Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo - Review

Six of Crows

Six of Crows Duology 1

Leigh Bardugo

500 pages, paperback

Indigo

Plot

Gangs rule in the Barrel, in Ketterdam. Gangs like the Dregs. For the right price you can trade everything there, and you find someone for any job. Someone like Kaz „Dirtyhands“ Brekker. A young criminal prodigy. He has been promised a fortune, if he breaks into the Icecourt and frees a prisoner.

For this incredible task he needs powerful friends to join him. Friends like Inej, Jesper, Wylan, Nina and Matthias.

But will they manage to do their job against all odds and with their own dark secrets turning against them?

My thoughts and feelings – spoiler free 

It took me a long time until I got to page 200 or so. I just did not have the time to really get into the story, but then I just flew through it.

Kaz Brekker is a wonderful character and so are all the others. The moment they left Ketterdam to head to the Icecourt the story became incredibly intense.

But not only their adventure was fast paced, you also got to read about the characters backstories and they were heart breaking.

The characters are all between the ages 16 to 18, but honestly I imagined them all as at least 18. But that is my only problem with this novel.

I read the Grisha trilogy last summer and it was good, but for me it did not live up to its hype. I didn’t really connect with Alina and Mal (I loved Nikolaj though) and the world building didn’t feel finished to me. But Six of Crows, which takes place in the same world as the Grisha trilogy, really made me love this world and I consider rereading the Grisha trilogy.

To sum my feelings up, I loved this book, every little aspect of it.

I have been in a huge book hangover since I finished Six of Crows last weekend.

You don’t have to read the Grisha trilogy to read Six of Crows and I really recommend picking Six of Crows up. It was amazing. I gave it full 5 out of 5 stars.

My spoilery thoughts

 I am sorry these are not in chronological order; I did not take notes while reading.

I could not believe how incredibly genius Kaz is. Everytime I thought they would get caught Kaz had already planned this to happen. How. Can. Someone. Be. So. Genius.

I loved it.  And I especially loved how Kaz let his guard down in front of Inej. Their friendship and potential romance was so good, even though Inej is one of my least favourite of our Six main characters. Don’t get me wrong, I still really love her, but the others are just even more amazing. I didn’t really like the religious aspect she brought into this story I myself am not religious. But I am okay with it of course it just made it a bit harder for me to connect to her.

For a long time we were only able to guess what had made Kaz as he is now, but then we learned about his backstory and I was shocked. How he came to Ketterdam with his brother Jordie and how they were tricked an lost all their money to Pekka Rollins was already so sad, but then they both got ill with this fever and Jordie didn’t survive it.

The scene where Kaz digs his way out of all these bodies was just insane.

Afterwards we knew why Kaz always wears gloves. He just can’t bear to touch human flesh anymore. Not after he woke up buried under hundreds of dead people.

(This review is going to be 99% about Kaz Brekker. And I am not sorry J )

Kaz isn’t a secretly good person, he really is really dark, the Barrel made him dark and not even Inej was able to change that. And to be honest, I loved that!

I knew at the end, that there would be a problem. And I was right, Van Eck, Wylan’s father just wanted the jurda parem for himself and he kidnaps Inej. Kaz lets him go to protect Inej and he basically starts a war against the whole world to get Inej back.

I can’t wait to see what happens in Crooked Kingdom to them.

I don’t have too much to say about Jesper and Wylan. We just don’t know too much about them. Jesper is a gambler and he betrayed his crew in order to protect his family, which was really heart breaking. He also straight up started to flirt with Wyland and it was hilarious to read about.

Wylan on the other hand is kind of mysterious for the most part of the book. He is the only one of our main characters, who has not his own POV chapters so we don’t really know what he is up to. Him being the son of Van Eck I was very suspicious of him all the time. But there was no need for that. We find out, that he besides being really good at maths and chemistry cannot read and that his father pushed him away because of that.

I even tried to sacrifice his son in order to get his hands on jurda parem. What an asshole! The last few chapters really made me fall for Wylan.

O and I almost forgot but we found out, that Jesper is a fabrikator.  Cool.

So that leaves us with Matthias and Nina.

We get to know Nina when Kaz asks her to join his team and later our crew breaks into Hellgate to free Matthias. Matthias is Fjerdan, he is a drüskelle, a hunter for Grishas and he has been in the Icecourt before.

Nina and Matthias already knew each other before our story started but when Matthias sees Nina in Hellgate he immediately tries to kill her. We later find out that Matthias and his drüskelle friend captured Nina (Nina is a heartrender and used to be in ravnka’s second army). But when they were on a ship on their way to Fjerda the ship sunk and Matthias and Nina were only able to survive because they worked together. In the following weeks they got really close but Nina eventually accused Matthias for slavery in order to protect other Grishas. So Matthias was brought to Ketterdam as a prisoner.

He developed a hatred for Nina in his time in Hellgate but eventually they forgive eachother and Matthias realises that Grishas are not the monsters he was made to believe they were.

Matthias and Nina’s friendship was really intense, their love and their hatred were so strong. And I loved the fact, that Matthias stayed faithful to Kaz’ crew.

But the best part about Nina and Matthias’s story was the section that was told from the past, when they tried to survive together.

I can’t wait to get to Crooked Kingdom but on the other hand I don’t want this story to end. The struggle is real.

For german people reading this:

Der Knaur Droemer Verlag wird wohl Six of Crows diesen Herbst auf Deutsch herausbringen und ich hoffe so sehr, dass sie das Cover beibehalten.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

- No mourners, no funerals. -