BOOK REVIEW – Six of Crows

Six of Crows by: Leigh Bardugo – #1 in the Six of Crows Duology.

AGE GROUP: 14 and up// GENRE: Fantasy// AMOUNT OF PAGES: 462// RATING: 4/5

YA BOOK

summary

Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. 

When Kaz Brekker gets offered an impossible task that will make him rich beyond his wildest dreams, he decides he’s up for the challenge that has led many men and women to their death. He puts together a crew and they set off on this incredible but highly deadly heist.

Will the criminal prodigy be able to achieve his goal and get his share of the money or will he end up just like the other men and women who have been sent on and attempted this heist?

Brekker’s crew all has to work together and be able to trust each other with their lives but Kaz has been able to survive on his own for years, he’s ready for anything.  Will they manage or will they end up killing each other before the actual challenges start to happen?

review

Wow! That’s what I thought and felt when I read the last word of this book. Okay, let’s get right on to this review. But first, I know I said I had planned to read this in the summer meaning July but I just could not wait! I had to see what all the hype around this book was. However, I’ve got to say for the most part it lived up to all the excitement surrounding it but I felt like because of the rave reviews, I had really high expectations going in and I don’t particularly think it was as good a book as I thought it was going to be. Now, that does mean I didn’t love it because I most certainly did. Okay, now for real, onto my review.

The names in this book were out of this world! I could not pronounce half of the names of people or places or anything but did that make Six of Crows any less enjoyable? Being completely honest here, it kind of did. However, I loved this book so incredibly much and I think this was one of the first books I had read in a long time that did not centre around romance and I actually found it quite enjoyable and refreshing. Constant love issues and romance is what I like in most books (depending on if they’re well written) but with this one I felt it could hold itself up on its own without any love. Now, I know the second book in the Duology — pair of related novels — has romance, but I have a feeling it will not take over the book and I really hope Crooked Kingdom is as good as Six of Crows! 

The writing in this book was spectacular. OMG! There are so many quotes that I will remember throughout my life and mostly every single sentence has its own meaning to each character. That was another thing I loved about this book. The characters. Unlike any other book I have read, you really get to feel for, know, and learn about each character. Kaz Brekker, Inej Ghafa, Nina Zenik, Matthias Helvar, and Jesper Fahey are the five that you learn about, and you really get to find yourself in at least one. (Although there are six crew members who embark on the magical heist, the sixth person doesn’t have their own POV chapters.) My personal favourite is Inej but that is a really popular opinion mostly because she is the first character you really get to know and love. Now, do not be scared away by the names like I was at first because once you get drawn into the universe of Six of Crows their names won’t be on your mind all the time. More like: Who’s dying? No! I liked that person. Who are they killing now? Wait, who betrayed Kaz? Yeah, those were the kind of OMG moments I had while reading this incredible novel.

Throughout the reviews that I have done so far, I have not talked about the cover of each book so I want to start now because this cover is literally to die for! The art is so cool but there will be a picture up of the book so I won’t get into lots of details. I love the silver metallic part on the crow’s wings to identify each feather. I found that the cover of this book was alluring and a part of why I wanted to read it. I know you are not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but I do it anyway and somehow still end up with some pretty bad covers. So, I love the cover and how it is not just people or something boring like that. Props to the front!

Lastly, a big part of this book was how amazing the plot was and how it kept me up at night trying to out smart Kaz and thinking of one of his many tricks. Alas, I gave up and reality hit so I decided to stick with letting Kaz do the thinking and me just reading along his side. Anyways, as I previously said romance wasn’t a big part/not really a part at all, but even if you only love fantasy/romance then trust me when I say I am mostly the same except for the exceptions of Harry Potter and now this book and a few others. However, the plot in this book sparks so much interest in me because Bardugo said she was inspired by a poster of Oceans 11 and that whole concept. I just recently watched Oceans 8 and because of the plot in the movie, when I found Six of Crows I was beyond excited to read it! The thought of a magical robbery was and is so cool to me and that was really why I wanted to read this book. I really wanted to see their thought process into the heist and the tricks behind it, more than I wanted to look deeper into the actual whole story. BUT, as soon as I started to get into Six of Crows (aka when I was reading it) I realized how much more there was to the story besides things leading up to the robbery and the robbery itself. The characters backgrounds and their own worlds and how they all come from somewhere different was a really big part of the story but sometimes the information about their past was a little confusing for me. When there were just so many hard-to-pronounce names of places to keep track of, it threw me off and I didn’t know the whereabouts of everyone’s home town and I wasn’t following each individual’s story.

To wrap up this long review I’m going to state the big reason I gave this novel 4/5 as a rating. Six of Crows is all about the robbery and planning for it and the little secrets that the characters might betray. But my one problem is how the whole revolves around getting (SORRY THIS IS KIND OF A SPOILER) a person who can make a magical drink that can drive you mad and make you control people. I think that right there is a little weak. NO HATE! Now, I know all books have a huge BOOM moment but I really didn’t find that in this book. Each little secret or betrayal led to something much bigger which I really liked, but I did not like the endless fighting to get a person out of The Ice Court and then shelter him because the drug was so addictive and the world would soon hear of it. My point is this: I didn’t like how the whole book was about some dangerous drug and the fact that war may break out because of it. Also, I found that at some parts in the book I was wondering what something meant when I had read it just previously. I think that, and I know I’ve said this before, if the names were easier, I would have had a better time understanding challenging concepts in the novel because no doubt this book was well articulated and had a very interesting plot. All in all I would say this is one of the really great fantasy books out there and it mostly lives up to its hype!

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