Crooked Kingdom

I needed to wait a little while after reading this to write a review because I was so emotional.Rating Roller Coaster:While Reading: ★★★★★ (For 85% most of this)After Finishing: ✰✰ (I was/am upset)After Calming Down: ★★★★*** Non-Spoilery Section of the review. ****This was one of my most anticipated books this year. That is always a blessing and a curse because it leaves a really high bar to live up to. That said this book delivered in a lot of ways. All of the characters were broken in their own ways and all of them overcame some portion of that in this book. It was fun to root for them overcoming their demons.Where Six of Crows was a heist Crooked Kingdom was the long con full of intrigue, betrayals and surprises.Jesper tapped his fingers restlessly on his thighs. “Has anyone noticed this whole city is looking for us, mad at us, or wants to kill us?”“So?” said Kaz.“Well, usually it’s just half the city.”There are plots and plots within plots as Kaz doesn’t like to put all of his eggs into one basket. There were the things that you loved from the first book. The humor of the dialogue, the small inklings of romance and the backstories that made you feel even more connected to the characters.In addition to that I was happy to see a few characters from the Grisha series. No worries if you haven’t read that everything will still make sense but if you have read it like me I think it was just fun to see what they were up to now and get a hint of the happenings in Ravka. I for one was totally happy to see my favorite character Nicoli aka The Snarkling thrown into the mix.The con was fantastic and I really loved how it played out. I was genuinely surprised by quite a few things throughout and Bardugo really kept me on my toes.So why the conflicted rollercoaster rating…well for that you will have to see the rant below. But I will say that the story overall was really well planned and executed. I was sad and book-hangovery when it was done since I was not ready to say goodbye.****Totally Spoilerific Section I will not be tagging anything extra proceed at your own risk****Spoilers in54321....Gah….she had me and I was loving it all and then the ‘thing’ happened and I was inconsolable and pissed and couldn’t even think of writing a review as I would have been really mean. But I’ll get back to that.One reason I loved Six of Crows so much was because of the characters. They were all awesome and the little band of misfits really made this great little makeshift family.Kaz was Kaz. He is brutal and broken and that isn’t something that was going to be fixed in a single book. Even though I thought that he was maybe a little nicer in this one since we didn’t see him cut someone’s eye out he still was brutal when it was necessary.“I’ll tell you a secret, Hanna. The really bad monsters never look like monsters.”Now the little girl’s lip trembled. “Did you come to eat me? Da says monsters eat children who don’t go to bed when they’re told.”“They do. But I won’t. Not tonight. If you do two things for me.” His voice was calm, almost hypnotic. It had the coarse rasp of an over- rosined bow. “First, you must crawl into bed. And second, you must never tell anyone you’ve seen us, especially your da.” He leaned forward and gave Hanna’s braid a playful tug. “Because if you do, I’ll slit your mother’s throat and then your father’s, and then I’ll cut out the hearts of all these sweet slobbering hounds. I shall save Duke Silverhaunch for last so that you will know it’s all your fault.”Inej might be the wraith and a strong confident girl with a plan for her future but she was still a girl who liked a boy but had her own intimacy issues since she was once held as a sex slave at a pleasure house and that has definitely left a mark on her. But Kaz and Inej have trust and so maybe just maybe they will find a way to each other.. “I would come for you,” he said, and when he saw the wary look she shot him, he said it again. “I would come for you. And if I couldn’t walk, I’d crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were, we’d fight our way out together— knives drawn, pistols blazing.I like that Inej knows exactly who Kaz is and what he is capable of and accepts him. She isn’t trying to make him a better and kinder person. Because that isn’t who Dirty Hands is and if he cares about you he will rip the world apart for you. I was really glad the entire book wasn’t focused on getting her back, that was just step one of Kaz’s epic plan of revenge.Wylan gets way more page time in this and we get more and more of an insight into his past. Let’s just say that his father was a complete ass and that carries through the entire story but he was an even bigger one than I had initially expected. Still he has a few brilliant ideas and those go a long way to solidify his place in the crew.Jesper the guy that always feels just a little more alive in a gun fight than anywhere else probably grew up the most in this. He is trying desperately to get back into Kaz’s good graces after his mistakes of the prior book. But is his recklessness all his fault or just a symptom of trying to hide who he is??? It was an interesting theory since he is a weak Greisha. He and Wylan get a little one on one time together and I could see how they would complement each other well. Jesper and Wylan get quite a bit more page time in the book and while I liked there additions to the story I was really more interested in the other characters.❈❈❈❈Nina and Mattias❈❈❈❈I love them, I ship them I will not accept what happened to them. Look this is the part of the book that I was enjoying the most. Every conversation that they had I have highlighted the crap out of. They are adorable together, perfect for each other. I loved them together so much.Nina is dealing with the after effects of Parem the drug that gave her enormous power to save her friends in their escape from the Ice Palace. The withdrawals are much like that from a drug addiction and they are taking a toll on her. I thought that Bardugo did a great job at capturing how something of this nature can make you say or do things that you normally wouldn’t.He’d groaned slightly. “The others—”“Everyone is asleep.”Then he’d seized her hands. “Stop.”“Matthias—”“I don’t have it.”She yanked herself free, shame crawling over her skin like fire over a forest floor.“Then who does?” she hissed.“Kaz.”She stilled.“Are you going to creep into his bed?”Nina released a huff of disbelief. “He’d slit my throat.”It was just heart-wrenching to watch Nina’s struggle and to feel the helplessness that Mattais felt because there really wasn’t much he could do for her accept to be patient.But then Nina finds out that maybe she has been altered a little by the drug and I really liked the direction that took in the story. I liked having the fun and flirty Nina back and the way she played with Mattias.“The first day you showed up at my house for this proper courtship, I would have cornered you in the pantry,” she said. “But please, tell me more about Fjerdan girls.”“They speak quietly. They don’t engage in flirtations with every single man they meet.”“I flirt with the women too.”“I think you’d flirt with a date palm if it would pay you any attention.”“If I flirted with a plant, you can bet it would stand up and take notice. Are you jealous?”“All the time.”Gah….Mattias feels everything so deeply. He is almost a zealot in his love for Nina and I couldn’t get enough of his words.“Meeting you was a disaster.”She raised a brow. “Thank you.”Djel, he was terrible at this. He stumbled on, trying to make her understand. “But I am grateful every day for that disaster. I needed a cataclysm to shake me from the life I knew. You were an earthquake, a landslide.”“I,” she said, planting a hand on her hip, “am a delicate flower.”“You aren’t a flower, you’re every blossom in the wood blooming at once. You are a tidal wave. You’re a stampede. You are overwhelming.”…“I… There is no one I want more; there is nothing I want more than to be overwhelmed by you.”So I was loving every minute with them and the con is almost done and then…THEN…Mattias is killed. I’m not okay with it….I’m actually still completely heartbroken by it and refuse to accept that is how Nina and Mattias end.You know when you go into a book and you are pretty sure that not all the characters are going to make it out and you’ve thought about the ones that you’d totally be okay with dying? Or is it just me that does that? So going into this I thought maybe Jesper would do something brave and stupid to get himself killed, or Wyland would kill his father and die doing it to save his friends. I even had a possible scenario in my head where Kaz died to protect Inej the only person he truly cares for. But in all of those scenarios I ran in my head I never could accept that Nina or Mattias would die. BECAUSE I LOVED THEM THE MOST. Mattias is pretty much killed by the boy he was at 14 after he had accepted Nina and Griesha and everything that went with it. It was just awful to read and my heart was left squished and bleeding too.If just seemed so pointless. I was waiting for Nina’s new found connection with death to take affect and for her to be able to pull his spirit back somehow but then it never came. Nina was supposed to work with Mattias to free his people. Sure she gave her word that she would go to Fjerda and help his people but I don’t like that story without Mattias. I actually hate the thought of reading that story without Mattias so I’ve made my own beginning to said story….Sorry LBSo during one of Mattias’s back flashes to his past we learned about his Wolf and how he got him and what happed to the wolf after Mattias was presumed dead. I was totally waiting for the wolf to show up in the story after that but it never happened.Still so I can end feeling good about the entirety of this book and be able to move on my thought for the new beginning to Nina’s story goes along with returning Mattais to the ice of Fjerda in the way she knows to preserve the body. Along the way she is befriended by the wolf that was once Mattias’s because the wolf finds her struggling to get Mattias to the land he wanted to be in for his resting place. Djel is so moved by the sacrifice that Mattias made and the promise that he solicited from Nina that he make a bargain with them. Djel with the help of Nina’s power will shift Mattias’s soul into the wolf who has also agreed to said ‘bargain’. He will be Mattias by day and the wolf by night. They must go on a quest for something Djel needs and if they can complete this impossible quest he will return Mattias for good. And YAY he is back. Now I just need LB to create the beautiful story that includes Mattias in it.I think it might be possible since it seems the Ice Court was made by Grisha power and Mattias made this observation.He had. An uncomfortable thought. Through Jesper and Kuwei, he had wielded Grisha power. And yet, Matthias did not feel tainted or somehow marked by it. He remembered what Nina had said about the construction of the Ice Court, that it must be the work of Grisha and not the work of Djel. What if both things were true? What if Djel worked through these people? Unnatural. The word had come so easily to him, a way to dismiss what he did not understand, to make Nina and her kind less than human. But what if behind the righteousness that drove the drüskelle, there was something less clean or justified? What if it wasn’t even fear or anger but simply envy? What did it mean to aspire to serve Djel, only to see his power in the gifts of another, to know you could never possess those gifts yourself?Also there was this….I have been made to protect you. His duty to his god, his duty to Nina. Maybe they were the same thing. What if Djel’s hand had raised the waters the night of the wrathful storm that wrecked the drüskelle ship and bound Matthias and Nina together?Yes, what if….Then wouldn’t Djel want to help them in order to save his people. *crosses fingers*I NEED a story where Nina finds her way back to Mattias.Overall:This was an entertaining and exciting story. I was personally invested in most of the characters…maybe even a little too much. I liked were the story ended for most and I have heard an unconfirmed rumor that LB is writing a Nina book. So if you read my spoiler you know what I’m hoping for. But now that I’ve had time to process and calm the writing was wonderful, the dialogue great and the characters interesting and complex.

Rating: 5 Stars I previously reviewed Six of Crows and I LOVED it! I was so devastated by the ending. Inej was taken and I just couldn’t believe that ending after everything they went through being beat down at the very end. Now our crew is beat down, separated, and tired but they are not out for the count. They have to regroup and come up with more plans. Their lives are more dangerous than ever and old allies could just as easily be enemies these days. When you go up against the more powerful in Ketterdam you need to have more than luck to save you. I didn’t listen to the first book I read it through but having listened to this one I really enjoyed the narration and how each character had a different narrator. As we see the story from different POVs hearing a different person with a different accent and style was really rather thrilling. I now picture certain accents with the characters that I didn’t before but now seem so natural. The multiple POVs is something I loved because it gave us all the information we needed but seeing things from different views you see how everyone can hear/see the same things but take away different things from it. All of their prospective are important and play off one another. They each have something to bring to the table, the same thing that made them special in the first book we just know and love them more. Each of our characters has a special place in my heart. Kaz and his cold and clinical way of looking at things in terms of what they do for him or how they can be used in the future. Inej and her ability to blend into any shadow and disappear yet despite her life she still has a kindness and good heart to her. Nina who is far from her home but will risk her own life for those she loves. Mathis and his turbulent inner battle between what he was raised to believe and what he has seen and felt to be true. Jesper in his flawed and self-destructive nature full of charm and good intensions. And Wylan the son who has always felt less than and flawed for his inability but has found a home and people who see his abilities rather than flaws. “Crows remember human faces. They remember the people who feed them, who are kind to them. And the people who wrong them too. They don’t forget. They tell each other who to look after and who to watch out for.” All of my crows were in my heart and I couldn’t wait for them to save Inej because they had to. I had no other option in my head. Well that is the start of the plan, save Inej and get revenge on Van Eck. He has no only betrayed them and tried to have them killed after they upheld their side of the plan but more he did that and took one of theirs and when you have so many enemies your reputation is important in helping fend off the wolves. I loved all the different plots and schemes from the first page to get Inej and the revenge they deserve. To get what is owed and set things right because no monster like Van Eck can be left standing. There is a difference between being a criminal and being a criminal with no value behind your word. Some things are sacred. Things don’t go as planned. Oh so many beautifully crafted plans and of course wrenches thrown into the mix. I am struggling so hard to review this book without spoiling things because there is so much happening. So many little subplots that take place and all the little details that are just amazing. Like seeing characters from the original Grisha series come into play and go toe to toe with Kaz and crew. One of the best moments. Inej, some of her chapters just broke my heart. Her captivity, the flashes back to when she was forced to work in the menagerie before Kaz saved her. So powerful. Bardugo has really captured so much emotion within the story. Things are in chaos all around them but still even between the plotting, scheming, running, and fighting they were able to have such deep moments between one another. They care for one another deeply even if they fight. Even if they don’t always show it. A few lines in particular that just hit me in all the feels…. “I would come for you. And if I couldn’t walk, I’d crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were we’d fight our way out together—knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that’s what we do. We never stop fighting.” I was rooting for my characters and rooting for others to get what was coming to them because they are just so dang vile. Seriously. Nina is struggling with her addiction and how it has changed her and her power. While Mathis sees just how wrong he was and his hope to try and help others see like he did. Oh but his time with Nina being there for her through it all…I adore him. Kaz and Inej are both so different but they are so good together and understanding one another in a way that no one else can. Both damaged. Both strong and weak. Both with baggage. I love this and shipped them so hard! And of course we had a bit of a spark between the wild card Jesper and our shy and quite Wylan which is adorable how they come to count on one another and support one another in times of need. Each of them have their own journeys to work through and I enjoyed being there as they went through them. They knew the odds for the life they chose to lead. No mourners, no funerals. Another way of saying good luck. But it was something more. A dark wink to the fact that there would be no expensive burials for people like them, no marble markers to remember their names, no wreaths of myrtle and rose. The story and pacing of this book was so well done for me. With the larger overall story but full of side stories and little inner stories that just made a more developed adventure. The pacing was on point and it felt like you were there with them rushed and escaping death one moment then having a few moments to regroup. It never let you fully off the edge of your seat but kept you leaning there ready to go. My poor heart was a mess keeping up with it. This book was everything. One of my favorite series by far. I loved everything. Even the end that had me sobbing. Okay several parts of the book had me choking back tears for several different reasons. My heart raced through it all and even though I took my time reading it fearing the end and while I wish I had more and parts made me sad I love it. It is such a fitting end (minus one part I don’t think I’ll ever get over) for this story and this crew. It started with one job and ended with so much more. I love this book and I would highly recommend this series to anyone and everyone.

I love the book, but page 431 is missing; they've printed an extra 'part 6' title page where it should be - literally mid-sentence. Returning for a replacement, and if the next copy is okay I'll come back and up it to five stars, but I feel like I can't give a collector's edition five stars if it's faulty (and I'm wondering how many people haven't spotted the fault because they've already read the non-collector's editions and bought this as an extra).Other than that the edition is beautiful.EDIT: Yeah, the second copy sent had the same misprint. Be sure to check your copy.

After my reread of Six of Crows I just had to read Crooked Kingdom and even though I knew what happens I was still not ready for that ending. This duology is one of my all time favourite books!It’s no secret that I adore everything that Leigh Bardugo writes and of course this book did not disappoint. This was a reread via audiobook and I highly recommend listening as it’s a full cast and amazing!This book starts where Six of Crows ends and it’s set entirely in Ketterdam unlike Six of Crows where they travel to Fjerda and back. So this story is a little different but no less enthralling and action packed. As usual the characters are absolutely wonderful and I love seeing their character development. I also loved seeing cameos by some of my favourite characters from the Grisha trilogy!Once again I was completely enthralled by the story and the characters. The banter between the characters is my favourite thing ever! They always seem so much older because of what they’ve been through but then they squabble and fight and sass each other just like your regular teen and it would just remind you how young they really are.The development of my ships was another thing I absolutely loved! The angst and the slow burn between them and how each couple is so different from the others and each go through their own journey and together as a couple and then on another growth in their gang together. Leigh had their character developments in all different areas of their life and did it so well.My favourite ship is of course Kaz and Inej. The slow burn between them and their own hardships and barriers they’ve built that makes it hard for them to even admit their feelings for each other. It just killed me! But I really love how Leigh handles Kaz’s PTSD. He cannot touch people and I loved that he wasn’t “magically cured” because he wanted to be with Inej. He struggled with it, it prevented him from being able to be close to Inej and it felt so much more real.This story is quite different from Six of Crows as it isn’t just one quest that they go on throughout the book. They have to make multiple plans and deal with lots of different groups of people. It was absolutely amazing to see how their plans came together. This book will take you on a wild ride!The ending of this book is so satisfying in so many ways but will also break your heart and drag it through the mud and run it over with a truck. I first read this book in 2016 and I have never gotten over a particular thing that happens at the end. They had so much potential and it was ripped away from them. BRB going to go cry.Anyways I highly recommend you go read this duology and all the Grishaverse books because they are amazing! I absolutely love all the grisha books but this duology will forever be my favourite!

Ok, I’ve just finished the duology and wow. Since I wasn’t coherent when I finished Six of Crows, and have now read Crooked Kingdom straight after it and can no longer really pick them apart, this is gonna be a review of the duology as a whole, but they’re basically one story anyway and I don’t comment on any specific plot points or anything so whatever.First of all, I have to comment on the author’s sheer skill with words. The writing itself is just so beautiful and gloriously visual. Bardugo crafts her sentences in a way that’s so smooth and sweet I could drink them down in one and ask for another glass. There are so many powerful, quotable lines and there were more than a few moments where I found myself thinking ‘I need all the fanart of this right now’.The pacing is brilliant as well - I’ve hardly been reading lately and I’ve been really restless and finding it hard to focus on books, yet this had me not wanting to put it down.One of my comments about the Shadow and Bone trilogy was that I loved the hints of darkness in it and wanted it to be even more ruthless, and I feel like Bardugo has well and truly achieved that. The tone is perfect, with it being properly gritty, yet still incredibly fun, with lighter moments and some excellent humour to cut through the murderiness.On top of the fact that she’s such a beautiful writer, the plot consistently surprised me and had me completely hooked. I loved how Bardugo would reveal nuggets of information at a time, just enough to keep you interested but never enough to work things out. And with the way she writes the characters, it’s often as if you’re finding out the plan along with them, with the only person knowing everything and holding all the cards being Kaz. I was constantly impressed by how clever he is and how everything is so meticulously planned in a way that feels both incredibly farfetched but also completely believable.Part of what kept me so invested was that it always feels genuinely perilous. The gang keep finding themselves in scrapes that I think there’s no possible way out of, and I’m absolutely hooked and worried about them all, with no idea how it’s going to play out. And usually when characters repeatedly escape situations like that, it starts to lose its edge a bit and I just get bored with it, but this was always done so imaginatively and cleverly that it stayed interesting.As much as I loved the scheming, peril, action, and darkness, I was so glad to see that even amongst all that, attention was still consistently given to the character development for each of the gang members, their relationships with one another, and revealing more of their backstories. It’s one of the most compelling plots I’ve read in a long time, but even that means nothing if the characters aren’t up to scratch, so building in that time to make me care about them made a huge difference.I felt something for every single member of the crew, but I don’t think I’ve ever read a character like Kaz. He is absolutely despicable, and I don’t like him in the slightest, but I... kind of love him? I respect him totally and I was hanging on his every action because he’s such a compelling character. I feel like if I was living in the Barrel I would follow him without hesitation and gladly put my life on the line to prove myself to him, all while knowing the monster he is and being more than a little disgusted and terrified of him. It’s a very complicated feeling.Finally, and kind of on a separate note, I’d just like a round of applause for Bardugo’s approach to diversity please. Different ethnicity? Couldn’t care less. Not heterosexual? Whatever bro. Differently abled? Who gives? Even with this being a fantasy world and obviously very different to real life experiences, there is so much brilliant representation in there. But the best thing about that is that it doesn’t shout about it in any way; all the characters are just judged on what they can do rather than what they are, and the respect and equality demonstrated feels completely natural. It just felt so positive and like an excellent example to other books.I now definitely understand why this is one of my best friend’s favourite duologies, and I’m kicking myself that it took me this long to read it. I think this is one that will stay with me for a long time and kind of resets the bar for all books for me a little bit.

No mournersNo funeralsAfter finishing Crooked Kingdom this morning I realised 2 things:1. My own headcanon is the only thing that's keeping me going today.2. I wish I read this sooner - so I would have recovered by now!After finishing Six of Crows a few weeks back - my plan was to jump right in to Crooked Kingdom. I knew I would love it, so I held off reading it in a bid to savour it.It certainly lived up to my expectations (though SoC is my fave).There were times when I thought the plot was too slow and nothing was really happening. But - overall I think that help build the tension for the climax at the end. I certainly wished I could flip back a few pages and stay in the safety of the previous chapters, before Leigh Bardugo ripped my heart out and squeezed every last bit of hope out of it.I laughed out loud at Jesper's and Nina's banter with the rest of the gang. It was needed in an other wise fairly bleak to and fro between everyone.When you're fed crumbs of hope on one page and then given a slap in the face back to reality on another - my emotions were frayed for the second half of this book.As most of you know - I love a good romance. And, although I couldn't say that the main 'romance' in this is even that - the bitter sweet affection that could be something more in time is the only hope I have. I'm filling in the gaps myself.Through all the scheming, distrust and harsh reality of life in the barrel - whether Kaz would ever admit it or not - he is the reason that all of them came together and he was used as a buffer as they all bonded. He's the reason for their friendships/relationships and I bet that just makes him feel all warm and fuzzy lol.I truly hope that one day we get another story from the Barrel because I'm not ready for this to be the ending.

This was such an incredible sequel to such a wonderful first book, filled with drama and tears and brilliant writing.I already adored all of the crows but this book really cemented them in my heart as my absolute favourite group of criminals. Inej and Kaz are wonderful, Nina and Matthias are wonderful as are Wylan and Jesper, all of their relationships were so well written and so adorable but also heartbreaking at the same time. I loved how they all developed over the course of the book and while staying true to who they were changed in such amazing and wonderful ways.The plot was so dramatic this time, it was full of excitement and trauma and just absolutely amazing. The last 100 paged just destroyed me, they were so full of action and I adored how it all ended becasue it was so sweet and heartbreaking and everything I expected from this book, to be honest. And that final chapter just blew me away and I felt like it was the perfect ending to an incredible book.The writing was wonderful and I cannot wait to see what else Leigh Bardugo has in store, not only in the Grishaverse but in her other books too.