Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Summary from Goodreads:

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.

Review:

Sadly, I did not love this one like everyone else in the world seemed to. I really, really wanted to love it. I have such good memories with the books by this author. Basically, I believe Shadow and Bone was one of the earliest ARCs I have ever read. I think my first was Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. I started off right…

Any way, I remember zipping through Shadow and Bone like I had for very few other books in my past. Bardugo is such a good storyteller. And I loved this magical, Russian landscape of a world. So, you’d think I’d love another book that takes place in this landscape. Not as much. I guess my biggest problem was that it took me almost 2 weeks to read it. I was literally going through one book a day when I was on vacation and then my last day of vacation was when I started this one, and I totally expected to finish it too.

It took me about half the book to really get into the story. I almost put it down and stopped reading it entirely, a few times. But, I kept reading all the positive reviews and I kept remembering how much I enjoyed the other books. So, I trucked through it. I’m glad I did. The story did get a lot better in the second half.

So, my favorite thing lately has been character development. I love character driven stories. And I guess you can call this book that. However, I didn’t care for any of the characters until half way through it. Mostly, Bardugo didn’t really let you get to know anybody until later. They were very interesting characters, but I didn’t really care about them and if they survived various dangerous situations until close to the end of the story because I didn’t really know them until close to the end of the story. I loved learning about Kaz and Inej, Nina, Matthias, and Jesper. I just seriously wished I could have learned about them earlier on. Also, the various points of view were hard for me when I didn’t’ really know the characters. I constantly had to go back and remember who was talking and why I should remember them.

Some stuff, like why Kaz wore gloves, I could make educated guesses about early on, and that was fine. I just wish I had more to go on for these characters from the start. Maybe part of my problem was I forgot so much about this world. It’s been a long time since I read a book that takes place there. I even had to re-educate myself about the word “grisha,” a major element of the previous series.

I did end up falling for these characters by the very end, or at least most of the characters. I liked that they worked off each other and the team dynamic was great. I liked all the twists and turns of the story. I found the world this takes place in to be so interesting. Everything about the seedy underbelly of the city and the gang wars was just so different than this author’s other work. Different, in a nice, refreshing way.

All in all, this took me way too long to read. I didn’t really like any of the characters until the very end. The beginning was slow and confusing because of all the different character perspectives. I did enjoy the second half of the book a lot more. The world building was strong. I do think I’ll give the sequel a try when it comes out, but it’s not at the top of my tbr pile. Though, now that I know the characters, it might be a much better novel for me. I give this a 6/10.