Finished listening to Six of Crows. My impression hasn’t changed much.
It is an internaining, but flawed book. It is never explained why Inej is such a great assassin if she was trained as a gypsy acrobat. Are all gypsy acrobats great assassins? As she’s seventeen, are do they become more or less deadly with age? Why there aren’t more acrobat gypsy assassins then? Same goes for Kaz: he’s supposed to be a cripple, but then he managed to beat opponents in hand-to-hand combat over and over again 🤷♂️
The whole buildup for Kaz’s childhood story turned out to be nothing. I expected that his brother was killed while assaulting the crooks that scammed farm money out of him, just stabbed or hit on the head. But no, he died from the plague. Now blaming scammers for this to the point that your entire life is a revenge… is a bit too much. Also, how convenient that the head scammer is also the head of the gang. I would have hired an actor instead, but who am I to judge?
For some reason, Leigh unable to hold suspension, at all. At one point she sets up a scene where Matthias traps Nina in a cell, and it’s almost convincing that he’s willing to trade her for his former position in “Inquisition”… but this resolves a couple of pages later. And this happens time and time again. I’m not a fan of cliffhangers, but it’s like Bardugo tried to avoid them proactively.
Also, isn’t it “neat” how the group of thieves is divided into 3 couples (one of them is gay-bi)? 🤡
The ending is fine, there are at least a couple of good plot twists, and it segways into the second book, which is both good and bad: I prefer complete stories, but I don’t suppose author could finish in on anything solid.