Review: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

So. Perhaps I was very late to this party. And perhaps I should have taken steps to be more punctual. But I don’t have to wait to read Crooked Kingdom. So ha. I have a silver lining. 

This book was so intense I had a very hard time guessing what was to come next. My ability to see what the author was doing was completely turned off most of this book. In short, I was conned hard. My brain was too distracted by amazing storytelling to be trying to analyze why this storytelling was amazing. I loved it. 

Even the two things that were telegraphed pretty intensely were given false starts or counted on your brain assuming it was going to be similar to what other stories had done. I’m talking about Nina taking the jurda parem and Wylan being disowned. You know from the moment we hear about jurda parem that one of our heroes will be consuming it, we assume Nina. The little extra Grisha surprise muddles that for a moment, then the threat for the jurda parem mist situation fakes you out for a minute, then BAM heroic idiot time. And with Wylan I kinda assumed it was going to be another ‘parent disowns gay child’ situation. I now see all the clues that my brain totally overlooked because I was not trying to find the reason. He did not label his map and he was freaked out by the looking glass book thing. I am sure there was something else I totally skipped over. This is going to be such a great book to reread. 

I know I am meant to declare who my favorite was somewhere in this review. Picking a favorite seems impossible. Anyone I would say would feel like betraying the others. This is also why I don’t have a favorite color.
How could I pick between Inej and Nina? I ADORE what was done with both of their characters. 

I wanted the world to be forced to grovel at Inej’s feet for forgiveness almost immediately after meeting her. The more time we spent with Inej the more that feeling grew, but also Inej’s plan to exact her own vengeance was presented. I was beyond elation that Inej was not written to be completely healed by the attention of the boy she likes. That she demanded much of him and held true to her conviction when offered a sliver of what she needed. That is a badass message to be presented to girls, more authors should show that happiness and healing are not tied to romantic love and that romantic love should not be accepted when it is not enough. 

And Nina. I am obsessed with Nina. I want to go on a thousand waffle dates with her (and Inej, she is welcome everywhere and I could not stop her from attending obviously). No other character could have caused me to feel sympathy for Matthias the way Nina did. She was a delightful connection to the Ravkan Grisha that I occasionally missed, I am always down for a Zoya anecdote. I knew with every wonderful lovely thing that was presented about Nina we were marching towards the consuming addiction that jurda parem was promised to extract upon her. 

I was impressed at the way in which Leigh Bardugo presented Matthias. She really used him as an embodiment of the whole 'it is harder to hate close up’ thing. We got to watch the nonsense he believed be slowly challenged repeatedly throughout the book. And I SUPER doubted that he was going to learn. That fake out might have been the one that most fucked with my mind. I am not sure he is quite there on respecting all Grisha as fully human, but he certainly respects Nina and probably Jesper. So we have a start. 

Speaking of Jesper. Wow. Maybe my favorite male character? It is so hard to choose. Everyone is nuanced and interesting and decisions are hard. I just love how flawed Jesper is. And how his flaws blinded him to his own recklessness even while he could see the places in which his own life was being destroyed. Jesper hardcore needs a therapist (though who in this book doesn’t?) or an addiction specialist. But despite his flaws I just adore Jesper. That reveal at the end was such a well down punch to the gut. I was very 'how did I not see this coming, this is super sudden but inevitable, how impressive, I have been tricked again!' 

I guess I am doing a character by character gush. So: Wylan. Such a precious baby. He was shoved in with the big kids and they are not teaching him the best morality or anything but I loved seeing him learn to thrive with them. I also was super into solving the mystery of him. And I love every naive comment he makes. I loved watching him show his value over and over. I just want more Wylan in Crooked Kingdom. 

And Kaz. I laughed at his wit. I literally shrieked aloud as he ripped an eye from someone’s face. I shed a tear or two at his backstory. I was horrified by his backstory. Also every moment he is on the page I am fascinated. And that ending. He is having the parts of him that are good stripped away so quickly. The sacrifice of the part of him he knows Inej wants to flourish in order to save Inej, ugh, this was killer. This is how you do a gift of the magi properly. This causes proper heartache. 

tl:dr I am obsessed with this book and these characters and no one is surprised because I am so late to this party.

I gave this book five stars on Goodreads and finished reading it on February 26th, 2019.