YMMV / Six of Crows

• Adorkable: Most of the fandom see Wylan as this due to his naivety at the beginning and his constant tendency to prove himself despite being way out of his element most of the time. The fact that he blushes quite often certainly helps.
• Complete Monster:
  • Jan Van Eck is a seemingly-respectable merchant who turns out to be an egotistical sociopath obsessed with his own glory and reputation. Callously disowning his son Wylan for his dyslexia that has made him illiterate, Van Eck divorces his wife, throws her into an asylum and tells Wylan she's dead so he can steal all her assets. When his new wife is pregnant, Van Eck tries to have Wylan murdered. After enlisting Kaz Brekker for a job and learning Kaz has Wylan hostage, Van Eck later attempts to betray Kaz and have Wylan murdered via having his ship sunk. It turns out Van Eck is behind a scheme to cheat his fellow merchants and distribute jurda parem to enslave the Grisha, or those with magic, subjecting them to addiction or death, all as long as he profits from the chaos he inflicts.
  • Heleen Van Houden, or Tante Heleen, the cruel owner of the brothel the Menagerie, buys teenage girls from foreign nations and cruelly trains them to be Sex Slave prostitutes. From Inej Ghafa's backstory, we see this involves horrific abuse, both physical and psychological with Heleen repeatedly having her whipped and beaten, even having a girl who kept some money from a client cruelly murdered in front of the other girls as a lesson. Even after being freed by Kaz, Inej is intensely scarred by her time at the Menagerie, and Heleen gleefully taunts her of it when they meet, even trying to have Inej killed later. Utterly reprehensible and dedicated to making a fortune from the sexual enslavement of countless young women, Tante Heleen is one of the worst that Ketterdam has to offer.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Colm Fahey, for being one of the few positive parental figures in the duology. (And even the entire Grishaverse.)
• Even Better Sequel: Many found the duology to be an improvement on the original Grisha trilogy with a bit more action and well-developed characters. In terms of the books themselves, much of the fandom considers Crooked Kingdom a step-up from Six of Crows (which already received strong praise and positive reception) due to the richer characterization, bolder schemes, and complex plot development.
• Evil Is Cool: While they are more like Anti-Heroes, the entirety of the Crows count due to being criminals but Kaz stands out in particular. He is the biggest crime lord in Ketterdam and possibly of all the Grishaverse, as well as one of the most popular characters in YA fiction for his cunning mind, intelligence, ruthlessness, and badass design.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • When they're putting together the plan, Jesper calls Wylan useless and Nina calls him an idiot for running away. It's harsh but not entirely unfair given how out of his depth Wylan is. On a re-read, Wylan's defensiveness makes a lot more sense. Telling Wylan he was useless and stupid because of his dyslexia was a staple of his father's parenting style.
  • Matthias persuading Nina to show mercy on the drüskelle, and her merely rendering Jarl Brum bald instead of killing him, looks very naïve and short-sighted when a) Matthias is murdered by a fanatical drüskelle in Crooked Kingdom and b) it's revealed in The Nikolai Duology that Brum and the drüskelle were planning to breed an army of enhanced and subservient Grisha via captive Grisha women, and they eventually expose Nikolai's illegitimacy and try to supplant him with a puppet king. In the long run, things would have been a lot better if Nina had gone with her first impulse and destroyed the Ice Court.
• Ho Yay:
  • Jesper berates himself for being too distracted to appreciate Kaz's naked body while they break into prison.
  • Jesper and Wylan flirt. By the end of the book, it's become more than subtext, since Wylan explicitly asks Jesper if he's into guys, and Jesper shows that he cares for Wylan much more than he'd like to admit when he defends him to Van Eck and, later, admits he likes Wylan's face. This in hindsight counts more as blatant Ship Tease, since they get a Relationship Upgrade at the end of the second book.
  • Nina flirts with everyone, and Inej is the most openly tender with her than with any other of the Crows, even cupping her face between her hands in one scene.
• Magnificent Bastard: Kaz Brekker is a gangster, conman, bank robber, blackmailer, and all-around criminal prodigy who uses his extensive knowledge of Ketterdam's secrets to shame richer and more respected men and women into helping him with his schemes. Kaz's plots range from bluffing gunmen into backing down with fictitious threats against their families, to arranging breakouts from the two most heavily guarded prisons in Ketterdam and Fjerda respectively and running a con on the entire government of Ketterdam that drags in King Nikolai of Ravka as a coconspirator. Utterly unscrupulous, Kaz proves to Pekka Rollins, Jan Van Eck, and all his other competitors that he is the true kingpin of Ketterdam.
• Love to Hate:
  • Pekka Rollins, the head of the Dime Lions, is Kaz's Arch-Enemy and the source of all misfortune to happen in the boy's life, but his Faux Affably Evil nature, combined with his intelligence and cunning to match Kaz, makes him an compelling villain who raises the stakes against the heroes.
  • Jan Van Eck is a sociopathic businessman who treats Wylan like absolute shit, but his plot to kidnap Kuwei sets the plot of the second book in motion and his terrifyingly realistic attitude makes an an interesting villain to root against.
• Memetic Mutation: The "what's the easiest way to steal a man's wallet" bit has been used in many incorrect quotes posts and in other Six of Crows-related fan content. It help's that Kaz's questions and everyone's answers help establish each Crow's character.
• Moral Event Horizon: Inej fears that Kaz has crossed it when he claims to have kidnapped Pekka Rollins' son and buried him alive, and the narration states that "This she would not forgive him". She's relieved when Kaz reveals that he was lying in order to play a brutal mind game with Pekka Rollins.
• Never Live It Down: Kuwei for the scene when Jesper kisses him after mistaking him for Wylan and teasing Jesper afterward. While not a lot, some people take him into Die for Our Ship.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The fates of Councilman Hoede's guards after the prologue. Under the effects of Jurda Parem Anya orders them all to "wait"… which leaves every one of them in a catatonic state they’re unable to break out of. All they can do is stand and wait until they drop dead one by one.
  • The extensive description of the Ice Court, what the Drüskelle do to the Grisha they've imprisoned and experimented on, and their plans to enslave all Grisha with Jurda Parem.
  • This passage describing Pekka Rollins' nightmare from the end of Crooked Kingdom:
    Sometimes his son was crying from somewhere in the fields but he didn't know where to dig. Sometimes Pekka was the one lying in the grave, paralyzed as the earth was piled on top of him- light at first, a pattern of rain, then in heavy clods that filled his mouth and stole the breath from his chest. Above him, he could hear people laughing- boys, girls, women, men. They were silhouettes against a blue dusk sky, their faces lost to shadow, but he knew who they were. All the people he'd swindled, duped, killed.
• One-Scene Wonder: Well, two scenes actually. Dunyasha Lazareva proved to be a memorable antagonist, even though she was only a secondary villain introduced late in the second book, for being the best fighter the Crows had to contend with. Indeed, she gave Inej a very good run for her money the two times they battled (with Inej outright stating the girl was "better than her" afterward in combat). And she's responsible for two of the most suspenseful fight scenes in the book.
• One True Pairing: Pretty much the entire Grishaverse fandom ships Kaz and Inej. Wylan and Jesper are a close second behind them.
• Portmanteau Couple Name:
  • "Kanej" for Kaz and Inej.
  • "Wesper" for Wylan and Jesper.
  • "Helnik" for Matthias Helvar and Nina Zenik
• Paranoia Fuel: The con that Pekka Rollins pulled on Jordie and Kaz, if for no other reason than for how elaborate it was and how many people were involved. Everyone was in on it: his fake wife and daughter, the employees for his fake business, even the boy who claimed to be looking for a job as well and suggested that he and Jordie try Rollins working under the alias of Jakob Hertzoon. And Kaz finds out later that this was a common con in the Barrel.
• The Woobie: Inej was kidnapped from her loving parents at 14 years old, forced to be a sex slave in a brutal brothel, suffering such horrific abuse she was left mentally traumatized. Due to this trauma, she wants to become a vigilante to ensure no other child has to endure what she did.
  • Wylan after his father´s abusive treatment is exposed.

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