Six of Crows - Leigh Bardugo | Book Review

Six of Crows (Six of Crows Book One)

Leigh Bardugo

Reviewed 1/14/2025

Rating:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Review (NO spoilers):

A solid high fantasy book, split between the POVs of 6 compelling heroes and heroines. It wasn’t amazing, but it was good and an overall enjoyable read. 

Bardugo manages the point of view switch well, and does an excellent job with worldbuilding and descriptions, but I had a few issues with the integration of flashbacks in some scenes, and two characters having similar names. Other than that, I don’t really have any major criticisms for this book, but it didn’t hold my attention as firmly as other writers have managed to.

Scroll down for review with SPOILERS

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Review (SPOILERS):

I felt the ending was supposed to be a twist… but did anyone really think Van Eck was going to just pay them a ridiculous amount of money and go on his way? Be honest.

I liked all of the main characters and the dynamics between them (other than Nina x Matthias, but I’m a Certified Romance Hater), but I didn’t really love any of them. I’m an absolute sucker for the overpowered girlboss assassin trope, but Inej was utilized more for stealth/parkour than combat. Nina is awesome, but her love-hate struggle with Matthias took away from her character, in my opinion. Kaz is supposedly crippled, with a permanent leg injury… but in multiple scenes, he just ditches the cane and is fine? 

The flashbacks were confusingly integrated, and at first I was getting Per Haskell and Pekka Rollins confused (their names aren’t too similar, but enough that my poor tired brain took a few chapters to realize there were two different characters starting with Pe). Aside from these criticisms, I enjoyed the book quite a bit; a solid high fantasy novel.