Title: Six of Crows
Author: Leigh Bardugo
Copyright Date: 2015
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company LLC
Lexile Score: 790L
Amount of Pages: 462
Word Count: 498
When you think of people to recruit for a heist that could save the world, a gang of teenagers is definitely not the first group of people that comes to mind. Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows follows six kids stuck in the fray of a dark world. Leading the group is seventeen year-old Kaz Brekker, a conniving crime lord with a hate filled past. As we meet more players in this dangerous game, the main conflict also reveals itself in the form of a deal that Kaz can’t back away from. Thus, the kids embark on a grand journey in hopes to get a grand reward for their troubles.
Bardugo has written related books like Shadow and Bone and Crooked Kingdom. Six of Crows changes perspective from person to person each chapter. Being written in third person limited is helpful in allowing the reader to gain knowledge along with the characters. This serves as a good vessel for Bardugo to share the backstories of each person. As much as this is a high stakes heist story, it’s also a story of six children doing what they can to survive.
Each character’s growth was very closely related to either another character or to their past, making the story interpersonal and character-driven, rather than the heist story it’s advertised as. For example, one of the characters starts off very resentful and is essentially a prisoner to the others because they don’t trust him. In the end, he proves himself and saves another person on the team despite hating her. The bonds that form between characters throughout Six of Crows is the real highlight of the narrative. We see the crew face many obstacles where their morals are tested, both in the past and present. This, paired with the sheer amount of pain that these teens have gone through at such a young age, ages them many years.
As a reader, I struggled to pull myself through the first quarter of the book due to it’s relatively slow pace. This is largely due to the fact that the story is so centered around the characters, so there is a significant amount of time dedicated to introductions and gathering the crew. However, once you got past the somewhat groggy start, the pace snowballs and we regain the feeling of the heist story once again. The writing style wasn’t very distinct despite the fact that Bardugo utilizes many flashbacks. Dialogue was used to show interactions between characters, giving them lots of personality. However, this choice led to a shallow vocabulary with occasional unique description.
Discovering mysterious world filled with vibrant settings and fleshed out characters, you can’t help but be captivated by the characters and their stories. I would recommend this book to those who enjoy action, but also relish in learning about each individual character’s psyche and what makes them who they are. If you have the patience to get through a slow start, the payoff at the end is worth it.
Reflection:
I already basically said what I wanted to about this book in the review. But anyways, I actually kind of hated this book at first because I thought it was slowly paced, cheesy and just a typical teen novel. However, as I went through the book and got through the first third, I actually enjoyed the plot and I was invested in the lives of the characters. There’s even a sequel to it that I’ve been wanting to read for a while now, and finishing this book made me want to read it even more. The ending of Six of Crows was neat and tidy, but it still had some unanswered questions so it wasn’t a complete cliffhanger. As for writing the review, I didn’t think much of it, because after I finished the book I was so elated that I just wanted to tell people about it.
Kacy Tam - College Writing 