The Lies of Locke Lamora
Scott Lynch
Locke Lamora is a con artist in a grimy city with a tight crew and elaborate schemes, much like the criminal ingenuity and layered double-crosses that drive Six of Crows.
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Find Similar BooksSix of Crows
Young Adult
★★★★★5.0 (2)
A sharp, twisty fantasy heist with six damaged, likable criminals whose banter and backstories carry as much weight as the impossible job they're trying to pull off.
What It's About
Six of Crows follows Kaz Brekker, a cold, calculating teenage gang leader in the port city of Ketterdam, a grimy, mercantile place loosely modeled on old Amsterdam. A wealthy merchant offers him a fortune to break into the Ice Court, a supposedly impenetrable fortress in the northern nation of Fjerda, and retrieve a scientist whose discovery could upend the balance of power between ordinary people and the magic-wielding Grisha. Kaz assembles a crew of misfits, each with their own reasons for saying yes and plenty of reasons not to trust one another.
The book is structured like a classic heist story: recruitment, planning, infiltration, and the moment when everything goes sideways. Bardugo rotates between several points of view, so you spend time inside the heads of the spy, the sharpshooter, the Heartrender, and the vengeful convict as well as Kaz. Flashbacks gradually reveal how each of them ended up broken, and those revelations often land harder than the action scenes.
Reading it feels like watching a well-made caper film with a darker streak. The dialogue is quick and funny, the plotting rewards attention, and the romantic tension simmers rather than takes over. It is set in the same world as the Shadow and Bone trilogy but works as an entry point on its own. Be aware that it is the first half of a duology and does not wrap everything up.
Read this if you…
- love heist stories like Ocean's Eleven and want them with magic and higher stakes
- enjoy ensemble casts where every character gets a real inner life and backstory
- want YA fantasy with darker edges, witty dialogue, and slow-burn romance
Skip it if you…
- dislike books that end on a cliffhanger and don't want to commit to a sequel
- prefer lighthearted fantasy without violence, references to abuse, or grim urban settings
Key Ideas
- 1
Found family among people who trust nobody
The emotional core is watching six people who have every reason to stay guarded slowly start relying on each other. Their loyalty is earned in small moments rather than declared, and the friction between them, especially old grudges and conflicting loyalties, keeps the group dynamic from ever feeling cozy or simple. The payoff is a crew that feels like a family without ever stopping being a gang.
- 2
Trauma shapes, but doesn't define, the characters
Nearly every crew member carries serious wounds: exploitation, loss, addiction, prejudice, or physical disability. Bardugo reveals these pasts gradually through flashbacks and treats them seriously without wallowing. The characters are shown coping in imperfect, sometimes unhealthy ways, and much of the book's tension comes from whether they can let anyone close despite what was done to them.
- 3
A heist plot built to misdirect
Kaz rarely tells the crew, or the reader, his full plan. The story leans on reveals where a scene you thought you understood turns out to have been part of a larger scheme. This gives the book a puzzle-like pleasure: readers who enjoy trying to stay one step ahead will find it rewarding, and rereads reveal how carefully the setups were planted.
- 4
Moral grayness in a mercenary world
Ketterdam runs on money, and almost everyone, including the protagonists, is willing to do ugly things for it. The book asks what decency looks like when survival depends on ruthlessness. It also explores how prejudice between nations and between Grisha and non-Grisha people breeds cruelty, particularly through the relationship between a Grisha and a former witch hunter.
Limitations
The cast is large and the multiple points of view mean the opening chapters can feel slow while everyone is introduced and the plan is assembled. Some readers find the characters improbably competent and polished for teenagers, which can stretch belief. The worldbuilding references the Shadow and Bone trilogy, so a few details will mean more if you've read it, and the book spoils some of that trilogy's events. It also ends mid-story, so it really needs Crooked Kingdom to feel complete. Violence and themes like trafficking may be heavier than some expect from YA.
Questions Readers Ask
- Do I need to read Shadow and Bone before Six of Crows?
- No. Six of Crows is written to work as a starting point, with a new city, new characters, and a self-contained heist. It does reference events from the Shadow and Bone trilogy and lightly spoils its outcome, so if you plan to read everything, publication order is safest. Many readers, though, start here and consider it the stronger series.
- Is Six of Crows appropriate for younger teens?
- It is generally aimed at older teens. There is frequent violence, some of it graphic, along with themes of human trafficking, past abuse, addiction, and death. Sexual content is minimal and romance stays restrained. Most readers around fourteen and up handle it well, but parents of sensitive younger readers may want to know about the darker material.
- How does the book compare to the Netflix Shadow and Bone series?
- The show blends the Crows characters into the Shadow and Bone storyline and invents a prequel adventure for them that isn't in the books. The novel's actual heist, the Ice Court job, is far more elaborate and gives every character deeper backstory and interior perspective. Fans of the show's Crows scenes will find the book richer and darker.
What Creators Say About Six of Crows
Reviews from readers on YouTube. Their opinions are their own.
- Published
- 2018
- ISBN
- 9781250076960
- Difficulty
- intermediate
- Category
- Young Adult
Book details and cover from Google Books.
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