REVIEW: SIX OF CROWS + CROOKED KINGDOM (Leigh Bardugo)

"It was excruciating to him, revolting. It was the only piece of his past that he could not forge into something dangerous."

I'm about to sue Leigh Bardugo for emotional damages to the tune of 30 million kruge.

If you haven't picked up the Six of Crows duology (which you probably have considering I'm the one late to the party), you're making a mistake. A big one. Everyone told me to read it and I didn't listen. It gathered dust on my shelf for three whole ass years before I picked it up like some lost treasure unbeknownst to the world. The joke was on me. CURSES, BARDUGO!

Listen here. This book? This damn series? Yeah. It had hands down the best character development and arcs I've read in years. This is proof that slowburns aren't just for romance.

Bardugo's attention to detail is unmatched; finishing this series, I was sad I couldn't got to Ketterdam for real (yeah, yeah, it's Amsterdam, I know — But Jesper doesn't live in Amsterdam, so...). The city felt entirely too real to me, with enough detail to prompt your mind into imagining the rest yourself. I felt like I was up on the rooftops with Inej, down in the streets skulking through alleys. I've never (ever) looked forward to description. Ever. But I ate up every detail about Ketterdam that I could like a hungry tourist.

And that's nothing compared to Bardugo's finesse with character. I thought I'd nailed down the emotional arcs in Six of Crows but by the end of Crooked Kingdom, I felt the weight I didn't realize was building finally make itself known. These character bloomed slowly and beautifully, and I could spend so, so many more books with them, but I'm glad the time was short. This duology served as a gorgeous snapshot of the convergence of six unlikely strings of fate — or chance. It's only a brief moment in time, and like the sweetest memories, it's something you can come home to, even if it won't be exactly the same. The dispersal at the story's end had me feeling all kinds of melancholy, and Bardugo's restraint on tidy happy endings is something I didn't know I craved.

*

"But what about the rest of us? What about the nobodies and the nothings? We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren't chosen."

*

The big ticket item for me, though, is how well this story grappled with the trope of the Chosen One. No trick of fate selected this particular team, no ancient power — this is a group of people who have survived by strength, wit, and chance alone. Even those with Grisha abilities are hardly protagonist-types, crawling up from the dirt and staying there. But maybe that's what makes them so familiar and relatable. I never expected to relate so intensely to a magical sharpshooter with a gambling addiction, but here I am.

Listen, I'm usually good okay with words, but this duology is too much. It rivals even Strange the Dreamer for me in terms of it's execution of theme and general emotion, which is, uh, big. I don't have much else to say except that these book elevated with I thought I wanted in a good story.

TL;DR: Leigh Bardugo got me f*cked up. I didn't sign up for the feels trip. Except I guess I did.