Even though he exists in a world with magical healing, he never asks to have his disability healed, and it isn’t brought up.īardugo writes in multiple perspectives, which does a great deal of justice to her characters’ lived experiences. His physical disability is treated like a “declaration,” and readers are told in the story that he made his cane into a symbol of pride, that he is stronger for having been broken. Kaz also limps as a result of an improperly healed broken leg and walks with a cane, but his relationships to his physical disability and his PTSD are not identical. Vicious leader Kaz and spy Inej both have symptoms that are consistent with PTSD, although they experienced vastly different forms of trauma. Both books showcase a range of experiences, showing that disability and mental health are not homogenous experiences. Many of the characters have intersectional experiences that Bardugo treats with nuance, complexity, and care.

In Crooked Kingdom, the six return to the gritty city of Ketterdam to enact an equally implausible plan: rescue one of their own from Wylan’s merchant father, Jan Van Eck ruin Van Eck’s reputation and secure the reward money he promised them for the first book’s heist job. Criminal prodigy Kaz assembles a crew, including spy Inej, sharpshooter Jesper, convict Matthias, magic-user Nina (a Grisha Heartrender, someone who can control and damage internal organs), and Wylan, the son of a wealthy merchant. In Six of Crows, six characters plan an impossible heist that is both extremely high risk and high reward. Yet Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows and its sequel Crooked Kingdom, which came out this past September, taught me to give myself space instead of hiding. As a queer, disabled woman, I’m often disappointed to find that characters that are like me are killed off, magically cured, or otherwise disposable in the end.

Yet despite the way that books have held me up over the years, it’s rare to find myself completely in a book. My mom, like me, was disabled, and it was something that was celebrated in our house. The only place that I really existed, that I let myself expand, was at home with my mom and our books. I made myself small, and left my body-which was shaky, uncoordinated, with muscles that didn’t work like everyone else’s and couldn’t seem to master stairs-to become as nonexistent as possible. That’s what I would do when I was walking down the stairs of my elementary school, one step at a time, hands clutching the handrails, as other kids pushed me out of the way. I could shrink myself down into the smallest physical fraction of my body possible and hide in that space. When I was a kid, I learned not to exist.

Six of crows series