The six main characters of Leigh Bardugo’s wildly popular Six of Crows duology do not exceed the age of eighteen, and all of them are killers. This brutal fact appears to be one of the selling points of the series. The term “murder nerds,” a play on the collective noun for crows, is often used by the online fanbase to describe both the characters and themselves; Leigh Bardugo also affectionately uses the term to refer to her fans. The flippant turn of phrase is an intriguing contrast to Bardugo’s nuanced and sensitive treatment of trauma in the text. Ultimately, the duology offers a redemptive vision for the characters that does not erase their murders or require them to eschew violence in the future; in fact, two of the characters choose positions (gang leader and vigilante) that will almost certainly require them to continue to take life. However, they direct their violence towards nobler ends, such as the eradication of sex trafficking and slavery in their fictional merchant country of Kerch.
The interplay of violence, forgiveness, and redemption in the fantasy text creates a guardedly hopeful narrative that is typically denied to real teenagers who have enacted violence (especially murder). Can this text encourage empathy for the violent teenager, or does the sensationalism of the fantastical setting and plot create too much distance between the fictional adolescents and their real-world counterparts? In this paper, I explore both the in-text treatment of lethal teenage violence in Six of Crows and the online reader response, and I will investigate how fantasy and heist story genre conventions impact the duology’s representation of adolescent gang activity.
About the presenterKathleen Kellett
Kathleen Kellett earned her PhD in Childhood Studies from Rutgers University-Camden in 2023. Her research focuses on young adult literature, monstrosity, and youth political and literary theories.