He is reasonably happy go lucky for someone who will kill at the drop of a hat. One winning bet was enough to have him hopelessly addicted to gambling. He was a middle-class kid who arrived at Ketterdam as a student. Of all the crows he’s the only one that seems to genuinely enjoy the gangster lifestyle. He’s very good with guns and is more than willing to use them at the drop of a hat. The closest character to a kid is, Jesper. Survival in the Barrel doesn’t allow for a childhood. They are all teenagers, but they have been surviving in the worst neighborhood in Ketterdam. These characters aren’t the usual YA formula of tacking up various eccentricities on a bulletin board and then blindly throw darts at it until you something that sort of fits together. What immediately gets your attention is the depth of the characters and the intricacy of the plotting. The gang the protagonists belong to is the Dregs and they own the Crow Club. The clubs run by the gangs provide the traditional distractions for seafarers booze, gambling, and prostitutes.
The Barrel is run by criminal gangs, so long as they keep victimizing each other law enforcement doesn’t take much interest in them. All those ships mean that sailors have to be entertained and preferably far away from decent people.
Their ships go everywhere, and Kerch fleets rule the seas. Ketterdam is a city that has become massively rich through trade. A fabricator can’t heal someone, a wind-summoner can’t influence solid materials. There are only three basic types, with specific and limited powers. The magic is provided by gifted (or cursed) individuals called the Grisha. This is a Gaslamp fantasy setting although it’s very nuts and bolts kind of fantasy. Bardugo was still learning to write when she published her first books, Crows is a much more mature work. When Leigh Bardugo first created her “Grishaverse,” she mentioned Kerch and its capital city of Ketterdam in the Alina Starkov trilogy of Young Adult books.įor those of you who are familiar with Lois McMaster Bujold, the difference between the Starkov trilogy and Six of Crows is the same as between Shards of Honor and Memory. Consequently, it’s usually been in their self-interest to show something of a unified front in the face of impending genocide. But that doesn’t change the fact there isn’t really a Dutch people, what there are, is three squabbling tribes that all live in the same area and for several hundred years various people have wanted to kill or enslave all of them. I’m sure there are Dutchmen skipping down to the comments to violently disagree with me about their non-existence. It’s that there is no such thing as the Dutch. It’s not that they are just too dour and business-minded to consider something as frivolous as a mythology. The simple explanation is that you try to base a fantasy template on the mythology of a real country and Holland doesn’t have any myths. The reason is both simple and complicated. Holland is a very unusual setting for a fantasy setting. Book discussions were a staple of the old Dark Herald blog it’s long past time I did one here.
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