Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

5 Stars

“Many boys will bring you flowers. But someday you'll meet a boy who will learn your favorite flower, your favorite song, your favorite sweet. And even if he is too poor to give you any of them, it won't matter because he will have taken the time to know you as no one else does. Only that boy earns your heart.”

Okay, sit back, I'm going to tell you a bit of a story about me and this book. I bought a copy last year after hearing nothing bu soaring reviews, I was excited. My copy came with the dusk jacket all damaged which was disapPOINTING BOOK DEPOSITORY WHY YOU GOTTA DO ME LIKE THAT. Anyway, I was that excited to read it, hoping it's magical greatness would pull me out of my slump. Now, let me tell you, I'm not a huge fantasy girl and fantasy sure as heck will not get me out of a slump so what I was thinking, I don't know. I need a completely open mind to read fantasy because I have too little patience. So, I read Six of Crows and absorbed absolutely nothing. I didn't even know what to write in my review and somehow I failed to pick up an entire character. So, I reread it because this book is supposed to be mind blowingly good, so I wasn't going to give up that easy. To cut this short, I reread it, I loved it, I actually retained nothing from the first read and I still don't understand how that happened, I expected to recognise some things but alas. So, now I'm going to dive into this review.

I adore the representation in this book, let's get it out of the way, it was great. I know literally every other blogger has said the same thing but here I am, reiterating. Honestly, I think fantasy is perhaps the genre with the least amount of representation which is crazy because authors are literally making up this whole world that can have anything. So, I think this is beautiful and I hope other authors can soon follow in Leigh Bardugo's footsteps. 

The characters are fantastic. In Shadow and Bone, I didn't love the characters but in Six of Crows they were electric. They were basically pouring from the page. I've said it before but characters make a book for me, I could more or less care about what said character is doing but as long as they're a strong character, you can usually tell I'll like it. I particularly love Inej and Nina and Jesper. They were my favourites. They were funny and strong and great characters but they're all so good. They all have stories to tell and they're just so three dimensional. It takes a very good writer to write characters like that.

The world building was something else. It was so vivid and that's something I look for in a fantasy. The world you're writing should be vivid and wonderful and almost real feeling. So, I really appreciated that. The atmosphere was perfect. It was dark and blunt and just perfect. World building is a strong second next to characters for a book, in my own opinion. 

I am dying to read Crooked Kingdom, you wouldn't believe it. The end was epic, the whole book was epic. I highly recommend it, even for those who maybe aren't the biggest fantasy fans. I don't know what to say that hasn't already been said about this book. I'm sure you've all read the reviews. It's a great book and that's from someone whose genre isn't really fantasy. Do yourself a favour and read it if you haven't already.