The people Kaz surrounds himself with are loyal more to the money and rewards of the job, not Kaz himself, and again, I like this choice. In Inej’s case, perhaps there is something more-but it’s a dangled hint of a something that Bardugo teases out over the course of the book. It’s a group of people loosely joined together based on self-interest. This isn’t a crew steeped in loyalty to the end. He’s not sick, evil, or twisted, but he is a bad guy.” I respect that. Sometimes authors are a little too precious with their protagonists, especially when they are criminals. I appreciate this choice on Bardugo’s part it feels like a departure.

He is not a mischievous rogue or criminal with a heart of gold, and he seldom cracks jokes.

He has a hardness to him, worn into him by his childhood being stripped away on the streets of Ketterdam. Kaz himself is not a particularly lovable fellow, or so we are told by others. It’s these characters who are the backbone of the story and who will determine how much you love Six of Crows. The actual stakes are high enough to make the heist interesting and require Kaz to assemble a crew with a diverse set of skills. There are inevitable betrayals-double-crosses, and double-crosses that actually turn out to be triple-crosses! And a fair number of mistakes too, don’t worry. There’s the “assembling the team” part of the story, followed by the plan and walkthrough stage. The elements that you look for in a good heist story are all here. When one of these contacts Kaz and contracts him to extract a foreign scientist from the world’s most impenetrable fortress … Kaz says yes. This has allowed him to rise from street urchin to the leader of a small gang, but it has also drawn the attention of the trading city’s rich and powerful. Kaz has a reputation as being tough but fair: if you cross him, he’s going to make you pay, but if you work with him, he will deliver. Kaz Brekker runs with the Dregs, a group of street criminals in the slums of Ketterdam. All of you should know by now that heist novels are my jam, and a fantasy heist novel? Bring me the fainting couch and smelling salts, for surely, I swoon! Suffice it to say that when I discovered this hidden gem, the highly underrated Six of Crows by unknown author Leigh Bardugo, I was anticipating a good time.

Six of crows author