Someone said, āheist movie but itās a fantasy setting,ā and Iāve been on the lookout for this book ever since. I finally found it in the clearance section of Half Price Books, and thenācouldnāt read it. I got through the first chapter, I started the second, I put it down, and I didnāt pick it up again. Not sure why, but frankly this has less to do with the book than with me. Iāve been erratic about reading for, oh, years now ā either I canāt focus for more than a few pages at a time, or I spend every waking moment with my nose in the book. Thereās no middle ground. Thereās no telling which way the cards will fall.
All of this to say, itās not the bookās fault that it took me so long. But then the show came out, I watched it gleefully with my mom, and somehow having seen the characters onscreen made it easier to slip into their heads on the page. Two days later, Iāve inhaled the entire book as fast as I could get away with, and Iām in love.
This isnāt a regular book review ā Iām terrible at ranking things, and the five-star system gives me anxiety. Itās mostly just some Thoughtsā¢ neatly sorted for clarity, and hopefully reading over them will help you decide if you should pick this book up and fall in love with it like I did.
Mind the cut!
Characters
I am in love with them.
It probably helps that Iāve been looking forward to this book for ages, Iāve seen lots of gifsets and the occasional meta post, and of course I did watch three out of six crows swan about being fantastic for an entire season of a show thatās not even about them. But itās not just that. There are a lot of technical literary ways you can analyze characters ā arcs, themes, etc ā but quite apart from all of that thereās justā¦are they compelling? They donāt have to be, for a book to be good, but it sure does help. And these six characters are so compelling.
(Also really likeable, which is even less necessary for a good story but which I do personally value. And I like these kids, I really do. Even Kaz āI commit atrocities without shame or remorseā Brekker. Wouldnāt want to meet him in a dark alley, or even a well-lit avenue! But I care about him and want him to succeed.)
Itās hard to devote equal time to six character arcs while also running a fantasy heist. Bardugo doesnāt try, but even the crows who get less screen time have complexity and depth. Theyāre all well fleshed-out, with full and distinct personalities and all that ā on a technical level, these are really well-crafted characters. Top notch. Plus everyone struggles with different traumas and goals, and handles them in different ways, which gives us wonderfully varied arcs as they each move toward a deeper understanding of themselves, for better or for worse.
It also gives us really varied dynamics ā some of them hate each other, some of them love each other, some manage to do both at once, some are just along for the ride. Itās as they pull at each otherās ragged edges that the story forms, in their different desperate needs and in what they can and cannot be for each other.
The show smoothed over a lot of the sharp edges and grey morality, most notably in Kaz. Kaz Brekker is a bad person. He does bad things for selfish reasons. His arc isnāt Learning To Be Good, itās an ongoing question of whether he might, for the sake of the first person he has (quite accidentally) let himself love, consider maybe perhaps being slightly less of an amoral monster. Iāve seen this book described as āfantasy Leverage episodeā but itās really more Oceanās Eleven, if Danny Ocean was a vicious bastard and everyone was seventeen.
And thatās great. I love that so much! Especially because the other crows run the gamut from shining idealism to casual self-interest (with a fun detour into āshining idealism but the ideal is violent bigotryā), so we really do get a morally complex story, without any easy black-and-white answers. One of the most kind-hearted people in the whole story has committed multiple murders and dreams of becoming a pirate. Kaz Brekker may do bad things for selfish reasons, but a lot of those selfish reasons boil down to āsurvive.ā Itās complicated! Itās compelling!
Plot
Itās a fantasy heist, what more do you need?
Plots and counter-plots, double-crosses and last-minute improvisations. Magic, though itās used as just another tool, as impressive and as prosaic as the gunslingerās pistols. Dramatic climbs, elaborate disguises, cunning grifts, and some good old-fashioned sleight-of-hand. Six wildly competent teenagers, one impossible job, and four million fantasy dollars waiting for them if they can pull it off.
Well, okay, thatās just half of the story ā maybe two thirds. The rest is flashbacks, showing us how these characters met and how they came to be the people they are; and stolen moments in between the action beats, where we see how theyāre changing each other. Itās woven in really deftly. Our knowledge of the characters expands in time with the forward momentum of the plot, so that both parts of the story ā the sorrows of the past and the edge-of-your-seat excitement of the present ā get their hooks in you in tandem.
Worldbuilding
There are two settings in this book: Ketterdam, where we begin, and the Ice Court, where the bulk of the action takes place. The wider world outside these two cities is sketched in, alluded to in offhand comments and minor details of backstory. In theory, reading the Grisha trilogy would fill in those sketches, but I suspect it doesnāt matter. This is a heist story, after all: one entrance, one exit, and all the traps laid firmly between the two.
You know that thing authors do sometimes where they use the aesthetic of a real time and place, in the names and the architecture and so on, as a sort of worldbuilding shorthand? Iām a big fan of that. Ketterdam is clearly based on post-medieval Holland, perhaps in the late 17th century or so ā a city of canals and commerce, with a ruling merchant class and a thriving criminal underworld, and a stock exchange at the heart of the wealthier district. The similarities feel like theyāre just skin-deep ā I donāt know that much about post-medieval Holland, but Iām pretty sure Bardugo has her own plans for the political situation in the wider world, which I assume is relevant in the Grisha trilogy. Here itās not, and we have just enough detail to get a quick feel for the city, with extra importance granted to the politics of the various criminal gangs Kaz needs to worry about.
If Iām honest, I would have enjoyed a bit more detail in the worldbuilding. Ketterdam is vibrant and crowded, but it feels shallow; the only information we get is what relates directly to the charactersā actions. Weāre told that itās a big and complex city, but I donāt really have any idea what goes on there beyond, vaguely, ātrade, gambling, and tourism.ā But thatās probably just me. Iām unreasonably invested in worldbuilding. And anyway, we do get everything we need to understand the actual story.
The same is true in the Ice Court, the frozen capital of the Fjerdans. Itās a beautiful place, white and gleaming, and the parts that we see are incredibly vivid. We get scant glimpses of history and religion, the faintest suggestion of politics, and exactly enough of the city layout to understand the heist. We do, however, get a much deeper understanding of Fjerdan culture than we did of Ketterdamās, because one of the crows defines himself utterly by the Fjerdan worldview, and his arc is largely about the difficulty of losing his place in that world and not knowing if or how he can ever get it back.
So yeah, we really do get everything we need to appreciate the story and the characters. I would have liked more, because I like worldbuilding, but what we do get is varied and satisfying.
Themes
I canāt really go in depth here without spoilers, so thisāll be a pretty vague section. I havenāt gone full lit-major on this book and I donāt especially plan to, but at a glance, the central theme is the tension between, in short, love and vengeance.
In long, several of the crows have the choice to embrace love as a force for healing and joy, or instead hold onto the (often violent) goals that have driven and defined them for so long. If they embrace love, itāll mean letting go of the driving purpose that has kept them alive, and risking their whole identity (and possibly their lives) on a new purpose. Itās scary! It might ruin them! And itās really not as easy as ālove conquers all.ā
(Big advantage of an ensemble cast: you can explore the same theme in different ways, with different outcomes, without having to settle for a single āanswerā to the question posed by the theme. I really love it when that happens, honestly.)
Itās also not just romantic love! I mean it mostly is, but one of the crows has an arc thatās really about self-love, about learning to trust and prioritize not just your survival, but your happiness, your goals, and your ideals. About putting yourself first, not in a selfish way, but in a healthy, loving way. Itās really lovely, and although it has no bearing on the plot (itās an internal moment of revelation), itās one of my favorite things about the whole story.
