Published in 2015, Leigh Bardugo’s young adult fantasy novel Six of Crows, the first in a two-part series, received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, VOYA, and Kirkus Reviews. A fantasy heist story, the novel shifts between the alternating points of view of five teenagers who team up to pull off the ultimate prison break.

Six of Crows begins in Ketterdam, an invented version of 17th-century Amsterdam, and the novel’s main characters hail from the seedy criminal district known as the Barrel. A people known as the Grisha, who originated in Ravka (the text’s version of Russia), possess magical powers.

Plot Summary

Seventeen-year-old Kaz Brenner or “Dirtyhands,” leader of the Dregs gang, is abducted by a merchant with a business proposition. The merchant tells Kaz of a new drug called jurda parem that, when ingested by Grisha, amplifies their existing power. Jurda parem is extremely addictive, and Van Eck fears governments could potentially control Grisha with the promise of more parem while using the Grisha’s augmented powers to wage disastrous wars. The man who invented jurda parem, a scientist from Shu Han named Bo Yul-Bayer, is being held in the Ice Court, an impenetrable fortress in Fjerda.

Van Eck wants Kaz to break Yul-Bayer out of prison, so the scientist won’t share the formula for parem with foreign governments. Kaz accepts Van Eck’s mission, believing the reward money will help him take down Pekka Rollins, a rival gang leader who conned Kaz’s older brother Jordie. Kaz gathers his crew: Inej, his right-hand woman, known as “the Wraith” since she can practically become invisible; Nina, a Grisha; Matthias, a Fjerdan former drüskelle (Grisha hunter) with intimate knowledge of the Ice Court; Jesper, the Dregs’ sharpshooter; and Wylan, Van Eck’s runaway son who is also a skilled bomb builder.

The crew arrives outside the Ice Court and waylays a prison wagon, changing places with six of the prisoners so they’ll be carted into the Ice Court’s prison. Inej survives a harrowing journey up an incinerator shaft, and in the process, she finds a new goal for herself: she’ll hunt slavers and their buyers. Jesper uses his Fabrikator powers—he is secretly a Grisha but has kept that fact hidden—to pull iron from the prison bars, and Kaz uses that iron to pick the locks. Nina and Kaz search the prison in case Yul-Bayur is in one of the cells, and Kaz finds Pekka in a cell but chooses to let him live.

An extra checkpoint of guards prevents the group from walking into the embassy as they’d planned. Inej and Nina disguise themselves as members of the Menagerie brothel to enter, while the boys use a secret drüskelle bridge Matthias shows them. Inej fights back against her former madam Heleen but is uncovered as a criminal and captured by guards. Nina tries to seduce drüskelle leader Jarl Brum into revealing Yul-Bayur’s location. Brum captures and imprisons Nina, and Matthias pretends to be on Brum’s side at first, but he eventually turns on Brum and frees Nina. Matthias and Nina soon discover Yul-Bayur is dead, and his teenage son, Kuwei, is being forced to try to recreate jurda parem.

Nina considers killing Kuwei, but Matthias argues that the boy has been robbed of his home and family just like the rest of them and deserves better treatment. They take Kuwei and meet up with Kaz, who uses an explosive made by Wylan to uproot the Ice Court’s gigantic ash tree, revealing a spring through which they escape. The victorious crew rides all the way to the harbor only to find 200 soldiers and a group of drüskelle waiting for them. Kuwei gives Nina a dose of jurda parem, and she gains the power to command the soldiers, forcing them to drop their weapons and sleep.

When they return to Ketterdam, Van Eck meets the Dregs on a deserted island, and reveals he has no intention of giving them their reward; in fact, he plans to kill them with the help of jurda parem-dosed Grisha. The merchant kidnaps Inej and tells Kaz he has a week to deliver Kuwei, or Inej will die. Kaz asks the crew to join him in a new quest to get Inej back, and they all agree. Kaz’s reassembled crew visits Pekka Rollins and asks for a loan to take revenge on Van Eck and reclaim Inej. As Kaz and his ultimate enemy, Pekka, make a deal, it becomes clear that more danger and deceit await in the sequel, Crooked Kingdom.