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

by Leigh Bardugo

[inlibrisveritas]

Six of Crows took me a bafflingly long time to read considering how much I enjoyed it. I started in Janurary and just finished it near the end of March. Depsite this sort of odd time frame, the story itself was never the issue…instead, I had some trouble with the audio narration.

Six of Crows takes place in the Grisha universe, sometime after the events of the original trilogy and in a different city altogether. The focus of this book is less on the Grisha as a whole and more about those who scrap by and take risks to survive. This is very much a heist novel, so has a completely different feel from the trilogy, which is pretty nice. I like seeing a different part of the world and seeing it from different points of view. Instead of having the p.o.v.’s of characters at the head of a rebellion facing insurmountable odds to change their country, we have a rag-tag group who hid in the shadows and making their living through less than reputable means. We see the grimy underbelly of the Grisha world and get to know people who are forced to live in it.

Our cast of characters is larger this time around and we have a wonderfully diverse little group in terms of personality, each with their own story that has really colored the way they see the world. My favorite characters were probably Inej and Nina. Inej is someone who has had her world taken away and replaced with a horror she still can’t quite escape from in her mind. Her new freedom has made her strong and there is a moment towards the end of the book that basically cemented her place in the ‘strong independent woman’ category and had me so freaking happy for her.

Now to this issues I had with the audiobook. As I was getting this post set up I realized there are a lot of narrators working on this one audio. I normally don’t mind having multiple but I think it probably worked against this one for me. There is a different narrator for each point of view, which is awesome…but several of these were hard to listen to. Jesper’s chapters were hard to follow because I couldn’t tell who was speaking, a lot of the male characters sounded the exact same. He also didn’t put a ton of emotion into it either, so it was hard to really understand the character’s feelings. Kaz’s chapters were better but were really slow and full of odd inflections that really threw me off. I think I wouldn’t have even noticed if I hadn’t been listening to the voices of Nina and Inej, which were much better. I’m not sure I’ll go for the audio of the next book unless it’s on sale like this one was.

Despite the issues with the audio I really did love this story. It was action packed and full of awesome characters with a lot to unpack. We get even more world building and see the world from a non-military point of view, and we even get some Fjerda and Kerch perspective instead of just Ravkan. I’m definitely picking up the next book when I can.