Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1) (Grishaverse, #4)

by Leigh Bardugo

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Well, this was a much longer journey than it needed to be. But overall, I think that this was definitely the more better written book when comparing the main works in the Grisha verse.

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I enjoy heists, there is something very interesting when seeing how a group of characters plan their way of doing things according to their strengths and such. Six of Crows had plenty of that with the amount of time it took to actually reach the point of the book and how Kaz worked around assembling his crew, I enjoy when things are taken slow in the planning process, it gives me the information I need to know more about the characters and more importantly it usually ends up revealing some form of world building that makes me giddy. That being said, this is where Leigh Bardugo’s shortcomings in her writings to me come into play, after finishing the Grisha trilogy I still didn’t really get a very good grasp on the customs and the overall persona of other countries for it to register all that well given that all the books were primarily in Ravka without expanding outside all that much.

In this book however, we get main characters who come from said different countries, have the setting be in a different country and I have to start grasping at any piece of information that will give me bigger ideas on where the Shu stand with this, the Fjerda, Ketterdam in itself that it got overwhelming at times, especially with the amount of things that actually happened in this book. I would never say that world building is a con, it never should be in a high fantasy setting, but the way it’s presented should make it stick so that any new additions to said verse can be taken in without issues. I’m of course saying this from the perspective of someone who was never a die hard fan of the Grisha verse, but still interested to know more about the world Leigh Bardugo is talking about.

While that is a con to the book, the characters in it were definitely a massive step up when compared to the main ones in the Grisha verse. I especially enjoyed how Leigh Bardugo didn’t imply her characters to be something and then present them as something completely different, more importantly I really enjoyed how she will present this peculiar thing about a certain character and then at a fitting time she’ll reveal what exactly was the story behind it. There were some instances where I’ll be sitting there and reading about a past moment or something of the sort before the focus would shift to another character, but before I forget about that interesting moment, it’s brought in again and actually elaborated on. I really enjoyed that about this book, even more so given how very interesting and entertaining the six of them actually are.

One more thing I really enjoyed are the multiple povs, the story is told form the perspective of several characters and that to me personally only served to make their presence stronger and much more memorable. So if I compare the world building to how she built her characters, I would say that I still enjoyed them more than enough for me to actually continue with the book, the book being so character driven was such a good idea with how unoriginal the ultimate goal is in a way. Executing the heist was very interesting to know as well, on one hand it showed me more about a part in the Grisha verse and on the other hand it showed me how incredibly resourceful Kaz and Co can be when things turn sour.

Tbh, I heard the book on audiobook because no matter how many times I tried to grab my copy of it and read it, I’ll get sidetracked, I’ll get bored out of my head and I’ll be surprised to notice that I got up and went to do something else instead. I tried so many times until I just tried out the audiobook and surprisingly, it was very very pleasant. Even more so with the multiple narrators, I haven’t heard another book with as many narrators before but I’m definitely not complaining because this is the way to go it’s this series from now onwards.

Will I continue with the duology? For sure, I enjoyed it more than trilogy and with a third book coming at some point, I do hope to be able to finish it before then. I also want to know what happened to a couple of characters so there’s that :)

Final rating: 3.5/5