Still on the Quest

I've got a cup of smokey black tea, I've got macarons, and I'm having a restful afternoon as the weekend wraps up. Other than my two daily trips out to the gym and pool, and a market wander during lunch today, I haven't been further than the bakery — where Matthias and spent an enjoyable time last night, drinking wine and eating a cheese platter with fresh slices of baguette for dinner. The bakery has been doing those wine nights for a couple of years now, but other than a flurry of visits when this was first starting out, I haven't really attended many. I should do it more — wine and cheese by candlelight: what's not to love?

My reading this week has consisted solely of a reread of Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows duology. This was prompted in part by my knowledge that she has gone back in and re-edited the books for new editions, 'correcting' authorial choices that she had felt were flaws or weaknesses of the books. I'm of two minds about this sort of thing — Samantha Shannon did it with the first three books in her dystopian Bone Season series — I understand why authors are itching to get out the red pen and fix weaker writing from earlier in their careers, but I personally wish they would leave things be and have the courage to just view problems in their earlier books as signs of how far they've developed as writers.

One of the things I know Bardugo was planning to 'correct' was to age up her gang of criminal underworld crooks so that the underlying premise (gangleading criminal mastermind aged 17, with his crew of similarly aged misfits, each of whom have equally improbable achievements for characters of their youth) was less ridiculous. I know she received a lot of criticism for this, most of which I felt was misplaced: it's a fantasy YA adventure series, and teenagers in improbable and unlikely positions of leadership and achievement are kind of to be expected in that genre. The absolutely absurd situations in which Kaz Brekker and his gang of unlikely allies find themselves is part of the ridiculous charm of the duology for me, and I have no interest in reading a 'corrected' version with older characters (especially since I imagine all their interpersonal relationships will remain very adolescent in character). For all past rereads of the series, I've relied on library copies, but this was enough to make me bite the bullet and buy secondhand copies of the older editions.

It's been a couple of years since I last read the duology, and I'm pleased to report it remains as enjoyable as ever. The heists and sleights of hand are spectacular and over the top, the stakes are high, the gang of mismatched misfits — all dispossessed in one way or another, almost all refugees or immigrants, all traumatised in one way or another — start out at odds, and ultimately find a sense of resolution, home and healing in each other. The other parts of Bardugo's imagined world in the Grishaverse (fake fantasy Russia, fake fantasy China, fake fantasy Scandinavia) are laughably cartoonish thin caricatures, but her Ketterdam: fake fantasy Amsterdam, a mercantile city of canals, warehouses, schemers, scammers and commerce remains a delightful creation. It's a place where everyone comes to make their fortunes, or to outrun their pasts — where at once no one is at home, and therefore it can be home for anyone. I always love coming back to spend time there. Other than my longstanding quibble with one character death that feels cynically done in order to ensure readers know the story's stakes are high (and Bardugo then having to wildly cast around for the one character she could safely kill off without risking a massive reader backlash or her planned spinoff sequel), I loved it from start to finish, and felt the reread was very worth doing. I'm glad I made the effort to get my hands on those older editions.

My tea is getting cold, so I'll leave things here. I hope everyone's been having restful weekends.