Scan barcode
A review by margueritestjust
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
adventurous
dark
funny
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
What an amazing book. I had held off on reading this for such a long time because it was so popular not just when the series came out but back when I was in high school when it was first released. But I decided to finally pick it up, and it was written so, so well.
I love the world and setting - some of my favorite stories have characters that are so much a part of their world that they can't be taken out of that world and put somewhere else and still be the same. The world and the characters very much play off of each other - each character is a product of their environment. Though Kaz is technically not a "bastard of the Barrel", he may as well be, because that is the world that shaped him, and it comes through in the way that he dresses, the way that he speaks, the way that he's created a myth around himself. Each of the main crew is similarly part of the setting and their own character at the same time.
One of the things that Bardugo does really well is to reveal information in portions and only when it's necessary. We learn of these characters' pasts as their relationships, fears, and goals are talked about in the present, and it's the restraint of a writer who knows to only give the necessary information at the necessary time. Obstensibly, this book is about a heist, but the book is really about the characters - the plot drives the character work at the end of the day. That being said, Bardugo was still delivering flashback exposition during the actual heist, and perhaps it was just me being impatient but I felt that it was information that could have been truly covered earlier - and then left the heist completely running on its own time. Everything was going poorly enough for our main characters that I needed to know about them in the present, not them in the past lol.
The book does raise a lot of questions about what is going to happen in the next, and while there are some obvious ones and clear threads that will have to be picked up (will Inej be rescued? What will happen to Kaz/Inej's dynamic? What will happen to Nina? My favorite question is how on earth the crew will not be prosecuted and extradited for rescuing Kuwei from the Ice Court. The Fjerdans literally know how every single one of them looks and two of their names thanks to Ms Heleen lmao. Perhaps this will happen, perhaps it won't. )
I love all of the main crew dearly except for Matthias. He's still on thin ice. (Unintended pun.) However, Inej my beloved <3
In all seriousness, I had a really hard time getting into the Helnik romance.If it had been me, I would have left Matthias in prison and never given it a second thought. It's really hard to want to cheer on a romance when a male character who is a fantasy racist thinks about killing the woman that he's in love with all the time. He gets better, but I'm really not an enemies-to-lovers kind of gal and while it's very clear that this is a story of Matthias getting deradicalized, we should have known about his tragic backstory concerning his family earlier, because it does help to make him more sympathetic. By the end of the book, he had grown a bit on me, but I still had a hard time wanting the two of them to be together. In comparison, I think that Kanej and Wesper(? are those the ship names?) were both nicely well done, with Kanej taking the clear lead. When it said "Kaz needed to say thank you for his new hat" I legit started to tear up. And when earlier in the book, he says "your enemies" to Inej in a conversation and she repeats "my enemies" and then he says "our enemies" like hello????? I think it's fascinating how much there is unsaid between the two of them that is instead spoken through their actions. As for Wesper, it's a relationship that is still somewhat loosely defined in terms of the romance department, and honestly I wasn't sure if they were really flirting with each other or not until probably 1/2 or 3/4 of the way through the book.
All of my reviews turn out to be unreasonably long, so I'll just say this to wrap up. It's a book that I genuinely could not put down. I read most of it within one night, and I found that reading along with atmospheric white noise really added to my experience as well, which is something new that I've discovered and I can't wait to use that for the next book that I read as well. I adored this book, I think it's lovingly crafted from start to finish. Definitely deserves the hype that it gets.
I love the world and setting - some of my favorite stories have characters that are so much a part of their world that they can't be taken out of that world and put somewhere else and still be the same. The world and the characters very much play off of each other - each character is a product of their environment. Though Kaz is technically not a "bastard of the Barrel", he may as well be, because that is the world that shaped him, and it comes through in the way that he dresses, the way that he speaks, the way that he's created a myth around himself. Each of the main crew is similarly part of the setting and their own character at the same time.
One of the things that Bardugo does really well is to reveal information in portions and only when it's necessary. We learn of these characters' pasts as their relationships, fears, and goals are talked about in the present, and it's the restraint of a writer who knows to only give the necessary information at the necessary time. Obstensibly, this book is about a heist, but the book is really about the characters - the plot drives the character work at the end of the day. That being said, Bardugo was still delivering flashback exposition during the actual heist, and perhaps it was just me being impatient but I felt that it was information that could have been truly covered earlier - and then left the heist completely running on its own time. Everything was going poorly enough for our main characters that I needed to know about them in the present, not them in the past lol.
The book does raise a lot of questions about what is going to happen in the next, and while there are some obvious ones and clear threads that will have to be picked up (
I love all of the main crew dearly except for Matthias. He's still on thin ice. (Unintended pun.) However, Inej my beloved <3
In all seriousness, I had a really hard time getting into the Helnik romance.
All of my reviews turn out to be unreasonably long, so I'll just say this to wrap up. It's a book that I genuinely could not put down. I read most of it within one night, and I found that reading along with atmospheric white noise really added to my experience as well, which is something new that I've discovered and I can't wait to use that for the next book that I read as well. I adored this book, I think it's lovingly crafted from start to finish. Definitely deserves the hype that it gets.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Violence, and Murder
Moderate: Addiction, Animal death, Child death, and Blood
Minor: Excrement
Lots of death - often by gun or knife, but it does have the death of animals and describes three bodies that have been burned to death. There is some description of an eyeball that gets a bit gory.