The Book Review Club - Six of Crows

Six of Crows
Leigh Bardugo
YA

It's not the classic horror that I can't seem to stay away from this time of year--little known fact: having the bejeezus scared out of you scares away the Halloween candy calories too--but it is classically, ruthlessly good fiction.

Six of Crows is the story of a gang from the worst side of Ketterdam, a fictionalized Amsterdam replete with canals, ruthless trade and traffiking of every kind, and, of course, drugs. Come on, it's Amsterdam. Even in a fictionalized version, drugs are a must. My favorite quip from my then 12 year old as we were walking out of our vrbo apartment on the Leiedesplein, the last ring of canals around the city, toward Hotel American to catch the street car: "Ah, there's nothing like the smell of fresh pot in the morning!' Amsterdam is Amsterdam.

And drugs drive this story. A gang from the Dregs (think: Redlight District) is hired to break a famous scientist, the creator of a drug called parem, out of a high security prison in Fjerda, a country known for its warrior-soldiers, and bring said scientist back to Ketterdam to the Merchant Council, specifically merchant, Jan Van Eck, who hires them. Supposedly, the Council has chosen a gang, rather than trained soldiers, because they feel a group of criminals has the right experience and deviousness to outsmart warrior-soldiers. Plus, this all must be done far below the political radar.

Gang leader, Kaz Brekker, pools his most-talented members--Inej, the Wraith; Nina, the Grisha (kind of witch); Matthias, a Fjerdan who's fallen out of grace with his command unit; Jesper, sharpshooter; Wylan, disgraced son of Jan Van Eck and bombs expert.

The story is told in close 3rd, moving chapter after chapter among the six characters POVs. It got a little confusing at times since it was close  3rd. I had to scroll back to determine from whose POV the chapter was being told. I'm not sure the always added to the storytelling, but at times, it is clear why Bardugo did it. She needed to get inside the head of a character, and instead of doing that piecemeal, she went Full Monty, and committed for the entire story. That said, Bardugo delivers a fast-paced, action-filled, plot intense tale.

The craft point I found most interesting is that, while Bardugo resolves the initial problem - breaking the scientist out of jail and getting him back to Ketterdam - at the same time, she creates a pressing, new problem that is not resolved at novel's end, So, strings loosened and cut at the beginning are reattached in new and interesting ways, but new strings are undone. This is book one of a duology and my guess is that Bardugo had sold both stories together and had the freedom to end the first book with unfinished business to lure readers into book two - Crooked Kingdom - which I am reading now.  So yeah, it works, at least it did on me, and I am notorious for not reading anything but the first book in any sort of continuing saga. My reason: the author put all she had into book one. Those that follow are just staying in that universe. So far, that's my experience with book two, Crooked Kingdom.  It isn't a bad thing. There are just so many other, new stories to read. I'm hopelessly behind.

The question this leaves me with, however, is how much newly unfinished business can a writer leave at the end of a story? Readers like things tied up neatly if the story is going to be over, but what if we writers purposefully don't deliver? What then? Gabriel Garcia Marquez does something akin to this at the ending of One Hundred Years of Solitude but how far can we push it? And what is the result? It feels like fairly uncharted territory for the novel--varying the degree of satisfaction vs. wondering we leave the reader with at the end of a story. It's almost the very premise of a story -- dissatisfaction and its multitude of forms. Hmm...

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@Barrie Summy

You might be a writer if...

I've been let out on good behavior for a few days having turned in my revised critical thesis. This basically means that I have time to take care of those fires that have been burning so evenly around my house. One is the Dr. Doolittle room, which goes straight to the heart of this blog: You might be a writer if...you try to make books come to life.

I don't mean the books you write because, of course, you try really hard to make those come to life.

I don't mean the books you read when you were a kid. Raise you hand (mentally) if you're one of those kids who tried to levitate rocks like Luke Skywalker or wondered if you really could tesser if you just thought about it hard enough.

No, I mean that you're still doing that today.

Guilty secret: I am.

Only, it isn't so secret anymore. You see, the summer residency at Vermont College assigned Linda Sue Park's Project Mulberry. Three other books were assigned with hers. We only had to read two. Being the good student I am, I only read two. But then, being the guilt student I am, after residency was over, I got the other two and read them (and I did not just write that in case any faculty members are reading my blog. Really).

Project Mulberry was assigned because of its format. Instead of Park remaining an unseen, unheard, unexperienced author, she steps in and has conversations with her main protagonist. The question posed was whether this got in the way of the actual story, if it pulled us readers out and whether that ultimately worked or was a hindrance.

Granted, all of that was interesting, but what really hooked me was the actual story. Two children raise silkworms, make thread and then embroider a project from the thread they've made to enter at the state fair.

In the words of ten year olds everywhere...Awesome!

So when my kids came home from their Montessori school needing a creative project for the year (they are in 4th and 6th grades in the same classroom), BANG! I had the perfect idea for them.

And they liked it. Yippee! Super Mom gets to secretly do good and make her favorite read come to life. Could life get any better?

It could get a whole lot more real, but I'm skipping ahead.

We ordered the worms. The girls quickly pointed out (after having read Project Mulberry, too) that the worms were more expensive in real life than in Park's story. I tried to explain that a few years had gone by, inflation, that kind of thing. I think they were still upset that reality did not exactly mirror fiction (as was my pocket book).

We pressed on, setting up shop in the garage since it's got the perfect incubating temperature at the moment, a balmy 85. Teh eggs arrive. We carefully placed them in the habitat, sprayed them with water...waited...sprayed...waited. In only six days, they began to hatch (faster than in Park's story, but no one complained this time).

Then the trouble started. We have a mulberry tree on our property, so food shouldn't have been a problem. We picked some leaves.

The worms wouldn't eat them.

Uh-oh. Silkworms eat mulberry leaves and mulberry leaves only. ONLY. What were we going to feed them?

My oldest pipes up, "the brochure the eggs came with said sometimes fall leaves are too tough."

Why didn't she tell me this before? (Let's not get into why didn't I read the pamphlet the eggs came with. I read Project Mulberry!).

So, I called my parents who always have a wild assortment of young trees growing in their yard. It was raining (storming actually), but I pleaded the case of the dying silkworms. My mom, who really must have wondered how old I was at that moment, agreed to trudge out in the deluge and check the leaves. We raced over to collect them.

Silkworms saved!

Until two days later. The temperature in Oklahoma shot up to the mid-90s. My husband, who has this thing about closing the garage door immediately after he pulls in his car, no matter how hot outside it is, did. The garage heated up.

Silkworms started dropping, like, well, like flies.

We ER-ed them into the laundry room. Painstakingly moved them from the dried out leaves to fresh, new, young, clean, delicious leaves.

Silkworms saved!

Then this morning, they started dropping again. Won't eat their leaves. Won't move. Might be in the sleeping stage, but we can't be sure. Frantically, I went online for advice. The only thing I could guestimate is that it could be mold on the leaves. Carefully, I created a new habitat, washed new leaves, and have now transferred all of the worms to their new home. My kids helped until carpool showed up.

Silkworms saved?

I really hope so because if we have to start from scratch, I will never get another word written on my novel. I have become a 24/7 silkworm caregiver. (This is not to mention the 30+ tadpoles we saved from soaring 100 degree temps in July and are now raising right next to the silkworms, of which, currently, 7 have sprouted all four legs and have greeted me mornings in the sink, on the faucet, on the sponge...).

I guess the motto of all of this is: Be careful what you wish for. I have never ever had a book come to life in such an exciting, frantic, uncertain, real way.

Does this mean I am becoming an amazingly great writer...or is my imagination finally getting the best of me?