Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

A few months ago, I was working in a bookstore and we were part of Leigh Bardugo’s ongoing autograph campaign and in the first week of that campaign, we received thousands of orders for her books. Leigh Bardugo’s name was all I saw and worked on for days at a time, until it stopped being a word, a name, but just a collection of sounds. At one point during that time period I could give you the last 2-3 numbers of the IBSN for MANY of her titles, including the different versions of the same titles. Leigh Bardugo.

So as you can imagine, when I left that job, to rejoin the world of theater, my passion job, it took some time for me to come back to hearing Leigh Bardugo as a name associated with enjoyable books and not just a part of a job.

I started small. I watched the Shadow and Bone show on Netflix and it was great! Kaz and his team of criminals were my favorite part. My spouse loved Jasper. And that show sparked the need for me to read Six of Crows. So I added a hold to my library, (thanks @lapubliclibrary and @libby.app!) and waited for the right time.

More months passed.

My hold and my reading timeline finally matched up and this book was a delight. Strong prose, clever characters, a compelling plot. Twists, turns, “how are they going to get out of this,” and “when are they just going to say their feelings already?”

Since this was a YA, it didn’t give me anxiety like the Gentlemen Bastards series by Scott Lynch does, but enjoyable and strangely beautiful nonetheless.

Now we wait for the Crooked Kingdom. -Ford