Six of Crows: a Slightly Biased Review

Things you should know before reading Six of Crows:

• The Grisha Trilogy is a series of books that came out before the Six of Crows series. They are set in the same universe, a little earlier chronologically and in a different country on the map of the cannon world that the author created.

• The main thing that sets this world apart from others is the presence of "Grisha", or people born with supernatural abilities. There are different kinds of grisha based on what abilities they have. For example, Tidemakers can control the tides of the oceans and help ships with steering and navigation. Other grisha are healers, or they can control materials and create cool stuff.

• You don't have to read the Grisha trilogy to understand everything that's going on, although it certainly helps. No characters from the Grisha trilogy appear in Six of Crows except Zoya, and they mention Sankta Alina a few times, but nothing more.

• Spoilery review:

Although I personally did read the grisha trilogy first, I have a feeling that you could pick out what grisha are and all of the dynamics of the world pretty quickly.

The reason why I wrote that this is a biased review is because I read so many YA books that I'm practically immune to all tropes and common plotlines of YA literature. Throne of Glass? Hunger games? Immortal instruments? A court of thorns and roses? The Selection? Basically every other popular and or semi popular YA book? Yeah, I've read it. (Except Shatter me. I couldn't get past the first few chapters of that one for some reason.) And with YA fiction being such a genre prone to repetitions, it can easily get boring. Perhaps this is one reason why I didn't enjoy it as much as someone who is just getting into the genre.

I usually judge books on six things, characters, plot, world building (in the case of fantasy/sci-fi), messages, writing style and "addictiveness" or how much I got invested in it. One example of a very addictive book that scored subpart on all other levels would be the previously mentioned selection series (if you know, you know). Now onto the actual review.

The "main character" of this book is Kaz Brekker. Dirtyhands. The limping, seventeen year old, ruthless, cunning, fancy suit wearing general of the Dregs; one of the many gangs in Ketterdam. Beating up people with his magic cane since [insert the year in which the grisha universe takes place]. I know that the author (Leigh Bardugo) actually also has a disease because of which she can't walk properly, and she wanted to create a hero who has similar issues to her but is still awesome. I was at first enthusiastic about this, that the main character not only has some mental problems- which is very common in these types of books, but also has an actual physical disability which he has to learn to deal with in this type of "dangerous" setting. HOWEVER, Kaz's disability did not affect his actual physical ability at all. He can still run, he can still keep up with the others, he can still be silent, even without his magic walking stick. His broken leg never hinders him in any detrimental way, and I thought that was a bit disappointing. Sure, you can say that he's just super capable and doesn't let even the most excruciating pain affect him, but still. Otherwise, he's your average emotionally crippled, revenge-driven, bad boy hottie. But how did he become what he is now? Yeah, that part surprised even me.

So when his father died, him and his big bro came up to the big city with big dreams of becoming rich. But they were tricked out of their last penny by this con artist/mob boss: Pekka Rollins. And then a pandemic hit (2020, where you at?). Both Kaz and Jordie caught the Queen's Lady Plague, also known as firepox. Jordie died of the disease, and Kaz fell very ill as well. The siblings were presumed dead and their bodies were collected and brought out by the Reaper's Barge to sea. However, Kaz, barely alive, swam back to Ketterdam using his brother's body as a float. The experience was extremely traumatic for the young Kaz and left him unable to bear contact with another person's skin. Also it is implied that the illness damaged his throat causing his voice to develop a rasp, which Inej describes as sounding like stone on stone. It did explain his strange ways and phobias, but then again however... I really hoped that we didn't find out the way we found. We saw this as sort of part of his memories, in his head, while I think it would have been a perfect opportunity for Kaz to actually open up to Inej and for us to figure out through Kaz telling her and becoming vulnerable. To actually have some development. I feel like Kaz did have development in the sense that he (sort of?) recognized his feelings for Inej at the end, which waas nice. At the same time, he didn't really advance at all. Yes, he asked her to stay in Ketterdam, but then he didn't want to offer her anything in return and just let her walk away... I realize that this book is a trilogy and that there are two more books for him to grow, but I still would have liked his character to progress a bit more. Maybe I'm just having too high expectations, who knows. You know what scene I loved? The one where he fell unconscious in the back of the wagon. I liked seeing him panic and not have everything under control with this cool. calculated façade. He's 17, for Christ's sake. It was also a nice intimate moment because Inej was the only one that noticed. This leads me into Inej.

There isn't much to say about Inej. She is a badass sixteen year old that jumps around on roofs and names her knives and has a dark past of getting kidnapped. I mean, all of these people have kind of a dark past, so that's not even unique anymore. She's likeable enough, you want her to be happy. She struggles with her identity, and her mortal enemy (You could say her Pekka Rollins) is the scary peacock lady that used to own her and force her to have sex for money with men who have a race thing (She's Suli, a type of nomadic people). By the end of the book, she gets her revenge on Ms. Peacock by stealing her unnecessarily large diamond choker (That's so 2016, lady)

I really wish that Leigh did not force this romance with Kaz onto her. It would have been enough for them to be friends or companions, or becoming more comfortable and trusting with each other. The romance is nonessential and that bugs me. But one reason why I absolutely love Inej is that she knows not to sell herself too short. She has a crush on Kaz too, but when he insinuated that he wanted her to stay, she replied with " I'll have you without your armor, or not at all". You go girl.

Don't even get me started on Matthias and Nina.

I honestly don't think that any relationship that started from "I want to kill you" is going to last. I believe that their physical attraction did contribute in bridging this gap of Matthias actually considering Nina as a human being, but I'm still very suspicious about this whole ordeal. Where are they going to go from now? How are they going to deal with these glaring cultural differences and the fact that they have very different plans for the future. Not to mention that Nina is now a drug addict and could die ( I mean, we all know she isn't going to die. I could bet my future children on that fact). P.S- I respect all religions and stuff but Matthias was seriously annoying with all the sacred tree talk.

I have to say that I enjoyed Jespers and Wylans dynamic the most. It sort of reminded me of Gimli and Legolas from LOTR. It was really cute just seing them genuinely go from having prejudices and getting on each other's nerves to caring about each other.

None of the other characters as far as I remember were especially interesting... Pekka Rollins, as much as they tried to build him up as this powerful big mob boss that everyone is scared about, I don't think he was actually a really impactful villain, nor the mercher that ended up betraying them (I don't remember his name), The main villain turned out to be partly the whole country and court of Fjerda, and partly the drug itself (Jurda Parem, the performance enhancing drug that Bo Yul Bayur invented for Grisha). I'll give them this though, Kaz and Pekka were eerily similar and that does add a certain irony to the fact that Kaz swore to destroy Pekka because oh what he'd done.

The plot wasn't bad... except i wasn't on the edge of my seat for any of it and it was also pretty kind of a let down. How was the merchant council so sure that Bo Yul Bayur was even alive? And they don't even have the recipe for this big bad drug because his son doesn't even know it? What happened to Nina and Matthias' plan? They went through all this trouble to free this man, the entire book's plot is based around it and the 30 million kruge they were going to get, and a) they scientist is dead b) they don't get the money and c) no one fricking died which is very improbable. How was Kaz Brekker the mastermind even tricked by a mercher like this? You want to believe me that he seriously did not research at all whether the rest of the merchant council knew about this whole mission? If they just didn't go to save Bo Yul Bayur, everything would have been the same. Perhaps his son would have died, but in the grand scheme that doesn't change anything. Also, the thing about how Nina betrayed Matthias? She could have removed the charges and/or found a way to escape BEFORE they threw Matthias into a prison, or at least told him why she did it instead of waiting for 3/4 of the book and creating miscommunication.

As far as I can see there isn't one overarching message to this story, which is fine, not every story needs one. There were, however, some good lessons. The ambiguity of morality. That everyone has a story to tell. The thing about Matthias and Nina and how they learned to love each other despite what their societies told them about grisha and druskelle. How at the end, Wylan is practically in a different body, but he is still himself on the inside, to name a few.

Jumping from one character to the other in the POVs was not to my taste. It should have stayed mainly, if not entirely in one person's head. First of all, it would have made it easier for the audience to latch onto one character. I feel like Leigh Bardugo was trying to do too many things at once. There were many interesting ideas in her book, like Jesper's decision to live without denouncing his powers and his feelings of betrayal, almost, and Nina and Matthias' relationship with each other and their countries and how they both, as soldiers on different sides, learn to cope with that responsibility and gradually learning to trust each other after a betrayal. And Kaz overcoming his childhood trauma and developing a trusting friendship with Inej where they were actually there for each other, Wylan's rich kid turned slum rat who can't read and is fighting for his place in the world story. But instead she just chose to skim the surface on all of them instead of focusing on one. I know this was part of what she intended, to show the story of each of the Six Crows, but I just didn;t vibe with it. It wasn't as powerful as it could have been. Her writing style overall is really good, easy on the eyes and she had some very poetic quotes in there.

Props to her worldbuilding. I think she did a very good job on establishing as much of a cultural and ethnic background of all of the countries in her book as she could in one book and giving them defining characteristics, and also incorporating one member from each of those countried into her team. I appreciate the diversity, especially on how each of the countries view and treat the Grisha. I felt like Ketterdam was sort of the capitalistic, American inspired pleasure center but with northern European influences and I liked how they publicly condemn slavery and are "neutral" however indentures and slavery are still very much a thing and that might be a parallel to how racial discrimination even in societies that are considered more advanced and don't have monarchies like Fjerda does can exist and they can still exploit minorities for their own gain.

The language aspect of her world building is also impressive. Not many authors will choose to make up so many different words in an imagined language.

Overall I would give this book a 4 star rating, but I'm not reading the sequels.

I hope you enjoyed this kind of butthurt, perhaps too harsh review.

Toodly doo