Six of Crows (Six of Crows #1) by Leigh Bardugo

Can a female character really be a heroine if life hasn’t fucked her sideways (often in the form of sexual abuse) to shape her up?

“I’ve broken into banks, warehouses, mansions, museums, vaults, a rare book library, and once the bedchamber of a visiting Kaelish diplomat whose wife had a passion for emeralds. But I’ve never had a cannon shot at me.”

Kaz Brekker 🖤

So, Six of Crows eh.

Finally got into the famous book. I have to admit that I was curious about this one because I have tried Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone but was unable to get into it. 

On the other hand, this one seemed like a step up and more… what’s the word I’m looking for here🤔, real? mature? adult? I really did not expect this book to center around 15–18-year-olds. Which, to be fair, shouldn’t have been disappointing. It is Young Adult after all, but how were they so magnificent like absolutely perfect geniuses at everything for no discernable reason at all? At least I could not make out why they were on my part. 

Our main character Kaz is this perfect anti-hero complete with the dead family that drives a burning need for vengeance. He feels, but he doesn’t. That prickly exterior hides a soft heart deep down that ultimately he’s afraid to show.  

To be honest, I never really got why people were afraid of him. Was it the stick thing he carried around? His voice?? 

Anyways, basically what Kaz had going for him were: 

📍Eidetic memory

📍Charisma

📍Gravely voice

📍Weird skin that made everyone blanch for some reason

📍Inej (but did it make sense that no one else in Ketterdam’s underworld had someone that could access secrets too?)

📍 Good business acumen (this might be what tips it for him, but then again, was every single crime boss in Ketterdam that bad at making money?)

📍 His walking stick

But honestly, though, how daft did the other gangs have to be for someone to just swoop in and take everything? 

…which leads me to Kaz’s first confrontation with that gangster guy…

How are you giving up screwing over Kaz because he threatened to harm your girlfriend? For that matter, how does your girlfriend not have security like WTF? Like how was that guy so bad at being a gangster, down to the security he hired, who, oh so conveniently, happened to have something terrible that Kaz found and he could hold over their head. Ugh!!

On to the rest of our motley but altogether brilliant array of characters that will blend together beautifully and give us magic according to the book.

I suppose you need a good supporting cast and if you’re going to break into a supposedly unbreakable fortress. (although with the way Kaz and his crew quite so easily scaled through all the hurdles, I’m not sure why that place had such a reputation in the first place).

Okay, but seriously, it should go without saying that breaking into a top security prison alone is impractical. But, obviously, doing it with five other inept (Kaz not included in this ineptitude because see quote at the beginning)

Anyways, suspend your brain from now on & move on with the belief that everything will always somehow work out for the main characters onwards.

HOW TO CARRY OUT A SUCCESSFUL HEIST, SIX OF CROWS STYLE

📍Make a plan that hinges on workers not doing their work because you know workers to be lazy, so they are pretty dumb & pretty negligent at their job, so you know voila heist easy peasy.

📍You definitely, without question, need someone who hasn’t visited there in years but has such a good memory that he’s able to reel off and describe in PERFECT DETAIL what every structure, nook, and cranny looks like. 

📍A person who can commit such perfect memory to paper in the form of a map (obviously making maps is beans in this book, but I’ve never made a map, so what do I know) in such a vivid way that you feel like you’re actually in said fortress. 

📍 Someone to climb things cos well it’s a fortress, and you need to climb…things

📍Someone with Grisha powers. No matter that the person’s Grisha skill levels are just okay, “not heist level we’re going to break in and out of the ice fortress which hasn’t been done in never because they’ve got top-notch security” level of skill. But again, refer to the first how to carry out a successful heist: Workers be lazy!!!!

📍Zero Scouting. I mean, who needs to scout a supposedly impregnable fortress to make sure a heist goes well? Maybe mere mortals do, but certainly not Kaz and his team. Why? Cos Kaz is magic & you know, his plans all work out because he’s Kaz. 

🖤🖤

Fantasy novels are out of this world

Literally, you get to create things that would seem nonsensical in reality and somehow make it work. But that’s the catch…

You have to make it work.

This author in no way convinced me that these six individuals could do what they did. There was literally no plan. Kaz kept a shit load of stuff to himself, and c’mon I mean, those guards were negligent to the point of helping the characters achieve their goal.

Also, just a measly couple of days to put everything together?? One/ two measly weeks tops to plan (and I use the word plan loosely) to infiltrate that ice fortress?? It was a bit comical to read, not going to lie.

Also, I’m going to need fantasy authors to stop commodifying sexual abuse in women as sympathy cards, especially when it’s never fully explored.

This is a hill I’m ready to die on.

It’s never really examined in this book because really this book isn’t about that. Still, it’s forever thrown in your face because, look, these girls are going to use these absolutely horrible things that have happened to them to rise and become the glorious badass heroines they were meant to be. Can a female character really be a heroine if life hasn’t fucked her sideways (often in the form of sexual abuse) to shape her up?

For a lot of fantasy authors, the answer is a resounding  NO!!

🖤🖤🖤

Random Ickyness

 🎈The fact that this book is supposedly Russian inspired, but the speech and everything else sounded not Russian. At least this answers my question of why the characters in the upcoming Netflix Shadow and Bone show do not sound Russian.

🎈Describing Inej’s special shoes as having nubbly leather soles… Like really, no other words apart from “nubbly” could be found?

🎈There was apparently champagne because why not?

🎈Kaz using his bare hands to pluck out a human eye… Like bare hands. TO PLUCK OUT A HUMAN EYE. A WHOLE ASS HUMAN EYE. This book really doesn’t rate me I swear😔.

🎈The part where Matthias describes Nina as being indecently round, and all I could think about was her being a ball cos round…

🎈The part where Kaz, I shit you not, manages to free himself, FREE HIMSELF (with ZERO EXPLANATION IN THIS BOOK OF HOW THIS IS POSSIBLE FOR A NON MAGICAL BEING) from being strapped to a fucking chair in chains, with his wrists bound on each side of the armrest. CHAINS!!!!! Is my functioning brain a joke to this book?)

🎈 When the plot started feeling like I was reading one of my Harlequin romance books. Like wow, we’re just introducing the whole love thing on this heavy level like that?

All in all, this book didn’t cut it for me. 

It was basically Lies of Locke Lamora without the 🔥. 

I have no doubt it will translate brilliantly on screen but, as a book? With the plot it had?

There are only so many times I can suspend my brain.

🌟.5