Six of Crows - very slightly spoilery
Oct. 16th, 2019 02:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearA friend recommended Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo to me a couple of years ago, so I bought the audiobook and gave it a try. According to Audible, I gave up about a third of the way through - I remember not really being invested in the characters or interested enough in the story to want to listen to more.
However, over the last few months, I've been listening to the Novel Predictions podcast, as well as Why We YA, the podcast the two co-hosts of NP made before. They have somewhat different tastes in books and very much disagree on a lot - but one of the books they both rave about as being amazing is Six of Crows. So, I decided to resurrect it in my audiobook library and give it another try.
This time, I made it all the way through without any trouble, though I'm not sure I would say I loved every minute of it. The book is split between the POV of five main protagonists, read by five different narrators, which is a clever way to do the audiobook and mostly pretty effective. It took a little while for me to really get into the story, though, as having different narrators makes the other characters sound different in each chapter, which is a bit disconcerting.
Still, it's cleverly constructed, and works very well because different characters know different amounts about what's going on, so using different points of view allows for certain things to be kept unrevealed without the narrators being unreliable.
The basic premise is that a gang of teenage thieves is recruited to go on what appears to be a suicide mission to rescue a scientist from a heavily fortified prison. It's a fantasy setting, with some magic, and a well-drawn societal hierarchy.
The five main protagonists all have distinct personalities and motivations, with lots of layers and complex inter-relationships, and the main thrust of the story is exciting and intriguing. It didn't wholly grip me, for some reason, though, not least because the actions and reactions of the characters seemed out of keeping with their age. They're all 15-17, but it surprised me every time the narrative pointed this out, as they all sounded and acted a lot older, to my mind.
Also, given how much it was emphasised early on that their mission was practically impossible and none of them were likely to survive, the actual consequences seemed unbelievably minor. (It's not that I *wanted* them all to die, or anything, but still...)
I kind of wish it had been a standalone story, or at least resolved itself more in this first volume, as I originally wasn't planning on continuing to the next book. However, I'm invested enough in the characters to want to see it through, so I will be listening to Crooked Kingdom at some point.
However, over the last few months, I've been listening to the Novel Predictions podcast, as well as Why We YA, the podcast the two co-hosts of NP made before. They have somewhat different tastes in books and very much disagree on a lot - but one of the books they both rave about as being amazing is Six of Crows. So, I decided to resurrect it in my audiobook library and give it another try.
This time, I made it all the way through without any trouble, though I'm not sure I would say I loved every minute of it. The book is split between the POV of five main protagonists, read by five different narrators, which is a clever way to do the audiobook and mostly pretty effective. It took a little while for me to really get into the story, though, as having different narrators makes the other characters sound different in each chapter, which is a bit disconcerting.
Still, it's cleverly constructed, and works very well because different characters know different amounts about what's going on, so using different points of view allows for certain things to be kept unrevealed without the narrators being unreliable.
The basic premise is that a gang of teenage thieves is recruited to go on what appears to be a suicide mission to rescue a scientist from a heavily fortified prison. It's a fantasy setting, with some magic, and a well-drawn societal hierarchy.
The five main protagonists all have distinct personalities and motivations, with lots of layers and complex inter-relationships, and the main thrust of the story is exciting and intriguing. It didn't wholly grip me, for some reason, though, not least because the actions and reactions of the characters seemed out of keeping with their age. They're all 15-17, but it surprised me every time the narrative pointed this out, as they all sounded and acted a lot older, to my mind.
Also, given how much it was emphasised early on that their mission was practically impossible and none of them were likely to survive, the actual consequences seemed unbelievably minor. (It's not that I *wanted* them all to die, or anything, but still...)
I kind of wish it had been a standalone story, or at least resolved itself more in this first volume, as I originally wasn't planning on continuing to the next book. However, I'm invested enough in the characters to want to see it through, so I will be listening to Crooked Kingdom at some point.
