Six of Crows ~ Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows #1)
★★★★☆
"When everyone knows you’re a monster, you needn’t waste time doing every monstrous thing."
It's hard to place exactly what it is about Leigh Bardugo's writing that makes it seem...simply okay to me. There's nothing wrong with it at all, but every book of hers that I have read as had that same level of "this is okay but that's all" to it. It isn't bad at all, and I find no fault in it, but it just doesn't excite me. It isn't styleless and the style that is there is good. It's really just an unnamable thing. I just don't particularly love her writing for some reason.
"The life you live, the hate you feel—it's poison. I can drink it no longer."
I went into this with very high expectations, and I feel like that was part of the reason why I found myself getting bored with this book very soon after starting it. While its themes were interesting and everyone loves a good heist, it wasn't as hard-hitting as I was expecting. I've read versions of every character before. I've read versions of the plot before (which was predictable and convenient far too often; they consistently easily escape situations that I would have preferred they have a harder time doing. It stripped the story of a lot of tension). None of it felt unique to me. It felt like an amalgamation of "edgy YA fantasy sci-fi" and not much else. Also, the characters didn't feel like teenagers except for maybe Nina, Wylan, and Inej, who all felt 18. Matthias felt like he was 30 or at least 25. Kaz felt distinctly 23, and Jesper felt 20. (Also, the bad guy just felt like the bad guy from Cassandra Clare's Infernal Devices trilogy and he's one of my least favorite YA villains of all time, so yeah.)
I did, however, like it. It has a nice aesthetic. Kaz was a very interesting character, and I think we have his dark past to thank for that. That scene when he pulled out a guy's eyeball and then tossed him overboard was cool. Inej was basically just Lila from Shades of Magic but less selfish and more likable, so that was alright. I enjoyed every character and I love the Grisha world, but I do miss the Darkling. He'll always be in my heart.
Greed may do your bidding, but death serves no man.
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