A heist story that arrived fully formed
Leigh Bardugo took the Grishaverse she had built across the Shadow and Bone trilogy and pointed it somewhere unexpected: a canal city, a crew of six outcasts, and an impossible job inside the most fortified prison in the world. Six of Crows, published in September 2015, has a different center of gravity from the trilogy that preceded it. Where the Grisha books were YA epic fantasy with a heroine at their heart, Six of Crows is a heist novel, and a serious one. Its sequel, Crooked Kingdom, followed in 2016 and closed the duology.
The books were an immediate crossover hit, praised for their ensemble cast, their pacing, and their willingness to take the genre seriously in a fantasy setting. Kaz Brekker, Inej Ghafa, and Jesper Fahey became among the most discussed characters in YA fantasy of that decade.
As of 2025, the path across media has been narrow. The Netflix series Shadow and Bone, which began in 2021, folded the Crows into a television universe alongside the Grisha trilogy storyline, giving them a full parallel arc across two seasons before the show was cancelled in 2023. A graphic novel adaptation of Six of Crows was published in 2022, illustrated by Dani Pendergast. No standalone film or game adaptation has been produced. The duology remains the definitive telling, and the cancelled Netflix run the only screen life the Crows have had.
Six of Crows across time
- 2012Shadow and Bone novel launches the Grishaverse
- 2013Siege and Storm continues the Grisha trilogy
- 2014Ruin and Rising closes the original trilogy
- 2015Six of Crows published, introducing Kaz and the Crows Six of Crows
- 2016Crooked Kingdom completes the heist duology
- 2017The Language of Thorns: fairy tales from the Grishaverse
- 2019King of Scars expands the Grishaverse with Nikolai Lantsov
- 2021Shadow and Bone premieres on Netflix; Rule of Wolves closes the Nikolai duology Shadow and Bone
- 2021Rule of Wolves published
- 2023Season 2 gives the Crows their most faithful screen arc; Netflix cancels the show Shadow and Bone
No mourners. No funerals.Six of Crows, Leigh Bardugo, 2015
If you love the heist structure
Fantasy and genre stories built on crew dynamics and impossible jobs
If you love the Grishaverse world
Dark fantasy with political intrigue, found family, and morally grey casts
If you love morally complicated anti-heroes
Stories centered on thieves, grifters, and characters who live by their own code
The definitive version: the novels
The duology, Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom, is the only complete telling of this story that exists. The ensemble's interior lives, the heist's layered reveals, Kaz Brekker's particular psychology: Bardugo built these on the page and nothing else has matched them. If you read one and not the other, you have half a story. Read both.
The underrated one: Shadow and Bone Season 2
Season 2 of the Netflix series gave the Crows a proper heist arc and came closer to the novels' energy than Season 1 had managed. It is imperfect television, but for fans who wanted to see Kaz, Inej, and Jesper move through a screen version of Ketterdam, it delivered more than critics acknowledged at the time. The cancellation made it a dead end. That does not change what the season accomplished.
The one worth waiting for: a standalone that does not exist yet
Six of Crows is a better fit for television than almost any fantasy novel of its decade: a tight ensemble, a single heist with escalating reveals, a city that rewards atmosphere. The Netflix cancellation closed the most obvious door before the story had a proper screen run. The correct response is not resignation. The Crows belong on screen in a production built around them, not woven into someone else's story. Until that exists, the novels hold everything worth having. But the case for a real adaptation is as strong as it ever was.