Hallo

Six of Crows: A Comic Adaptation

Part 1, Chapter 3

Bonus Art

Previous Pages

I have by no means been quiet about how I feel about Kanej and how it negatively affects the story, but i figured with the release of Letters from Ketterdam and influx of people i’ve noticed on my page that feel similarly to me, I would like to air out all of my gripes with these books. Like I said before, I'm not making this post to upset people, and I understand this ship is very serious to a large majority of this fandom. I don’t expect to change anyone's mind or imply that people who like them are lesser than me. I just want to explain how it reads to me and find other people who may feel the same.

Six of Crows, despite having moments that were about Kaz and Inej, was able to remain extremely entertaining and exciting for me to read because this book wasn’t about relationships. I am not against the small moments written into this book with Nina and Matthias and the hints toward what was to come with Wylan and Jesper, but this book benefited greatly from focusing on the characters individually instead of constantly having scenes revolve around another character besides the focus of that chapter, which is one of my biggest struggles with Crooked Kingdom. As I was reading Crooked Kingdom, I began to dread Inej and Kaz’s chapters, because I knew it simply wouldn’t be about them at all. As someone who is really not a fan of Kaz but really loves Inej, I hated knowing I was getting set up for disappointment in all her chapters because she would never be the focus. There seems to be a recurring problem in the Grishaverse as a whole where the story introduces a woman who has a very strong focus on their independence and their own personal goals (Inej, Zoya, Alina) only for them to be put in a relationship specifically with a man who is in a position of power. And for the hetero ships this does not apply to, where the relationships remain individualistic and frankly healthier (Helnik, Genya/David), they do not get the same shelf life as the others.

I think it is very obvious that these characters have some fondness for each other, and I can't write this entire thing without acknowledging it. However, I also think that the “romance” aspect of their relationship hinders them as characters. Not only that but I find that everything that is supposed to be read as romantic just comes off as extremely uncomfortable, which wouldn’t be a problem if you weren’t supposed to be rooting for them as a reader. The worst example of this I can think of is when Inej is on the silos in Crooked Kingdom genuinely feeling like she missed her chance with Kaz because she no longer belonged to the Menagerie. The fact that Inej has spent YEARS giving Kaz her all and yet has no reason to believe that she is good enough as she is now to be given his affection was so saddening to me and the fact that this relationship is meant to be seen as ideal and that he is so dedicated to her is so troublesome. There are so few moments where Kaz is truly kind to her and doesn't play it off as keeping his assets safe. His treatment of her in these books disgusts me and for Inej to ever have a reason to think she wouldn’t be cared for if she could no longer serve Kaz says it all to me.

I absolutely adored Six of Crows, but I have been so let down by the writing of Crooked Kingdom and now Letters from Ketterdam (I received my copy early). What really drew me into this story was how all these characters worked together. How all of them, despite conflicts of interest and trouble getting along, learned to care for each other and form relationships. I don't read these books just for focus on one relationship, but all the different dynamics found outside of the romantic aspect. By the time of CK, Kaz and Inej lost any individuality they had, and somehow despite not even being with Kaz in Letters from Ketterdam, Inej still can’t be spoken of without the focus remaining on Kaz. In all honesty, I didn’t like Letters from Ketterdam at all. Only half of it was even letters between the crows, and when it was it might as well have just been Kaz and Inej, as Wylan and Jesper’s parts in the story felt completely useless. This is especially troubling knowing that the only official material released for the book ahead of time was about Wesper, which in my opinion was a really gross move.

The last piece of poor writing I would like to touch on, which I will admit is a little out of place in this post, is the death of Matthias. I find that redeeming a character we really don’t know anything about and then killing them off to be a cheap gimmick, and it felt like his death was only thrown into the story to add shock value. I know this may sound hypocritical coming from someone who is a huge fan of the red dead franchise, but the difference between these two is the time given to the characters. Across two books, we still hardly know anything about Matthias. We know nothing of his past except that he was a Druskelle. In Red Dead Redemption 2, there is so little you don’t know about Arthur by the end. His death feels meaningful because you truly know everything leading up to it, all that he had to lose to even make it that far. Matthias and Arthur both share having more ahead of them and having people that they could’ve gone back to, but we simply don’t know Matthias. There is no weight to his death except for Nina’s reaction. And it pains me to say this because I really do love Matthias, but there is really no actual meaning or weight to the event, which is only further proven by his only mention in Letters from Ketterdam being “I miss our Fjerdan” from Jesper. That is, unless you want to read another set of full length novels that only heavily features one character from the duology.

Why is no one talking about the use of AI imagery and the sloppy illegal use of shutterstock image on this page spread of LETTERS TO KETTERDAM?????

Like this is amateur af and embarrassing. The back of the book has credits to all other artists who contributed to the book, but neglects to say who “drew” the boats battling above (obviously AI generated if you look close enough) and you can LITERALLY SEE THE DAMN WATERMARK ON THE STOCK IMAGE!!!!!!

She spent money to commission a bunch of artists to do portraits but they couldn’t have one of them do quick sketches for this page??? Makes me wonder if she used AI anywhere else in the book

In the same way that Kaz's ego can blind him, I think there could be a part of inej that will choose the world she wants to be true over the world that is (she didn't think to question Jan's love for his son either, after all). I think that, plus the fact that she is seen among the Crows as being uniquely insightful, could lead her to be overconfident and blind to her blind spots.

Posting this piece on A Darker Shore's release day :)

This one has light-ish spoilers (especially compared to the other piece I hope to post later that week haha), but if you don't want spoilers, feel free to mute any of these tags I'm going to use:

#six of crows a darker shore spoilers

#a darker shore spoilers

#six of crows spoilers