Crooked Kingdom, by Leigh Bardugo

5 bittersweet ending stars!!!!

I was obsessed with Six of Crows, and I am equally obsessed with Crooked Kingdom.  What can I say about this book that won’t be spoilers for either one. Okay it is about a crew of criminals and misfits. They have banded together to achieve one goal and on the way they run into an infinite amount of problems that their leader Kaz almost always sees coming.The plot is amazing in this book, the characters will have you rooting for them from the beginning. There is so much diversity in these books the cast of characters is amazing.  They are survivors of trauma and most have some form of PTSD.  The author deals with these issues in such an amazing way. Okay onto the spoiler section, if you  haven’t read either book please don’t spoil yourself by reading below!

 

Spoilers ahead turn back!!!

The Diversity in this cast is amazing.  I can’t even tell you how different each person is from your typical book.  Every character has a different background and is a different ethnic group.  Yet they are all working together and relying on one another.  Some of them have had to get over themselves and how they felt about another person’s race to reach the ultimate goal.  Of course along the way they realize their previous feelings about the other person’s ethnicity were wrong. I have post it’s stuck all through this dang book! I will try to put some of my favorite parts down below.

 

Inej remains my favorite character.  She is so damn resilient and strong.  Obviously she has PTSD from being held captive and from being part of the menagerie.  However she tells herself she is stronger than them and constantly proves it.  While she doesn’t physically lean on anyone for support you can tell she gains support by just beginning to trust people in her crew.  Two of the biggest supporters are Nina and Kaz.  While she can’t physically touch Kaz she knows no matter what happens he will always have her back. When they get into sticky situations it’s almost like they know what the other one is thinking. Her relationship with Nina and their similar yet different backgrounds is great.  They are seriously friendship goals in the way they know exactly how to support one another.  Whether it be through food or through silence and just understanding.

“Inej almost felt sorry for her, Dunyasha really believed she was the Lantsov heir, and maybe she was. But wasn’t that what every girl dreamed? That she’d wake and find herself a princess? Or blessed with magical powers and a grand destiny? Maybe there were people who lived those lives. Maybe this girl was one of them. But what about the rest of us? What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns.  We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren’t chosen, when there was no royal blood in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.”

Kaz… ugh I love his character.  I have no idea what he is thinking at all other than the fact that he is always five steps ahead of everyone else! Like I said above his relationship with Inej is one of a kind. They both love each other but she knows he can’t touch her and she can’t touch him because of his PTSD.  However they know they can rely upon each other 100% He feels more for his crew than anyone would suspect. They all think he’s a cruel calculating bastard.  Don’t get me wrong he is, but he also trusts his crew completely. That scene in the book where he helps Inej change her bandages and he gets closer and closer to her and lightly kisses her neck was probably the best scene I have read in a long time.

““Wait,” he said. The burn of his voice was rougher than usual. “Is my tie straight?”

Inej laughed, her hood falling back from her hair.

“That’s the laugh,” he murmured but she was already setting of down the quay, her feet barely touching the ground. “

Nina is such an amazing character especially in this book. Her addiction in the first book and the results of having a drug addiction in the second book were so well planned. It’s not like the author was like oh she was addicted and now she’s not so la de dah… Nope Nina still craves that drug every time she tries to use her power. However it seems she has a gained a new power and although it takes a bit of getting used to I love that when she figures it out she embraces it instead of being repulsed by it.

Matthias would of course be next because he is always connected to Nina. I loved how we received a little more background on each of the characters. Matthias’s wolf story made me love him even more! The fact that he took the damaged wolf, the one no one wanted says a lot about his character. He is always up for a challenge and I love how his outlook on everyone in the crew has changed. All of the people he loathed in the beginning are now the people he relies on to save his life. He had such a nice slow progression as a character and then boom, he dies for no reason at all. Dang you Leigh!!!

Jesper… I fell so hard for him in this book. That scene with him and Wylan who’s not Wylan and the piano. I seriously lost it while reading that part! He also evolves into such a stronger character in this book. He is trying to do right by Kaz because he let him down in the first book.  Jesper has tried hard all his life to hide who he truly is.  I really enjoyed the part near the end when he embraces his Grisha abilities. His slow burn romance with Wylan may be one of my favorite romances of the year. The fact that you get so much more of his background including his mom and what happened to her.  It really makes you understand why he is the way he is now.

Wylan would be my ideal boyfriend for anyone in any book! He is so unbelievably sweet, loyal, and smart. He doubts himself a lot throughout this series, but he knows where his loyalties lay. Wylan in the second book has finally started to earn everyone’s respect for how smart he is.  His romance with Jesper and easy blushing are so adorable. The fact that he is so quiet and rarely speaks up unless spoken to makes all of the things he does say more valuable.  Again the piano scene with Jesper I feel like is the turning point of their relationship. When Wylan finds out the truth about his mom I almost broke for him. I couldn’t believe all the paintings she made about him.

While Kuwei is not a technical part of the crew he is kind of adopted into the crew after they “save” him. He really doesn’t talk and pretends he doesn’t understand the people around him.  They do not realize how smart he actually is! I love that he comes up with the idea to get away so he can make an antidote to the original drug. I feel like he might almost get his own spin off series.

Again I will say this may be one of my favorite  duologies!! I adore how every little thing makes up one big web of plans for Kaz. I ‘m not sure how Leigh plans these out?  Does she have a whole wall at home of post it notes with string connecting each plot point from book to book?  Either way it worked really well. I did not read her previous grisha stories but I might go back and read them now just to see how they hold up to my little family of crows 😉

Goodreads link here.

Hardcover, 546 pages

Published September 27th 2016 by Henry Holt and Co.

Original Title

Crooked Kingdom

ISBN 1627792139 (ISBN13: 9781627792134)

Edition Language English

 

Kaz Brekker and his crew have just pulled off a heist so daring even they didn’t think they’d survive. But instead of divvying up a fat reward, they’re right back to fighting for their lives. Double-crossed and badly weakened, the crew is low on resources, allies, and hope. As powerful forces from around the world descend on Ketterdam to root out the secrets of the dangerous drug known as jurda parem, old rivals and new enemies emerge to challenge Kaz’s cunning and test the team’s fragile loyalties. A war will be waged on the city’s dark and twisting streets―a battle for revenge and redemption that will decide the fate of the Grisha world