Today, Fable and the Verbivore are excited to share our June book club episode! This month we chose to dig into Leigh Bardugo’s enthralling fantasy heist duology, the Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom.

This series has a funny history on our podcast, as Fable read it over a year ago, loved it, and has mentioned it multiple times on our show - and it has been on the Verbivore’s TBR list for over two years. But we both feel that this conversation was well worth the wait.

The Six of Crows duology focuses on a motley crew of characters brought together in the grimy Barrel of Ketterdam - who have to overcome their differences and execute an impossible heist – all while facing possible death and betrayal at every turn. To us, this book combined the best that the found family story trope has to offer along with the engrossing twists and turns of a great thriller.

In this episode, we discuss how the author created larger-than-life characters that are none-the-less grounded in reality, how the opening chapter of Six of Crows play out the stakes of this story in miniature, and how the timing of POV switches right as a character is facing an important decision can create an internally driven cliffhanger.   

We also talk about how forcing characters into the perspectives of someone they are at odds with can help build tension and internal conflict around what they’ll chose to believe going forward and how that will impact their actions. 

We hope you enjoy listening to this episode, we sure enjoyed having this conversation! Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

Leigh Bardugo is the New York Times author of the Shadow and Bone trilogy, Six of Crows Duology, King of Scars Duology, Ninth House, and several other books set within the Grishaverse. The Netflix series Shadow and Bone just realeased on April 23rd and has already been renewed for a second season. It references mostly the original trilogy, but will expand to include some of her other books included the Six of Crows duology. You can follow her on instagram at @lbardugo.

The Verbivore mentioned how gambling is addicting, because it uses a random schedule of reinforcement and compared how Leigh Bardugo paid off moments in the book as similarly addictive for that same reason. Here is what Simply Psychology has to say about random reinforcement schedule:

• “This kind of schedule results in high, steady rates of responding. Organisms are persistent in responding because of the hope that the next response might be one needed to receive reinforcement. This schedule is utilized in lottery games.” - https://www.simplypsychology.org/schedules-of-reinforcement.html

The Verbivore reads the first sentence of chapter one of Six of Crows. Here is that quote:

• “Joost had two problems: the moon and his mustache.”

The Verbivore mentions that the Six of Crows is a heist story. Here is an article that discusses some of the elements of those stories:

• https://litreactor.com/columns/the-8-keys-to-a-good-heist-story

Books Mentioned:

• Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

• Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo

• The Shadow and Bone Trilogy Boxed Set: Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm, Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo

• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas

TV Show Mentioned:

• Shadow and Bone - Season 1 Streaming on Netflix

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)