WARNING: THIS REVIEW IS SPOILERY!Honestly, what is all this hype about? Because frankly I don’t understand where it comes from. Is it because the Grisha trilogy was good and so must be another series from the same author? I’m confused.I’ll start by saying that no, I didn’t read the Grisha trilogy. This was the first Bardugo book for me. Sadly, I didn’t enjoy it a bit.Story:The book follows the story of this group of six people that - for different reasons - come together and try to penetrate into an impenetrable building, the Ice Court. What this Ice Court is, we’re not quite sure. We learn - after almost 300 pages - that it is a massive palace that hosts druskelle, men who’s job is that of chasing Grishas, because they’re believed to be demons or some things like that. If there are other things this palace is needed for, we don’t know. Nobody cares to explain us something about it. There’s a place called Ice Court and that’s it, we’re just supposed to accept it.My main - HUGE - problem is: Bardugo, would you care explain to me how this damn world you created works? Or am I supposed to read the Grisha trilogy before? Because if that’s so, nobody told me. When you decide to write a new series, completely independent from the other one you wrote before but set in the same world, you must explain everything all over again. You can’t expect people to read the Grisha trilogy before and then move on with Six of Crows! If you don’t want to explain everything again, just make the book part of the original series, so it’s clear I can’t venture in it without reading the previous ones.But since you decided Six of Crows had to be part of a new series, why did you leave everything unexplained? Why - after 500 pages of book - do I not know why Grisha exists? Why, in a world so similar to ours, there are people with extraordinary powers and people with none? And why the only people you talk about are criminals, merchants and druskelle? Aren’t there any other jobs in this fictional city? What the hell is jurda?Another big problem: for the first 300 pages nothing happens. Literally nothing. I spent days reading only about the Barrel, this area in Ketterdam where our criminals live and “work”. That’s what 3/5 of the book is about. I mean, I’m glad I’m not the type to DNF books, because if I was I wouldn’t have made it to the point where finally things starts to develop.This book is full of informations thrown at the reader without a proper explanation, just like the writer thought we were just supposed to accept everything and move one without questioning anything.“Should I dwell on what Grishas are and where they come from? Uhm...nope, I’m just gonna write the word “Grisha” and they’re gonna work with that” clearly something Bardugo thought while writing this book.Characters:Before diving into every single one, I wanted to mention how much I hated the different POV (point of views). I get that the writer probably wanted to let us know everyone on a deeper lever, but I think she didn’t manage to achieve this goal. Given that - as I already said - the first 300 pages are full of nothing, the changes between characters are just annoying and pointless. Instead of making me emphasize more with the characters, this actually made me feel them very distant and plain.Kaz: he’s one of the main characters. Got to Ketterdam with his brother after their parents died, they do a bad investment with the wrong man and manage to lose every money they’ve made selling the family farm. After that his brother gets sick and dies because they don’t have money to pay a medik. Kaz has to swim using his brother’s body as a lifebelt to save his own life. From that moment on he won’t touch anyone without gloves ever again and he will do anything to drown the man who cheated his brother. Am I supposed to believe that this incredible criminal known as Dirtyhands, who always manages to get the most difficult jobs done, who knows more tricks than the Devil, is a 17 years old? I mean, I’m not asking for a 50 years old character, but he could at least have been in his late twenties to be realistic. Honestly I read the books imagining him older and I still believe every character is actually older than the age the writer gave them. Apart from that, I actually pretty enjoy him and his story. Pity that we get to know it almost at the end of the book, making him unpleasant and quite boring for most of the story.Inej: I already forgot why she arrives in Ketterdam. She is one of the girls that work at The Managerie - even though I didn’t quite understand if she had to prostitute herself or not - but Kaz convince his boss to buy her indenture and she becomes a member of the Dregs. Maybe the only character I truly felt a (little) connection with. I think that’s because she’s the only one who’s story is being told from the beginning, making the chapters from her POV more interesting than the others. I also ship her with Kaz a lot. Is it realistic that she’s 16 years old? Of course not, she’s at least 20.Jesper: he’s a Grisha fabrikator, but we discover this only at the very end of the book. Why does he hide this isn’t very well explained. The rest of the time he’s a compulsive gambler with lots of debts and a love for guns. A funny one, but did he make a difference for me? Not quite. The chapters from his POV were boring most of the time, they became a little more interesting when Wylan came into the picture. I like the idea of a romantic something between them and I hope it’s gonna be developed better in the next book of the series. I would have preferred to read fromWylan POV though.Nina: she’s a Grisha heartrender who works at the White Rose. I liked her, didn’t love her. Again, I didn’t find anything truly special in her, but she wasn’t that bad. I do enjoy her complicated relationship with Matthias.Matthias: it could’ve been interesting to see how a druskelle, a witch hunter basically, grown around people who teached him how Grishas are monsters that need to be killed, changed his mind because of one specific Grisha. Which is what Bardugo tried to do, but there was something missing in my opinion and since the beginning it was too obvious he and Nina loved each other, too obvious that he already wasn’t so sure about what he had been thought. I wish his psychology was a bit more complex.Wyland: he’s the son of Jan Van Eck. He joins the team because of his knowledge in demolitions and his use as a hostage in negotiating the reward. I don’t have much to say about him, given the fact that - for some reason - there wasn’t any chapter from his POV, even though he was part of the group of protagonists. He seems like a nice guy, with morals and a personality that could develop and become very enjoyable and interesting. As I already said, I would’ve loved to read from his POV rather than Jesper’s one.I give it two stars, because the writing style was good and I quite enjoyed the last 200 pages. I do really hope Crooked Kingdom won’t be a pain as this one was.