Update #2: 27/09/2016

I AM NOT READY FOR CROOKED KINGDOM WHY ISN'T MY PRE-ORDER HERE YET I AM DROWNING IN AN OCEAN OF MY OWN SALTY TEARS.

First read: 18/01/2016


Me right now:



It's rare for a spin-off to be better than the original series. Usually, you find yourself missing the previous characters, and feeling like the spin-off is a fraud or an impostor you want gone. This is not one of those times.

Six of Crows absolutely knocks the Grisha out of the park. And I liked the Grisha. Six of Crows, is well thought out; its characters are more memorable, dynamic; its storyline is meatier. I was very concerned when this book was announced. Six main characters? Six POVs? Ocean's Eleven meets epic fantasy ??? This book had so much potential to fail.

But, of course, there was absolutely no reason to worry. Bardugo takes this crazy, complex plot, she takes this crowd of narrators, and she just makes it all work. This book was fantastic. It was epic. It had me staying up till two in the morning unable to put it down.

Remind me to never doubt Leigh Bardugo again.

Six of Crows is set in the same universe as The Grisha (obviously), this time in the fictional country of Amster Ketterdam. Our heroes (more on them later) are a rag-tag team of thieves and mischief makers, assigned to a very dangerous, possibly-fatal mission abroad. There's a butt-load of money involved if they manage to pull it off. And the pull of the reward, for very different reasons, is much too great for any of them to refuse despite the very real risk of death.

The group, aka The Crows, is led by Kaz "Dirtyhands" Brekker. Kaz is a thief with the remarkable talent for escaping shizz. He's ruthless, he's smart and calculating. He's sharp, cocky and bitter, willing to do anything to get the job done. He's an anti-hero, and I am so in love with him, it's not even funny.

What? You know how much I love my anti-heroes.

My second favorite character is, without a doubt, Inej. She's Kaz's right-hand, a girl she saved from a pleasure house and basically took under his wing. Also known as The Wraith, she spends most of her time spying on people for Kaz, feeding him with people's dirty secrets that he then uses against them. What I love about her, as well as the other female character Nina, is that they're so true to themselves. For all her time spent among thieves, gamblers and thugs, Inej never loses sight of who she really is - of the girl she was before she was sold to a brothel. She's loyal, strong, she's courageous, she's opinionated and calm, and she moves like a cat's shadow. She's also fierce as hell. I have such a crush.

The other characters are equally well-written. They're all multidimensional. They change and grow through the course of the book. They have short-term and long-term wants and needs. They're diverse - not just racially. Personality-wise, they're all remarkably different. Bardugo absolutely nails characterization with this book.

She's even grown in the emotion department. I didn't think that was possible. The Grisha, as well as all the Grisha shorts, were incredibly emotional. They made you feel all the things. Somehow, with Six of Crows, she does it better. The emotions are subtler this time around, there's no heavy, dramatic, angst that makes you clutch at your heart and go, "oh no, my poor babies". This time, it's subtle. She weaves strong emotions lightly, a touch here; a wayward thought; an averted gaze. And even though all she's really doing is lightly trailing an Emotion Feather TM, you still find yourself clutching at your heart, crying for your babies.

Which is great.

There's a healthy amount of romance in this, I'm not going to lie. The romance is tied together tightly to the plot. But fear not! It's in small doses. Really. No sappy, annoying couples. No infuriatingly angsty lovebirds. It's little sprinkles of romance at just the right places. The same can be said for the magic. Little sprinklings. Nothing overwhelming.

Six of Crows is everything you could hope for, and more, from a YA epic fantasy. It's daring and large, but it honestly does not disappoint anywhere.

SUCH_A_GREAT_BOOK.

READ IT.

*cries*

Also, because I feel like this needs to be said; I LIKED HOW THE GRISHA ENDED. FIGHT ME.
Double also, Kinej needs to happen, like, yesterday.

Read the review here

“I would come for you,” he said, and when he saw the wary look she shot him, he said it again. “I would come for you. And if I couldn’t walk, I’d crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were, we’d fight our way out together—knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that’s what we do. We never stop fighting."

I am a mess. I am a sobbing, broken mess.

I didn't read Six of Crows until the beginning of this year, and in a way I'm glad. Because while the wait for Crooked Kingdom has been excruciating and nearly consumed me whole, at least I can say that I haven't had to wait as long as most other people.

HAHAHAHAHA.

This duology holds a special place in my heart. From the minute I read Inej's first chapter in Six of Crows, I knew I'd carry this story and these characters with me for a long time. There's a magic to this series that I don't find in many books, and when I do, I treasure it. I'd sell my left foot for a chance to experience this series for the first time again.

Bardugo is incredibly gifted when it comes to crafting characters - they leap off the page. They're real, they're diverse, and they make nests for themselves in your heart and never leave. I love them - Kaz and Inej in particular - like they're my own. I feel for them as if they're real people I know and have come to accept into my small circle of friends. I am currently writing this review unable to feel my own fingers, and with my heart pulsing weakly in my throat. This book has ruined me forever.

Crooked Kingdom is a trip. It starts at a 100 miles an hour and gains speed as it goes along. The jump in quality from Six of Crows to Crooked Kingdom is astounding. How Bardugo improves this much from book to book, I'll never know. But if you thought Six of Crows was well-written, Crooked Kingdom is going to take your breath away. Things are a lot more tense, this time around. The con is trickier, the game they're playing much more dangerous that when they were infiltrating the most guarded prison in the world. And the haul is so much more greater than ever before.

Crooked Kingdom opens a few days after the ending of Six of Crows, with the gang in the middle of a crazy scheme to get Inej back and destroy Van Eck. And you'd think that it'd be as simple as that - but you'd be wrong. The stakes in this book are bigger than anyone of us, I think, ever imagined. There's so much more going on than just taking taking Van Eck down and boy, is it a ride.

I loved how much more layered each character got. (Yes, it does always come back to the characters for me). We got to take a closer look inside their minds, got to know them better as people. And after everything they went through in the first book, they all went through some pretty serious, but believable, changes. Kaz, especially became so much more complex. Look, I'm sure that some people will look at this and say he lost his edge. But he didn't, not really. Crooked Kingdom saw Kaz even more ruthless than he was before, and a little more unhinged. Because this time he was letting himself feel things, and his emotions affected his behavior.

Still he soften a bit? Yes.

Was he still the mad schemer we all know and love? Yes.

Was he cruel and vicious and sometimes murdery? Yes.

Did he keep to the character development that was set up for him at the end of the last book? ("He wasn't so broken that he couldn't pull himself together into some semblance of a man for her") Yes. I mean, guys, he's an anti-hero. Not a cold villain. There was ALWAYS good in him. This was the point. To see him grow into that.

DID HE GROW LIKE AN ACTUAL HUMAN BEING? Y E S.

*breathes*

A quick list of things I wasn't too happy about, before I wrap up:

1. NOT ENOUGH KAZ CHAPTERS. WHAT THE HECK.

2. Kuwei seemed kinda pointless as a character tbh

3. I honestly hoped Inej would figure out what the R on Kaz's bicep meant, but okay.

4. No, seriously. where the heck were all the Kaz chapters.

But honestly, these were tiny things. Sure, the lack of Kaz chapters bothered me, but in the grand scheme of things, these weren't big enough annoyances to stop me from giving this book ALL THE STARS.

My point it, this was a fabulous book, one I will be reading again and again and again. It ended the way it should have, on a fast-paced, bloody note, and even though I will never accept that this is the end of this tale, everything about it was perfect.

Also, Leigh Bardugo is an evil genius and has thoroughly ruined my heart, and I need to go lie down on the floor some more.

PS: Inej is an absolute boss and I love her to bits.

Read this review here

If you were to take every single praise-word in my vocabulary, and smush them together to try and describe how much I loved this book, you wouldn't even come CLOSE to my actual feelings.

Normally, I like to give myself a few months before I reread a book, but I loved this one so much that I might pick it up again as soon as next week. And I hope my enthusiasm for this book is enough to get people to pick it up, because it was truly a delightful gem of a book, and I thank all my lucky stars that I decided to give it a shot. It was de-freakin'-lightful.

Read my full review here

Don't let how long it took for me to finish this fool you, this may or may not have just become one of my all-time favorite books. It was just one of those novels that you couldn't gulp down in one sitting - it required reflection and time to absorb. Amazing read. I'll be picking this one up again soon. I can feel it in my bones.