In this digital age people are always playing a game or on social media or texting their friends. They rarely spend time reading books but if you love to read or you want to spend a little time reading a book, a starter book I would recommend for you is “Six of Crows” by Leigh Bardugo.

The book has lots of great details and offers many twists that leave you on the edge of your seat. It offers many different descriptions and has great narratives from different points of view.

“Six of Crows” follows six characters, each with alternating narrative chapters, each with their own special set of skills, quirks and baggage.

Set in the same universe as Leigh Bardugo’s “Grisha” trilogy, aka the Grishaverse, Six of Crows opens in Ketterdam–a city of violence and opportunity. The story focuses on main character Kaz Brekker: thief and brutal street lord.

Living in the backbone of Ketterdam’s “Dregs” underground business, Kaz’s past is haunted by death, abandonment, guilt and trauma. Since growing up as an orphan on Ketterdam’s unforgiving streets, Kaz has grown up to be a hard-young man and one with connections.

Kaz is approached with a dangerous but lucrative proposition: break into the impenetrable Ice Court and retrieve the package. The package, in this case, being a man named Yul-Bayur, who has the formula for a highly addictive drug called Jurda Parem which amplifies a Grisha’s (those born with magical abilities) powers to extreme ends.

The world in “Six of Crows” is set in the same universe as her previous trilogy and happily expands on the rules and peoples therein. This world is a general fantasy analog of our own world and on

its own not exceptional or remarkable–but the magical systems make up for the lack of originality.

Depictions of PTSD in fiction tend to manifest in very uniform ways. The boys are violent and grumpy and have panic attacks; the girls are sad and stressed and have panic attacks.

Kaz, to be fair, is violent and often grumpy, but he also demonstrates PTSD traits that are often underrepresented in fictional depictions.

Most notably, he experiences frequent intrusive thoughts, his mind circling back to his trauma again and again. Intrusive thoughts are one of the defining characteristics of PTSD but they are rarely seen in fiction—they just aren’t as dramatic as panic attacks.

Like many traumatized people, Kaz ties tremendous emotional importance to a single mission, stemming from his trauma. It seamlessly and significantly ties his trauma into his character and his motivations, without letting it define him.

The rarest PTSD symptom that Kaz displays is touch aversion. Male characters with PTSD are often represented as erratic and out of control.

Kaz is tight, almost obsessively controlled, and the cases where he violently loses control feel less an issue of his PTSD and more an issue of the other stressors in his life, which struck me as both realistic and refreshing.

The plot was bursting with action and overflowing with suspense from the start. The world building is phenomenal and the Grisha world is by far my favorite out of all the fantasy stories I have read.

The attention to detail is amazing; I love how each country has its own language and traditions, the transitions between chapters and points of view was amazing and really provided a sense of impact to the most significant scenes.