Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

It seems so weird to just write a normal blog post about just a regular book. I don't even really think of myself as a social person, but social distancing and being told that I can't just go the store willy-nilly when I realize we are short an onion has really taken its toll on me. There's also a crank on our local Facebook pages who keeps telling everyone to STAY INSIDE and he's really gotten in my head and I feel like I'm committing a crime by walking the dog. Our governor has told us that we should go outside (really!) because it's good for our mental and physical health. So here you go. This is book  number two of the four library books I have. As soon as I hit publish on this post, I'm definitely going to check into getting books digitally from the library.

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo is a heist novel set in a fantasy world.   It reminded me of The Lies of Locke Lamora in that they're both tales of rule-breaking do-gooders who live in a world with magic and great social inequality and the plots are both byzantine and wonderful with characters who have interesting stories, interesting reactions to events in the story, and interesting interactions with one another.   So, what I'm saying is I thought this book was absolutely riveting.

A couple of caveats. The book starts off slowly, but I also thought Lies had a slow buildup. A certain amount of scene setting and character introduction had to take place and while it wasn't as fun or diverting as it was in, let's say, Harry Potter at Diagon Alley, it was serviceable and after the first handful of chapters was excellent. It's also told from multiple points of view, which is not necessarily a literary device I'm loving these days, but I thought Bardugo did an excellent job of picking the correct character to tell the story (although I wish Bardugo had trusted us more to figure out who was telling the story, the way Lynch did in Lies).

Other than those nitpicks, I have to say that I thought this was such a thoughtful book. It deals with heavy themes, including stereotypes and racism, human trafficking, sexuality, and disabilities, but it doesn't deal with these heavy themes in a heavy way. Bardugo has such a deft hand at examining complicated topics and the fallout from these topics that you don't realize that you've essentially been given a crash course on international trade in people smuggling until it's over.  I would describe this book as a fun romp, and it is, except it's also not. There's humor and silliness, but there's also a lot of examination of the human experience and all its ups and downs.

I'm going to try to and continue on with this series, which reminds me that I definitely need to read more of the Lies series, too.  Come at me, digital library books!