Six of Crows Literary Elements

Young adult fantasy heist.

Ketterdam, a prosperous and crime-laden port city inspired by Amsterdam; and the Ice Court in Djerholm, Fjerda, a nation in the far north, notorious for its impenetrability.

The novel is narrated in third person by seven different characters, five of whom are on the crew performing the heist.

The tone is mostly suspenseful, with banter and romance throughout.

Kaz Brekker leads the crew of six protagonists (himself, Inej, Jesper, Nina, Matthias, and Wylan); the antagonists include powerful adults like Jan Van Eck, Pekka Rollins, Heleen Van Houden, and Jarl Brum.

Kaz's crew must infiltrate the Ice Court, an impenetrable fortress, to save Bo Yul-Bayur, who has been imprisoned. He is the inventor of a drug called jurda parem that grants Grisha exceptional powers, and the crew gets 30 million kruge if they succeed in freeing him.

The crew completes the heist, freeing Kuwei Yul-Bo from the Ice Court, only to be double-crossed by Jan Van Eck. Van Eck reveals that he wants the formula for jurda parem to make a profit for himself, kidnapping Inej and ending the novel on a cliffhanger.

Heleen grabbing Inej's arm in Ketterdam foreshadows her trying the same thing in the Ice Court (with less success).

When Kaz breaks into the Ice Court, in order to bring in explosives, he “had to bring them up—along with a pouch of chloropellets and an extra set of lockpicks he’d forced down his gullet in case of emergency—every other hour to keep from digesting them. It hadn’t been pleasant.” (398) The understatement in the final sentence is comedic, because forcing yourself to vomit up and then re-swallow objects every hour would be a bit worse than "not pleasant."

Kaz makes an allusion to Robin Hood, though he doesn't name him.

The novel uses crows as recurring imagery, evoking death and danger as well as intelligence.

In order for Nina to protect the world from jurda parem, she must take jurda parem.

“But there was more to it than that, wasn’t there? Inej would never betray him. He knew it. Kaz felt ill. Though he’d trusted her with his life countless times, it felt much more frightening to trust her with this shame.” (278) Kaz's anxiety is communicated by the choppy parallel structure of "He knew it. Kaz felt ill," which is wedged between compound sentences.

“The storm had come out of nowhere, tossing the ship like a toy on the waves. The sea had played along until it had tired of the game and dragged their boat under in a tangle of rope and sail and screaming men.” The storm and the sea are personified, using the ship the way a child would.