Six of Crows

DNF at 27%

Lots of little things bugging me about this one, which kept hauling me out of the reading experience.

It's marketed as a YA book, but I think probably the only reason it's able to do that is because the main characters are (allegedly) teenagers. But almost none of them behave like teens would actually behave. They're in charge of gangs. They've spent years becoming hard in prison. They've been forced into brothels that they've then escaped from or been bought from. They have severe addictions. They are often homeless and/or defenseless. This is a VERY adult book, and I don't know how it was able to be marketed as for young audiences.

I'm not super big on fantasy anyway, but this walked the line between not enough fantasy and too much? Like, I wasn't sure why this couldn't be set in actual Amsterdam since that's what the framework was obviously laid on - there were not enough fantastical elements to make this worth setting in a fake world.

I probably would have kept reading because it was mildly entertaining, until I got to some rather gruesome violence, inflicted by one gang member on a rival gang member (which is where I put the book down; thanks, but I don't need to hear the logistics of removing one's eye from its socket).