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retvenkos · 3 years

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There have been rumors that sab is going to include six of crows next season. Any thoughts?

whoo, do i have some thoughts™.

i should preface by saying, though, that if you are excited, good for you! if you think it’s a concept™, it most certainly is, and if you don’t want to see hate for the idea, then do not read ahead. i have some things to say about the idea, and none are too positive.

let’s get into it...

lol, plenty of spoilers ahead. mostly for the six of crows duology.

✧ *:･ﾟ

first of all, let’s hit it from an obvious, show running perspective.

six of crows is a lot™. there is so much happening in that book, and even more happening in crooked kingdom. not only are there new characters to add and explore, but there is new lore and new places that would all have to be hit. already, i felt like shadow and bone season one went fast. there was a lot to establish, and even more to expand upon, and i think there is so much to cover that trying to squeeze it all in would be a disservice to the characters and the world, which is the exact opposite of what the showrunners want, since they are lining up the grishaverse to be the new fantasy hit.

especially when the shadow and bone trilogy is adding in new places and characters, i don’t see the need for them to shoehorn in the six of crows duology. i’m sure there’s plenty for the crows to do, during these following two seasons. in fact, i’d even be fine if they wrote the crows out of the third season (which would ideally follow ruin and rising) entirely and maybe threw in a cameo at the end to get viewers excited for a six of crows show.

basically, there’s so much to cover, and shadow and bone already hit the ground running. i think that adding in the six of crows story arc would be too much of a time crunch, on the runtime of the show.

✧ *:･ﾟ

secondly, i’m ranting about a couple of characters, and how they are not six of crows duology ready.

the easiest one to talk about is kaz brekker, because book!kaz is dirtyhands kaz. our first introduction to kaz in the boks is him telling an opposing gang member that he can’t kill kaz, because if he does, his girlfriend will burn in a fire, and no matter how fast he runs, he won’t get there in time. kaz is like... “do you smell that? i think it’s her hair burning.”

and this is a more mild transgression of dirtyhands kaz. in the same book, kaz pulls a man’s eye out, he swallows lock picks, and he plans and executes the greatest heist of all time.

compare this to kaz in the show. kaz in the show is just a mean, angry boy in comparison. and this isn’t me hating on freddie carter - he did an amazing job. and this isn’t me hating on the writers either. i understand why they did that.

decidedly, there is a lot™ happening in shadow and bone season one. you don’t really get a lot of time with any one character, and if you do, it’s the shadow and bone characters. the showrunners knew they had to make kaz a likeable character to people coming into the series blind, and kaz brekker is a pretty hard character to like when you don’t get his backstory or even the slightest hint of it. part of what the six of crows books had going for it was the changing point of views, and inej’s trust and feelings for kaz. inej narrates a lot of stuff, and she does it in a more sympathetic way, making us give kaz the benefit of the doubt - especially since inej is such an upstanding character. you get a little bit of that is the netflix show, but you can’t get a lot of it because (1) time constraints, and (2) inej and kaz are actually at odds for a lot of the show - especially the opening bit. literally, their first interaction is a fight.

so, to get newer fans invested in this emo teen, they made him less dirtyhands. this is also fine because these events happen before the six of crows duology.

if we start the six of crows arc in season two, however, there is too much growth for kaz to do in between seasons. we need to see some of that on screen. especially since his plans were a bust, and the most dirtyhands thing he did was with the inferni, and he wasn’t the one to kill the inferni - inej was. (and i love that scene like the rest of you, but there could have been other ways to get inej to save kaz while letting kaz show some more of that ruthlessness.)

and that’s just kaz. admittedly, he’s an easy character to pick apart, but we have to talk about a few more.

nina zenik? yeah, let’s talk about her. the six of crows nina we knows has a lot of guilt over what she did to matthias - even if a lot of it is repressed. she has a slew of complex emotions over matthias, and it’s all been fermenting inside of her for a year. point is, in the show nina still thinks what she did was right, and she hasn’t had time to question that inside of herself. sure, in the books she still posits that what she did was justified, but there’s a bit of uncertainty there, caused by the acidity of guilt. i want to see that war inside of nina. it makes their love story all the more compelling.

and while we’re talking about helnik, let’s just cover matthias helvar real quick, because, personally, his character needs that time spent in hellgate, now more than ever.

i’ve already mentioned my beef with aging up matthias is a few other posts, but why don’t i reprise it?

matthias is an incredibly complex character, and part of what makes his change earnest is two things - the struggle he continues to feel throughout the duology, and his age. now stick with me.

part of matthias’ struggle is that he is still that little boy whose family were killed by grisha. in the books, matthias is only 18. that seems mature, but by all accounts, it most definitely isn’t. he doesn’t know anything about the world. he has been training to be a religious soldier, where he was heavily indoctrinated. what has matthias truly seen of the world? likely, very little.

furthermore, because he’s only 18, how many expeditions has he been on? sure, matthias has seen grisha tried for their “crimes” and he has been training against grisha since he was a boy, but do you think they’re putting eleven year old matthias out there, against full grown grisha? my bet is he only started truly hunting grisha when he was 14.

when he meets nina, he hasn’t been hunting grisha long, and he’s young enough to where we could truly see how him being smitten with nina could impact his thoughts.

matthias in the show is played by a man who is 27. no hate, this isn’t ageism, but if he’s been hunting grisha since he was 14, he’s been hunting grisha for 12 years. he has gone out on numerous expeditions. hell, in the show they give matthias a large amount of credit for capturing nina. it is sO much harder for you to buy the “nina is a beautiful grisha and has changed my life” storyline when he’s 27, almost 30. furthermore, this matthias has seen way more grisha trials. the concept that he doesn’t know that grisha aren’t given a fair trial is just absurd, at this point. furthermore, you add on the fact that he’s been indoctrinated longer, and it makes his story all the more difficult to grapple with.

on the one hand, i understand that they aged everyone up (which i was happy about, for the majority of characters. kaz, i am once again looking at you). on the other hand, it puts a huge strain on matthias’ character, and if they were to try to juggle the six of crows plot with the shadow and bone plot, so much nuance would be lost and the majority of new fans would not understand people liking matthias. you would risk alienating his character (and nina’s, by effect) and that is not what either character (or actor!) deserves.

they’ve already made it so hard for us to buy the “nina changes matthias” storyline - even though they’ve made him a tad sweeter and more likeable - and if they try to fast track it, it’s going to fall through.

i think matthias needs his time in hellgate for some soul searching and some struggle. with matthias, the only way out is through, and we need to have time for that to happen.

inej and jesper are a little less difficult to juggle since they’re are done pretty well, but i don’t want to see their complexity and nuance fall through (especially jesper’s) because the show is doing too many things at once.

basically, the crows are currently in their fledgling state, and if they were to be thrown into the six of crows storyline, it would not be nearly as fulfilling.

✧ *:･ﾟ

finally, i just want to say that the overall genre and theme of six of crows and shadow and bone are completely different. i feel like there would be far too much dissonance in the show. you could already feel it in season one, but because alina fears being kidnapped and then she goes on the run, it works. six of crows, though, is a completely different show and i think it would be odd to shift from ~life aboard sturmhond’s ship~ to ~breaking and entering in the ice court~.

✧ *:･ﾟ

anyway, those are my thoughts, anon. surely you didn’t ask for this, but you received it, anyway.

#shadow and bone spoilers #s&b spoilers #spoilers #grishaverse #asks #kaz brekker #matthias helvar #i'm only tagging those two because i really only talk about them

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bloodthirstyreviews · 5 years

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Crooked Kingdom (So/c 2)

(2/5*)

I still just can’t get on board with this one.. I really wanted to. I enjoyed SoC, well, the last half of SoC, and was told it all gets better once you get to that point. I was told that Crooked Kingdom is all go, totally action packed and awesome. Boy howdy what a letdown. I suppose it was action packed, but it was all over the place and not very gripping. Not once did this really pull me in.

It gets long, and spoilery at the end.

The Good:

Nina! I thought I was going to hate her back in the beginning of SoC but she was possibly the most dynamic character out of all of them even to the end. Her story (besides that One Terrible Thing) was done justice. She was fleshed out. And then done a terrible injustice with that One Terrible Thing. Nina was struggling through withdrawals on top of her demons and figuring out who she is again, all while still being a badass involved in the many shenanigans of this book.

Wylan & Jesper. Again they are cute idiots and I love them. They both felt more real this time around, more meat to their personalities and neither of them got killed off. that’s the dream. That’s the real gay agenda.

The Bad:

Kaz. He’s the most boring main character ever. Everything is way too easy for him. Everything goes exactly according to some crazy plan he *just thought of*. He gets out of sticky situations with ease, even with a busted leg. Every time one of his plans went how it was supposed to (spoilers: every damn time) he makes some like *mic drop* comment that makes me hate him even more. The way his plans are written sometimes isolates the reader. “It worked because this thing I did that I didn’t tell anyone about and I’m the best” *mic drop*. He is written as someone Much older than we’re supposed to believe he is, which has always been my struggle with all of these characters. I think it just shows so much more blindingly with Kaz. Even if his whole life has been a struggle and he’s a hardened criminal... he still doesn’t have the thought processes of a 17 year old. He’s talked about as being some genius more than it is actually shown.

Only maybe Jesper & Wylan kinda seem like teenagers. I’m pretty convinced Bardugo was writing this book as adult fiction and then decided she wanted it to be YA after all and just reduced their ages down in number but nothing else. If I read them as 30-40 year olds it’s much more pleasant, but she has to keep reminding everyone they are ~17~ and that just ruins it all over again.

Inej. I liked her enough in SoC, but here she is reduced to just.. not much. Everything about her, in reference to her, that she says or thinks, is repetitive. I know I read the same line about her several times throughout this book. Her storyline in Crooked Kingdom felt like a constant backpedal. Like ooo we’re getting somewhere, she’s going to overcome something... and then we loop back to the starting position again. Just.. frustrating. No growth. Treading water.

A few paragraphs ago I say it is action packed. And it is, but that is not a good thing here. The fast pacing was a major downfall. There’s so much going on, so many odd plot lines. The beginning of SoC felt the same way for me. It feels like running loosely related errands. “We have to do this thing before we can do this but we also have several more things to do and...” ok. It’s like questing on Runescape but Worse. Do we need to pick up some milk on the way over also, Kaz? A lot of these plot lines / devices also kinda got abandoned. Really just feels like trying to rush through these smaller events to get to the Big Bad Event, not giving anyone time to process what just happened. There are no feelings, its just happening. There’s no real consulting about what they’re going to do, because Kaz is the ~mastermind~ and hes so ~witty~ and always just has the perfect plan that will go off without a single problem. I guess she is writing another book? But I’m pretty sure that is an afterthought. No Grisha uprising? No actual problems with Parem? hokay. sure. just gonna build to an actually interesting and good plot and flush it down the harbor in favor of a) another heist basically b) a boring ass villain who is really just a rich dude in a suit.

Dunyasha. Another rush through plot device. She’s incredible. She’s lovely. She’s going to murder Inej.. but nope. She was not done justice. Inej was so worthless during their fight, just getting stabbed left and right and not being able to fight back. I wanted more Dunyasha. Not just ~defeated~ and then is nothing more.

Van Eck was underwhelming as a villain. He was too easily defeated because ~kaz the mastermind~ He gets hauled off to jail.. for “committing” fraud... h’okay. and the gang gets all his money. woo. hoo. he did not have enough face time. there was basically no interaction with him. He was just some dull politician.. oo scary.

The vicious coupling. I’m literally just going to paste from my SoC review because its the SAME THING. “ It may actually be possible, wait wait hear me out, to end a YA series without pairing up EVERYONE. You can even end it without pairing up anyone. I mean yay a little nibble of lgbt rep, I’ll take what I can get. But ugh does everyone have to be together? It doesn’t bode well for plot/character development in the next book. Because that just sounds like a good plot device- oh wait! that is what it is! With Inej being kidnapped!”

Ummm this was basically SoC but just like. slightly different plot. Exact. Same. Algorithm.

The Really Bad.

KAZ OWNS INEJ KAZ, A STRAIGHT WHITE MALE, OWNS A SULI GIRL “The Suli, being a nomadic, stateless people, may have been influenced by Jewish or Romani cultures.” and the main character of this book. OWNS ONE. ONE WHO HE CALLS HIS INVESTMENT CONSTANTLY. THE BROWN GIRL HE OWNS IS ALSO HIS LOVE INTEREST???????” PLEASE. STOP SWEEPING THIS UNDER THE RUG. THIS SHOULD NOT BE OVERLOOKED. tHIS WAS PUBLISHED IN 2016 HOW IS THIS OKAY yall really out here ignoring some severe issues just because you love this ~tortured past~ ~witty haha~ ~genius schemer~ nasty vile 1 dimensional boring brick of a character

Matthias.

The character with growth and depth. The love interest of the other character with depth.... suddenly dead. His death was so dumb. It really came out of nowhere. We go through all this with him just for him to be expendable. No one even cared? Nina did, but the others didn’t have any thoughts about it. He did not deserve this. Nina did not deserve this. If anyone had to be viciously coupled, it should have been them. It made sense for them.

I wasn’t really planning on doing a full review, I didn’t want to put the effort in. But it kept bothering me, and I’d remember more things that bothered me. So here we are. I didn’t want to just hate on a book without thoroughly getting into it.

#book reviews #ifisndjdssksnsnsn #stahp #im gonna get shat on for my opinions i already know #so/c

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