Six of Crows by Leigh BardugoMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Kaz Bekker is a more than a thief - he's a bastard from the Barrel with a streak of genius. Enough to assemble a team of outcasts for a heist so impossible it will make each of them richer than their wildest dreams. If they can trust each other enough to complete it.
Six of Crows is a riveting adventure with characters solidly on the darker side of the grey of morality. They aren't nice people and they're okay with not being nice people, but they have their reasons for not being nice. Some it's circumstances. Others it was a hard choice. I love how they have such intertwined moral and immoral qualities. It's a gritty, brutal world Bardugo has created, and all six survive as best they can. A couple thrive from it. She doesn't pull punches when it comes to their actions - there's blood, pain, and betrayal aplenty (no rape onscreen or implied heavily, though).
The adventure was fast-paced, logical, and with enough twists and turns to keep me entertained without being frustrated. I was satisfied with the ending, despite there being a definite thread left unraveled and waiting to be picked up and completed in the next book.
What I didn't like was the amount of backstory for each character. While at the end it paid off with me knowing the character's history and why they were doing things, I personally don't like to be loaded with backstory. I'd rather get to know the character as they are now. There were also times when I forgot which POV I was in - especially when I had to stop mid-chapter to go take care of something and couldn't get immediately back to it. While most of the time I prefer deeper POV, with how gritty and brutal some of the actions were I think having it pulled back more helped me not get disgusted or grossed out. It would have been nice to have a clearer indication of whose POV it was at the time, though.
For some reason I also forgot it was YA when I started reading, which threw me off - but that was a gaffe on my end.
I would highly recommend it to fans of dark fantasy who like their characters to break the traditional values of what is good and evil and play to their own moral tune.
I will be continuing the series.
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