Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1) in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

Apr 18, 2019 Cardi rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, read-in-2019

I felt this book really hit it's strides halfway through. By then the characters were well known to me and seeing them further developed through flashbacks and having their relationships progressed by the action of the plot was very gratifying. Nina and Inej were particular favourites of mine. To be honest I would have liked more of a tidy conclusion to this novel (wishful thinking given my awareness of a sequel!), especially as I read it whilst on holiday. I'm currently undecided as to whether ...more

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Mar 21, 2020 Lacey Louwagie rated it really liked it

Shelves: book-club, youngadult, fantasy

This book had a clear sense of place, and the characters were also compelling. The heist story was less interesting to me, but then, I'm not really a fan of heist stories to begin with. My mind sort of glazed over in a lot of the chase and battle and whatnot scenes. But I guess I liked the characters and their backstories enough to give this book four stars way back when I read it. (I had a lot of thoughts about this three months ago, but most of them have been crowded out by other things by now ...more

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Apr 16, 2015 eb rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, print, young-adult, review-copy, multiple-viewpoints, poc-main-characters, poc-ancillary-characters

I tore through this addition to the Grisha world in just a couple of days-- it's fast, dangerous, and fascinating, building a world much like the parallel Russia of Ravka in Shadow and Bone, only this time in the crime- and vice-steeped world of a parallel Holland. Ketterdam and The Barrel are a twisting rat warren of turf wars, marks, and shady dealings, and the characters that populate it, particularly Kaz Brekker, are compelling and infuriating, real and damaged and mythic.

Part of the fun of I tore through this addition to the Grisha world in just a couple of days-- it's fast, dangerous, and fascinating, building a world much like the parallel Russia of Ravka in Shadow and Bone, only this time in the crime- and vice-steeped world of a parallel Holland. Ketterdam and The Barrel are a twisting rat warren of turf wars, marks, and shady dealings, and the characters that populate it, particularly Kaz Brekker, are compelling and infuriating, real and damaged and mythic.

Part of the fun of a heist story is seeing how the game unfolds, how the mastermind planned for each step without anyone else on the crew guessing. In a way, the reader is between the crew and the mastermind: we're picking up clues and trying to solve the puzzle before the reveal. That's the pleasure-- either of figuring it out, or of seeing how it was done. Most of the reveals in Six of Crows are skillfully done, both in set-up and pay-off, and they are fun to read, but there were several places in the text where convenient details come to light with disappointing at a crucial and messy point in the plot. It wasn't that I was disinclined to believe these details, I was just hyper aware of the clues, because that's how a heist story is meant to be read. There were several places where characters suddenly knew something / had a skill / or had made some preparation before the immediate action that should have been set up with a sentence or two, some stray detail, or a memory, and they were not.

The most egregious example in this story is Jesper, a sharpshooter on Kaz Brekker's crew for the wildly dangerous job that comprises the plot. Throughout the story, I felt less connected to him as a character, and felt distinctly that Bardugo was trying to figure him out on the page-- that she didn't already know him. The fact that he's bisexual and a hidden Fabrikator Grisha both crop up as convenient details when suddenly those motivations / skills are needed to advance the plot. I expected more skillful workmanship from Bardugo and of the editors for this book. The Jesper we know at the end is cast in a completely different light than the one we meet at the beginning, and it's not because of character development. It's because he was written like a pawn. Very minimal additions would have seeded his secrets into the narrative as things to pay attention to so that the reveals were both surprising and inevitable. In a tightly plotted book that is balanced so carefully, these small, unnecessary flaws are all the more obvious and disappointing.

I hope the next books in this new trilogy live up to the quality of The Grisha Trilogy, because these characters are so much fun to read.

ARC acquired from McMillan at Book Expo 2015.
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Oct 11, 2015 Kaitlin rated it it was ok

Shelves: fiction, ya, fantasy

This book was fine, but just not my favorite. (view spoiler)

The characters were somewhat interesting, with the female characters piquing my interest more than the others, though toward the end when we got a bit more backstory on some of the characters I was interested.

This book felt like a CW show, if you know what I mean--sort of teen-soap-opera-y. The plot wasn't that well developed, and there wasn't enough ...more

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