Six of Crows & Crooked Kingdom Reviews: Basic Fantasy That Doesn’t Deliver

Since finishing Robin Hobb’s masterful Realm of the Elderlings books, I’ve been searching for another great fantasy series to read. Novels like City of Stairs and Curse of Chalion both fell into the good, but not great category of books for me. Leigh Bardugo is a fantasy writer who’s become pretty popular and has written a large number of books in a shared fantasy world, so I was curious to give a couple of her novels a try.

Six of Crows

Six of Crows is the first part of a duology that takes place in the Grishaverse, which is Bardugo’s fantasy world where Grisha are humans with magical abilities. It’s a bit more of a young adult book than I’m used to, but that’s not something I really minded.

The story centers on six teenagers who are mostly thieves living in the city of Ketterdam. A wealthy merchant hires the group to rescue the inventor of a powerful drug that grants those who are Grisha extremely enhanced powers and thus has the potential to totally reshape the world.

The inventor is being held at a seemingly impenetrable military fortress known as the Ice Court. Fortunately, our group of teens is led by Kaz, a ruthless and calculating thief who just might have the plan that’ll allow them to accomplish their mission.

It’s not a revolutionary or super unique story by any means, but it’s enjoyable enough. Bardugo’s writing style is easy to read, even if it often has more style than substance. 

Chapter perspectives rotate primarily between five different characters, members of the team attempting the rescue. We learn backstories throughout the story as we progress in a way that feels natural. Still, sometimes when you’re reading a book you feel very connected to certain characters. I didn’t get that feeling with any of the core cast here. Everyone is just totally fine.

To me, the characters almost felt like the sort of team you get when you’re playing an RPG video game and you have everyone assembled for the story. As with most of the characters in those sorts of games, the backstories and traits we get for the members of the heist team in Six of Crows are built around familiar character tropes.

Overall, Six of Crows isn’t a particularly deep book, but it’s one that I think most fantasy fans would get at least some enjoyment out of. It doesn’t take any major risks with its story or characters, so it would be sort of a hard book for anyone to really strongly dislike.

Grade: 6/10

Crooked Kingdom

So, I have not been able to get into the second book in this series at all. I’ve read 190 pages, but this novel is over 500 pages, and I seriously do not feel like reading it anymore.

To enjoy a book, you have to be invested in either the characters or story (hopefully both) and I don’t really care about either here. We’re focusing on the same core group we followed in the first book and they’re still completely fine – these characters aren’t awful, but they’re super cliché and I don’t find myself rooting hard for any of them.

The plot also grades out as being totally okay. I mentioned the characters feeling similar to those you’d find in an RPG video game earlierand here I feel that way about the story. This is like the generic video game story you’d find in a basic, totally average game. None of it is really all that interesting to me.

I definitely gave Crooked Kingdom a fair chance, but I’m searching for a book that’s so good I can’t put it down. With this one, I end up reading a few pages at a time then getting bored and doing something else.

I still can’t fault anyone for liking Leigh Bardugo’s work. She’s clearly built a name for herself in the fantasy genre. To me though, her writing doesn’t feel special, just basic.

I felt similarly about this book as I did with Brandon Sanderson’s second Mistborn novel, The Well of Ascension. I wrote that I didn’t think that novel was necessarily bad, but that the characters and plot aren’t interesting enough to me. It’s the same story here. I don’t think I’ll be checking out any more Leigh Bardugo books anytime soon.

Grade: Did Not Finish/Do Not Recommend