As someone who fully enjoyed Leigh Bardugo’s Alex Stern series (and still does), I decided to branch out into other books of hers. I think I literally just went to Goodreads and looked for another Leigh Bardugo series.
I was just looking through some people’s reviews of this book on Goodreads, and one specific reviewer that I follow illustrated my feelings about this book. She had trouble getting into it initially, which I also did. I borrowed the ebook from the library, and it went back once before I got it again and actually finished it. She helped me understand why I had trouble – we kinda jump right into the story with no introduction of the world. I didn’t know what at Grisha was (even though there are some charts at the beginning), and I didn’t really know how the world and characters work. This reviewer said: This book lacks the smooth introduction that you would normally get with a book set in a different universe. It reads like the author expects you to have already been introduced to it, which makes sense because this book is set in the same universe as her previous books. But I’ve never read those books and without having that background, I found the initiation into this book to be pretty rough.
I also haven’t read any other Grishaverse books, so I had the same issues. However, once you figure out what’s going on, it’s a great book. This is basically a street gang pulling a really big heist. We slowly learn about each of the gang members and get stories from their points of view throughout. I feel like the main character is Inej, who has an acrobatic background. She’s also kinda indentured. She was in a kind of brothel / escort house, and this gang leader bought out her contract. She has a lot more freedom in this gang, but she’s still not free. The gang has to break into a prison far away and capture / kill (depending on who you ask) a prisoner. There’s a huge bounty and lots of action. This ends on a cliffhanger, and I didn’t know that or I would’ve put the second book on hold at my library earlier!!
