Clare L. Deming

I have been reading a lot over the past few weeks, but I wanted to step back to review some books that I read earlier in the year. I had really enjoyed the Shadow and Bone series by Leigh Bardugo and have since finished a read-through of her other novels. Most of them are set in her Grishaverse world, so I’m going to start with those. Next up in the reading order after the Shadow and Bone trilogy are the Six of Crows Duology books: Six of Crows and then Crooked Kingdom (paid links). I listened to the audiobook version of Six of Crows, narrated by a cast of Jay Snyder, Brandon Rubin, Fred Berman, Lauren Fortgang, Roger Clark, Elizabeth Evans, and Tristan Morris.

You can find my reviews for other books by Leigh Bardugo here:

• Shadow and Bone (Shadow and Bone #1)
• Siege and Storm (Shadow and Bone #2)
• Ruin and Rising (Shadow and Bone #3)
• Demon in the Wood (graphic novel/prequel)

Here is the blurb:

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

Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction—if they don’t kill each other first.

It’s hard to even know where to begin with this book, but it was by far one of my favorite reads in the past few years. At it’s heart, it’s a heist story with the six characters in the blurb taking on a seemingly impossible task. Yet where this book shines is the characters. Each one has their own reasons for being there and secrets abound. While they are all criminals of some sort, it was easy to root for them and to understand the circumstances that brought them to this life.

While this book is set in the Grishaverse, it takes place in parts of the world that did not feature in the Shadow and Bone trilogy. Grisha magic is also less of a factor here, although the group still has a renegade grisha. There is romance woven through the plot as well, and it is torturously good. Just don’t expect a payoff from any of the characters’ relationships in this first book.

I think that you could also read Six of Crows without having read the Shadow and Bone books. The events of the earlier trilogy are mentioned, but none of that is directly relevant to this story. The grisha powers might be a little confusing, but since those play a smaller role here, it shouldn’t limit the enjoyment of the book.

The audiobook used a different narrator for each character’s chapters. This worked well and I was able to adjust to the different voices easily. One difference in my reading when I listen to an audio performance of a book is that I don’t always have a good sense of how much of the book is left. However in this story, I realized that I had too many minutes of the book left when I thought it was almost done. While that isn’t specifically a spoiler, I knew that something more was going to happen, which I think actually added to the tension at the end, making it tragically perfect.

Find more of my reviews here.