Spoiler alert! Also stay tuned for my take on Fjerdian wolf-shaped pepper cookies!
A gambler, a convict, a wayward son, a lost Grisha, a Suli girl who had become a killer, a boy from the Barrel who had become something worse.
Set in the same world as Bardugo's Shadow and Bone Trilogy-- three years after the civil war shook Ravka-- six outcasts fight to pull of the heist of a lifetime. With thirty-million kruge hanging in the balance, their plans, relationships, physical and emotional strength, and morality will be put to the test. Will they outlast the other gangs trying to pull off the impossible? Or will they die with no one to remember or care?
What bound them together? Greed? Desperation? Was it just the knowledge that if one or all of them disappeared tonight, no one would come looking?
I loved these books! I've been holding off on reading them for years because I didn't think the plot would interest me. Though it has a few fantasy elements, the heart of this story is an impossible heist, so I thought it wasn't really my style and I passed it by. I was mostly wrong: I think the plot was fun and interesting, but what really captured me was the characters (as usual). For some really quick (and I promise, it will actually be quick) context, here's the basic premise: Kaz Brekker, Inej Ghafa, Nina Zenik and Jesper Fahey are all members of a notorious Kerch gang called the Dregs. One day Kaz is approached by a man called Jan Van Eck and given the chance to make 30 million kruge (dollars) if he can travel to Fjerda and retrieve a wanted prisoner. The prisoner is a Shu man who invented a drug called "jurda parem" which enhances Grisha powers to a point where they are terrifyingly powerful-- some can fly, walk through walls, control minds, etc. The prisoner is being held in one of the most heavily secured places in the world. Kaz brings along Inej (a Suli girl who they call "the Wraith"), Nina (a Heartrender, meaning she can kill with a flick of her wrist and do some minor healing), and Jesper (a sharpshooter) to be part of his crew, while also acquiring the help of Wylan Van Eck (you guessed, Jan Van Eck's son), and a Fjerdian man named Matthias Helvar (who once tried to kill Nina, then fell in love with her, then she betrayed him, it's a long story). These six misfits set out and literally achieve the impossible.
The water hears and understands. The ice does not forgive.
I was really in love with the fact that all of the characters seemed so well developed at the very beginning of the book. Leigh knew exactly who they were and so it was extremely clear to me, as well. Though they do all go through their own personal growth and changes, it didn't feel like the classic "coming of age" which I really liked. All of these kids have been through horrific things that have emotionally aged them, so if they were going through normal teenage stuff it would seem quite foolish, right? I won't go into intense detail to discuss each of them in depth, but I'll do a bit of a summation for each of them.
She was not a lynx or a spider or even the Wraith. She was Inej Ghafa, and her future was waiting above.
Inej has sort of been wandering as the Wraith and wanting to find her way back home for years, but she never really had the courage before the heist. It was really lovely to see the transformation she undertook while climbing up the chimney-- if she could get through that, she could do anything. She finally decided what she really wanted, and I respect her strength in sticking with it, especially when Kaz tried to get her to stay in Ketterdam.
Jesper knocked his head against the hull and cast his eyes heavenward. "Fine. But if Pekka Rollins kills us all, I'm going to get Wylan's ghost to teach my ghost how to play the flute just so that I can annoy the hell out of your ghost."
Jesper's development is not as intense or decisive as Inej's, it's more that he's realizing he's got problems that he can't joke or charm his way out of. He left his father's farm to go to school, but has ended up losing all of his money on a gambling addiction and has yet to return home. When Kaz calls him out for making a mistake that could have gotten everyone killed, it's a bit of a wake up call for Jesper that he needs to sort himself out.
A nearly perfect replica of Kuwei Yul-Bo stood before them, but he had Wylan's voice, his mannerisms, and-- though Kaz could see the fear and hurt in his golden eyes-- Wylan's surprising courage, too.
Wylan gets more comfortable with the group, yes, but the real transformation is the way we all see him. We know that he no longer has a connection to his father, but it is a mystery throughout the entire book as to why. In the end, we learn that he has severe dyslexia (I assume?) and cannot read, so his father cast him out for being "useless" as the heir to his fortune. To find out how his father really sees him and to ensure that Van Eck keeps to his word, Wylan's appearance is altered so that he looks like the prisoner the crew has been asked to achieve. At the end of the novel, we don't know if Wylan will ever shift back to looking like himself, but it was a risk he was courageous enough to take. I am particularly curious to see what comes next for him in this story.
"They fear you as I once feared you," he said. "As you once feared me. We are all someone's monster, Nina."
Nina and Matthias sort of go hand in hand-- the two begin on very rough terms, one a witch and the other a witchunter. They clearly had an intense history, and eventually they come to understand the other's POV. Matthias was raised to believe that Grisha were evil and should be erradicated, he also believed that he was doing the right thing for his country. By the end, he realizes that Grisha aren't inherently evil-- they have the same potential for good and bad as normal humans do. Yes, Nina also deals with accepting Matthias for his beliefs/his past, but she also risks her life for everyone in the final chapters. When they are so close to slipping out of Fjerda with the prisoner and getting safely home on a boat, our six misfits find themselves surrounded by hundreds of guards blocking the beach. Nina decides the only way they can get through is if she takes a dose of jurda parem, and she puts all of the soldiers to sleep. They slip through and get on their way home, but not without consequences. Nina's body begins to go through painful withdrawal and we have no way of knowing if she will live through it, but if she takes another dose she will become addicted and it will kill her in another way.
There was not a part of him that was not broken, that had not healed wrong, and there was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken.
Meanwhile Kaz freakin Brekker is over here with a horrendously tragic backstory (I mean they all kind of have that, but his hits different) and is constantly dealing with the emotional and physical trauma from it. Him and his older brother were conned out of all their money by Pekka Rollins when he was only 9, then his brother died of disease and Kaz was thrown with all of the dead bodies and had to use his brother's corpse to float to safety... Haven't heard a story like that before, have you? And now he's a hardened criminal who flinches when he's touched and can't stand the feel of touching someone else's skin because it reminds him of his brother's water-bloated, pustule-covered body. So imagine how difficult it must be for this 17 year old kid to now realize that after all these years he's come to care for someone, but has no idea how to tell her, care for her, protect her, or even touch her. He still has a long way to go, but I'm happy to see that he's on his way.
"Well, we've managed to get ourselves locked into the most secure prison in the world. We're either geniuses or the dumbest sons of bitches to ever breathe air."
It's hard to give more information than that, because so much of the book was plotting and scheming and planning. I personally found it a little bit hard to follow because my brain shuts off when it comes to things like floor plans or building layouts or security measures, which is obviously a bit part of a heist book. Bardugo is freaking incredible at it, though, I have to give her credit. I cannot imagine trying to write a book as meticulously detailed as Six of Crows. My heart did soar at all of the lovely relationships in this novel, though-- both friendly and romantic. It's clear to me right now that's gonna come down to Nina and Matthias, Kaz and Inej, and Wylan and Jesper. That's all fun and cute, but I really, really loved the friendships between Inej and Nina, as well as Inej and Jesper. Those little moments of lightness really helped balance out the novel and made me feel warm inside. I'm most excited for those nuggets of joy in the sequel.
"I will have you without armor, Kaz Brekker. Or I will not have you at all."
Moral of the story is that they accomplished their task, despite the hundreds of times the plan went wrong or changed under their feet (or how many times I thought that was happening and it turned out to be exactly part of the plan, it just hadn't been disclosed to the readers). The only problem is that they learn the man they were supposed to break out was dead-- his son was there instead. They end up taking the son and get away with him. When they meet up with Van Eck to hand over the boy and get their cash, they realize it was all a set up. Van Eck plans to take the boy, use the jurda parem to make the Grisha slaves, and kill the crew. But, boom bam, big surprise! Kaz wasn't foolish enough to bring the actual prisoner with him, they brought Wylan dressed as him (using some Grisha magic, of course)! Van Eck then has his men kidnap Inej and gives Kaz a week to get the real boy to him or he will kill the person he loves most. And who does Kaz turn to to help him out of this mess? Pekka Rollins. The man responsible for his brother's death.
It was Jesper who spoke first. "No mourners," he said with a grin. "No funerals," they replied in unison.
FJERDIAN WOLF-SHAPED PEPPER COOKIES
Signs of Hringkalla celebrations were everywhere. The shops had created elaborate displays of pepper cookies baked in the shape of wolves, some hanging like ornaments from large, twisting trees, and the bridge spanning the river gorge had been festooned with ribbons in Fjerdian silver.
You know how every baker has that one food that totally kicks their ass? Like when you start getting an ego because everything you've baked so far has turned out pretty well and suddenly you make something that looks like it was crafted by a toddler? Well, these wolf cookies were mine. I was so convinced that I could shape these without a cookie cutter-- and honestly I still think my method of carving the shape out of the dough with a knife was a solid idea-- however, I hadn't thought to account for the amount of expanding the dough would do in the oven. To paraphrase Archie Renaux, they came out quite chubby and looked a bit more like bears. Here's how they came out:
The upside to this foolishness was that I baked these as part of a Shadow and Bone talent competition to raise money for the NHS! So even though they came out a little goofy, it was all for a good cause. And hey, they didn't taste to shabby, either!
Instead of giving live updates on my baking via my instagram story, this week I made a fully edited tutorial on making these cookies and submitted it as my talent. It was actually quite fun and the entire cast saw my video and liked it which is MEGA cool. That means Ben Barnes has genuinely watched a video of me butchering a simple cookie recipe. How many people can say that?
To see the video of me making these, check out my instagram @picklesandpages and watch my IGTV video!
If you didn't know, I bake something from a book every week and post live updates on my Instagram. Tune in to @picklesandpages every Wednesday to check it out!
NEXT READ: Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo
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