Young Adult, Fantasy

Published September 2015

Six of Crows, set in the same world as New York Time’s Bestselling series The Grisha Trilogy, is the first book of the “Six of Crows” duology. It’s a heist story written from a few different points of view, focusing on themes such as building relationships, self-discovery, identity, substance abuse, with a couple LGBT characters. It takes place in Ketterdam at the end of Winter.

Van Eck, a member of the Merchant Council, thinks someone is controlling Grisha with jurda parem. Grisha are humans who practice the art of manipulating matter. They are divided into three groups: Coporalki, Etherealki, and Materialki.

Van Eck is worried about the use of jurda parem and thinks if it’s released into the world it will lead to war. He wants to save Bo Yul-Bayur, a well-known chemist who helped to create jurda parem, currently imprisoned at the Ice Court. Van Eck doesn’t want their government connected to the situation in any way. He asks Kaz to break into the Ice Court and save Bo Yul-Bayur and in return Kaz’s crew will be paid 30 million Kruge. There’s one problem: The Ice Court has NEVER been breached. Kaz wants that money. It would change his life. So he goes about putting together the perfect crew – The Six of Crows.

Kaz Brekker is known as “Dirty hands” and “the Bastard of the Barrel”. He may be young, but he’s a bad-ass with a grumpy attitude. He uses a cane with a crows head due to a leg injury that causes him to walk with a limp. He is the leader of a gang of thieves known as “the Dregs”.

Inej Ghafa is “a spy known as the Wraith.” She’s a serious girl, and one of the few people who Kaz trusts. Inej silently sneaks around in order to gain information for Kaz. “The only law that applied to her was gravity, and some days she defied that, too.”

Nina Zenik is “a Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums.” Nina is super confident and hilarious. She agrees to help him on this quest so that Kaz will help her get Matthias Helvar out of prison.

Matthias is a Druskelle soldier (a Gisha hunter) from Fjerda who used to work for the Ice Court.

Jesper Fahey is a light-hearted, sarcastic “sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager.“

Wylan Van Eck, Van Eck’s son, is “a runaway with a privileged past.” He knows how to take things apart, put them back together, and blow things up.

Switching the point of view enabled me to become better acquainted with the main characters past, thought-process, goals, and motivation. The first half of the book is a slower pace than the second half, and it was a little hard to “get into” the book. However, once I was “in” I couldn’t put it down. I liked a few characters quite a bit, but if I had to choose a favourite I think I’d have to pick Inej. She is a STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER. In fact – MANY of the female characters are strong and quite able to help themselves “thank-you-very-much”. There’s nothing I despise more than all of the female characters depending on men to help them. BIG POINTS for the slow-burn, very under-the-radar romance stories going on as well. There is NO INSTA-LOVE happening here, and the romantic bits never take over the story and do not drive the plot. There were a few funny parts, but for the most part it’s quite a dark, suspenseful story with characters who have dismal pieces to their past. Six of Crows reminded me of the Ocean’s Eleven movies.

I don’t like when I don’t know how to pronounce the name of a character. If I can’t pronounce their name I have a hard time connecting with their story and find it easier to forget them. The flashbacks used to tell us more about each character’s history were slightly jarring. The book is much longer than it needs to be, and FYI – the ending leaves us with a cliffhanger.

I recommend this book to 16+ (for some graphic violence) readers who enjoy long, multi-character stories with morally grey characters.