Book Review: Six of Crows

I finally got around to reading Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows after seeing months and months of hype. It is especially good timing because the second book in the duology comes out in September. So read on to see if you should hurry up and read the book so that your eager hands can be ready for Crooked Kingdom when it releases in a few months.

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 are the only ones who might stand between the world and destruction—if they don't kill each other first.

Six of Crows is a story of six criminals who work in the underworld of Ketterdam, a fictional city on a fictional island known as Kerch. They are sent on an impossible mission to get a man out of the intensely secure prison called the Ice Court. This prison is located in Djerholm, Fjerda. (I’m just going to take a moment to pause and ask you if you’re confused yet. A little? Me, too. I will say that I heavily struggled with the first half of the book because I just could not wrap my brain around all the new words that were thrown at me.)

“A gambler, a convict, a wayward son, a lost Grisha, a Suli girl who had become a killer, a boy from the Barrel who had become something worse… What bound them together? Greed? Desperation? Was it just the knowledge that if one or all of them disappeared tonight, no one would come looking?”

a criminal underworld, magical secrets, and an impossible heist

What I loved:

1. The aesthetic. Okay, so this is totally superficial and irrelevant, BUT I love how pretty this book is. The chapter headings, the section dividers (see below), the cover, the black stained pages. GORGEOUS.
2. The characters. LOVED THEM! Multi faceted with unique personalities and bonus: some can even do magic (and we know I love magic)!
3. The world. While I have heard that you should read Leigh Bardugo’s Grisha Trilogy (unrelated story but takes place in the same world) prior to reading this novel due to more explanation of the world, I felt like I still got an adequate understanding of things and thought it was all super cool (magic, criminals, exotic places, oh my!)! I just might even pick up the first in that trilogy because I liked the world so much!
4. Multiple point of views. You switch between 6-8 different POVs in this novel, and while I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about it at first, I ended up loving it! I can only describe it using relay runners as an analogy: whoever was holding the baton and running their segment of the relay would have the chapter from their POV, so you always got to be a part of the action!
5. The ending. (Well, sort of.) I didn’t like that the ending ended on a big cliffhanger (BOO! I HATE THAT.) But I loved that we got a TON of character bonding and progress with relationships in the final quarter of the book. If the ending had been different, I definitely would not have been picking up the sequel, but now I am VERY eager to read it because with an ending like that I feel just as the photo below describes. And that must be remedied by the sequel ASAP.

If you like magical fantasy, action, heists, and a motley crew of characters, I would definitely recommend this book.

What do you think about heist books? Have you read Six of Crows? Do you plan to? I have to admit I’m SUPER excited to read the next one! 

Did you decide to take the plunge and read it for yourself? Amazon. Barnes & Noble. The Book Depository.

A.S. Thornton

A.S. Thornton has evolved from book blogger to author with a particular fondness for writing forbidden love in ancient deserts. When not writing, she’s caring for dogs and cats as a veterinarian. You’ll never find animals at the center of her writing, though, because those fictional worlds don’t have veterinarians and her literal brain can’t accept that the poor critters would be without parasite prevention. Thornton’s debut, DAUGHTER OF THE SALT KING is available wherever books are sold.