Book: Six Of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Published September 2015 by Henry Holt & Company|465 pages

Where I Got It: I borrowed the hardcover from the library

Series: Six Of Crows #1

Genre: YA Fantasy

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.

I really liked Six Of Crows!  It was nice to visit the world we got to know in her Grisha trilogy, and revisit it in a completely different way.

I liked seeing a completely different part of Ravka, and how this group of people came together for one task.  It’s a random assortment of people, but they all brought something different to the group, and they all have such different skill sets.  It made everyone important, and I thought they worked really well as a group.

I also liked seeing everyone’s stories, and how they ended up in Ketterdam.  We all learn more about the different characters, and how they came to be involved in this really big heist.  And they all take turns narrating, which I really liked.  It was a little slow at first, and hard to get into, because it takes a little bit to figure out who is who, and what their story was, and their place in this world, but once you get past that, it was an interesting read.

It’s such a complex world, and it takes place after the Grisha trilogy ends (though how long after, I’m not sure). Like I said earlier, you get a different look at this world, because of the different setting, and it really expands on how people see the Grisha, and how things are in a different place.  With spin-off series, I get a little nervous, just because I never know if I’ll like it as much as the original.  More often than not, I do, but in this case, I think setting it in the same universe, but in a different setting, and at a later point on the timeline, was a really good idea, because you still get a sense of the world and it’s familiar but also different.

I think what I love the most was that the heist didn’t go as planned.  It definitely changed how Kaz went about trying to get them out of it, and I really am curious as to how the rest of the series is going to go.  There’s romance (which has a small part in things and totally threw me for a loop) and adventure and even though I didn’t love it, I still thought it was a really great book.  There’s more to this world than I ever thought was possible in the original series. And what’s nice is that you don’t need to read the Grisha trilogy to know what’s going on in this book, because even though they’re set in the same world, they’re also stand-alone series.  I don’t know if that makes sense, but I don’t know how else to explain it.  You can, of course, and some of the terminology and magic might make more sense, but it’s not necessary because Bardugo does a great job at explaining how this world is.

4 stars.  It was a little slow at first, but it definitely lives up to the hype!