Six of Crows
Fantasy, High Fantasy, Young Adults
Leigh Bardugo
Six of Crows, Book # 1
Henry Holt and Company
September 29th 2015
Hardcover
465
English
February 15, 2020 February 20, 2020
Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone. . . .
A convict with a thirst for revenge
A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager
A runaway with a privileged past
A spy known as the Wraith
A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums
A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes
Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction—if they don’t kill each other first.
About the book
Six of Crows talks about a gang of criminals who must complete a task given by a city merchant. We are in a fantasy world, in a world where humans and Grishas exist, people with particular powers that not everyone accepts. To say more would be too much because it’s nice to discover the plot by reading the book like I did.
What I think
I liked the book even if I found it a little reductive, or better, I know that there is already a trilogy that talks about Grisha, but from the comments read here and there, I understood that the book is very readable even without reading the first three volumes and so I jumped on this duology. But I find that the Grisha world is explained a little reductive, not in a bad way, as if a piece is missing, we are given information, but I do not find it exhaustive as far as I am concerned. Maybe in the first trilogy it’s explained more and differently, but anyway, I liked the book. Especially all the ideas that Kaz had.
I like the fact that our heroes are not heroes, in fact they are the exact opposite since they are criminals. There is no chosen one but everyone has an important role and everyone has their moment to stand out above the others. I also like the fact that there are no Young Adult cliches.
Style
The chapters are not very long and the author is very good at mixing past and present. Each chapter is dedicated to a character in the gang and after the first chapters that are all present, each character revisits the past, how they found themselves in the gang and what they did before or how they met.
Characters
Kaz is the main character and the whole gang revolves around him. There are 5 members in addition to Kaz and they are: Jesper who is the group’s sniper; Inaj nicknamed the Wraith because she can get any information and any secret; Nina who is a Grisha, Matthias a Fjerdian who has a past with Nina and from what we understand from the book, the two populations, Grishass and Fjerdians hate each other so much that the Fjerdians hunt the Grishas to kill them. Then there is Wylan who is an inventor and is also the son of the merchant who gives Kaz the job. Everyone has a point of view in the book except for Wylan, who, however, we come to know him through others.
The characters are well described, each has its own particular past and I like how the author manages to mix past and present without being cryptic. It has often happened to me that an author is narrating the present and that for some reason s/he goes to the the past but there is no separation and therefore it is not clear when he is narrating the past and when the present. It doesn’t happen here. Perhaps because it is practically in the first person and each chapter is narrated by the character to whom it is dedicated so it is easy to introduce the past.
Conclusion
The book is not a super difficult fantasy to understand. In the end, more or less all the questions that are asked are answered even if there is a second book, but this is to finish the story not to give answers to questions that the first book doesn’t give. I recommend it to anyone who loves adventures, who likes to read about gangs of criminals, but who are not common criminals. But perhaps I would recommend reading the first trilogy.
3 coffees on “Six of Crows”