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dwellordream · 3 years

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A Six of Crows Review: Joost and Inej I

This marks the beginning of my review of Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. Before I go any further, I want to provide context for my experience/knowledge of the book and its fandom. Six of Crows was published in 2015 when I was 16. I picked it up in a bookstore and read the first few chapters idly while shopping, before putting it back down.

At the time, my dislike of what I’d read was probably primarily fueled by the realization that it was by the same author as Shadow and Bone, which I had tried to read a few years before and disliked, and because at the time I was aging out of the YA genre in general and had very little patience for many of its familiar tropes.

In recent years, Six of Crows and its companion and predecessor series, the Grisha Trilogy, have become one of the most popular YA series online. The avid fan response and promotion of it on social media no doubt led to the Netflix series being greenlit and it is obviously trending at present due to the success of the series. With all that in mind, I’ve decided to try Six of Crows again and see for myself what all the hype is about.

Some more caveats: I am 22 years old. I am aware Six of Crows is YA literature intended for a middle and high school audience. I will not be holding it to the standards I would hold an adult grade fantasy book, in terms of prose, themes, or content. I am aware that I am not necessarily the target audience for the book and these reviews are in no way intended to shame or disparage anyone who enjoys the book.

Criticism is a healthy part of any fandom and does not necessarily constitute hate. I will likely critique elements of the book in my write up. That does not mean I have a personal vendetta against the author, publishers, or the TV show. Please do not take this as a personal attack if you’ve enjoyed the book. This is just intended to promote discussion and to gather my own thoughts.

If you follow me, I am tagging this as ‘in review’ so you know what to block if you don’t want to see my posts on your dash. I will be going through 1-2 chapters per weekend. This weekend I will be looking at the prologue, aka Joost, and the first Inej chapter.

Jumping into things, here is Joost:

The prologue is our introduction to Ketterdam, the setting of Six of Crows. It’s been a very long time since I read Shadow and Bone and so all I really know is that Ketterdam is a city in an island known as Kerch, based off the map. The major countries or kingdoms of the mainland to the east appear to be Fjerda, Ravka, and Shu Han, though it is unclear how they differ from one another at this point.

Ketterdam through Joost’s eyes is a sinister and dreary place, a city under a grimy night sky and full of dangers. Joost works as a hired guard for a very wealthy man named Hoede, who keeps grishas, powerful magic users, as indentured servants. Joost is infatuated with one of them, Anya, a healer, though he knows she is not likely to return his affections and furthermore cannot wed without the permission of her owner. We also learn that grishas are at risk for being kidnapped and sold by slavers due to their value. However, the indentured servant system of Ketterdam thus far doesn’t seem to be much better than slavery, given how little freedom the grisha have.

Overall, the prologue is supposed to give us a sense for the setting of Ketterdam and interest us in the main hook of the novel, which seems to be a mysterious substance that grisha can ingest to heighten their powers for the benefit of their masters, though it has the risks of making them uncontrollable. How well is this done?

Through Joost’s perspective we can glean several things; Ketterdam is a dirty city with rampant income inequality, full of crime and corruption. Magic is an established system within Ketterdam, but the magic users do not seem to be at the type of the hierarchy despite their powers, which suggests they are a minority to the extent of which they can still be controlled by the elite class of non magic users, if they have enough money and power.

It is also very obvious through the references in the prologue that Ketterdam is heavily based off the Netherlands during the Golden Age, which was Amsterdam’s (Ketterdam… Amsterdam… not subtle) economic and cultural boom during the 17th century, aka the 1600s. Notably the world’s first stock exchange began in Amsterdam in 1602, and it was a major port and trading hub for the Dutch East and Dutch West India Companies.

It is not clear if Ketterdam is also intended to be a 1600s-esque society, timeline wise, but we know that rifles are common place and there is a thriving merchant class who rule as opposed to old aristocracy, which seems to indicate a Renaissance style setting, as well as the urban environment in general. (That said, from the advertisements for the Netflix show, they seem to have updated it to a more Victorian-era 1800s society, in terms of fashion and general aesthetics).

Overall, the prologue does its job. It gives us a vague idea of what Ketterdam is like, how the society is structured, and who holds the power. It also ends on a suspenseful cliffhanger, leaving Joost’s fate unclear. Where it falls flat is that I think a little more time could have been spent fleshing out Joost as a narrator, even if this is his only showing in the book.

His internal monologue comes across as a bit dry and mechanical, as if the author is aware he is just a means to an end to start the book off with a bang, and he quickly turns into a walking camera (just there to report events to the reader, with no internal input from him), for the second half of the prologue, as we switch to just watching Anya and Hoede through his eyes. That said, it’s not a major problem, as Joost is clearly not intended to be a main character, and his narration still effectively conveys what is happening and sets the dark tone of the novel.

What I would have liked to see from the prologue is perhaps the POV of Anya herself, or the small child she is being forced to experiment on, as that might have been a more compelling and immerse introduction to Ketterdam and its dangers rather than the fairly bland and neutral Joost, who doesn’t really feel like a character so much as a bland stand-in for the reader. If we were put in the shoes of Anya, suddenly called upon by her power hungry employer to participate in this unethical test, or in the shoes of the small boy caught up in the middle of this, it might have been both more thrilling to read and given a more gritty sense of what it’s like to be on the lowest rungs of Ketterdam’s society, at the mercy of the most powerful.

Moving onto Inej, we run into some similar problems. After Inej’s first chapter, I couldn’t tell you a single thing about her, other than that she was an acrobat as a child, that she is part of the street gang known as the Dregs, and that she intensely values loyalty. This isn’t a problem, per say, but while that’s all good to know, it doesn’t give me any sense of Inej’s actual personality, which doesn’t exactly bode well. Like Joost, she comes across more as a walking camera and occasional tourist guide as opposed to a human character with her own worries, hopes, and fears.

I think this may become a recurring problem with Bardugo’s writing - ie all tell, no show. Inej is good at telling things. She tells us where we are as we follow her to the location of a stand-off between rival gangs, she tells us that Kaz, their leader ‘doesn’t need a reason’, though she never exactly explains what that means other than that he is widely feared, she tells us that she is very fond of her knives.

But in terms of writing, we shouldn’t have to be force fed all this information via her internal monologue, which, again, entirely cuts out once the action picks up, just like Joost’s. While I don’t need her thoughts on every threat or gunshot, it would be nice to feel as if she hadn’t just vanished from the story completely as soon as the dialogue starts.

We also meet Kaz and Jesper, though I couldn’t tell you much about them utter than that Inej clearly admires, even venerates Kaz as an accomplished intimidator and chess master, and that Jesper is clearly the joker of the group.

It also feels incredibly weird that this parley between gangs in happening in front of the city’s stock exchange. Inej tells us this is because the Exchange is one of the few remaining neutral territories, but it’s also heavily guarded, which means every time a gang wants to parley, they have to pay out the cash to bribe all the guards to very pointedly ignore a meeting between rambunctious and trigger happy street gangsters on their literal doorstep.

I understand why Bardugo chose this location, wanting to contrast the violence of the gang members with the economic injustice that the Exchange and its merchant rulers represents, but it just seems a bit silly. They couldn’t meet at the docks? In an alley way? This is like picturing the American Mafia hosting a public meeting at the New York Stock Exchange with a bunch of cops twiddling their thumbs nearby.

The foreshadowing that Bollinger is the traitor (‘I’m not going to bet on my own death’) also seems very heavy handed and a little much, but I’ll let it slide.

It’s also not really clear while Inej is present at this meeting in the first place. Kaz commands her to keep watch from above, but he has also put a contingency plan in place that doesn’t even involve her, having bought out some of Geels’ men from under him. Why put Inej looking down from above if you’re not involving her in this plan? Her only role seems to be to watch, and she doesn’t even have a gun she could play sniper with. It just seems like a hamfisted way of getting Inej out of the danger zone so the author can have her as a passive spectator to the violence that follows.

This is my main problem with this chapter. It’s supposed to introduce us to Inej, but really, it’s introducing us to Kaz. Which is fine, but as he also has a POV in this book, it seems a bit lame that her own chapter is completely overtaken by showing off A. his smarts and B. how dangerous he is, despite being dismissed as a young ‘cripple’ by the likes of Geels.

Geels is also… not a greatly done villain. I get that he’s supposed to be small fry and is just a precursor to much more threatening opponents, but his every line of dialogue feels designed to show off how cool and Machiavellian Kaz is in comparison. He doesn’t seem like an actual hardened criminal who has underestimated his opponent, but a somewhat cheesy cartoon thug who unironically says things like “How are you going to wriggle your way out of this one?” with his full chest. The effect is comical, and not in a good way.

This chapter also shows off Kaz’s sadistic side in full display, which is probably one of the only interesting things about it, though it would be nice if we got any input at all from Inej on this… instead she completely vanishes from her own narration, to the point where she might as well not be present at all. Kaz has no qualms about tracking down his enemies’ weakness, such as lovers and family, and threatening them.

But the open horror and shock Geels reacts with seems incongruent, as if Kaz were the first up and coming gangster to actually consider threatening someone’s family or girlfriend. That seems pretty par for the course for violent criminals trying to claim territory and unnerve their rivals, yet Inej and Geels himself react as if no one had ever thought of sinking to the level of ‘do what I want or I’ll kill your loved ones’ until Kaz invented it. It just feels a bit silly and on the nose.

Really, my overarching issue with this chapter is that it’s not about Inej at all, it’s just an introduction to the Kaz Brekker fan club. I don’t automatically hate Kaz as a character, but his introduction is heavyhanded and comes at the cost of any establishing character moments for Inej. The most we get out of her is her brief pangs of sympathy for Bollinger despite his treachery, and her brief reference to her childhood. Maybe future Inej chapters will totally change this, but right now, it’s not a great sign of what’s to come.

I can think of about a hundred things Inej could have done or said this chapter to develop or establish her personality at all, but all we got was her briefly holding a knife to someone, and her briefly saying a prayer for Bollinger. I think it would have worked much better had this plan to catch Geels with his pants down been Inej’s invention or at least worked out between her and Kaz, rather than her just there to play lookout and admire how cool Kaz is.

Or at the very least, we could have seen the scene referenced where she searches the crime scene of the assassination, instead of that getting two lines and an entire chapter being devoted to what boils down to a pissing contest over which gangs gets rights to a certain neighborhood.

Next week, we will look at Kaz I.

#in review #six of crows #ya lit #inej ghafa

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