Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2) (Grishaverse, #5)

by Leigh Bardugo

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With this I can easily say that I have read the entirety of the Grisha verse books that are released so far and I can safely say that out of all of them, Crooked Kingdom is by far her best work.

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When I was thinking of starting this verse, I was torn between beginning here or the original trilogy and I think beginning with the original trilogy was by far the best choice to make (thank you to all who advised me to do so), because if I went from here to there, it might have been a worse experience than the other way around. I’m not going to compare between the series, but you can easily see how much growth Leigh Bardugo had as a writer by following the release dates of her works. Crooked Kingdom follows our 6 crew mates once again, and although the book is 50% planning at the very least, I’ll be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it. I like journeys, they’re fun and a great source of knowledge about the world I’m in, but planning can be a pretty nice substitute if the previous option is not available.

Crooked Kingdom shows the different aspects of their world yet again and starts adding the different cultures of the kingdoms or the countries in small instances, by now, I’m getting less of a vague grasp on what each nation is about, but if you really ask me a deep question about each and every one of them, I feel like I can answer about Ketterdem, about Ravka and about Fjerda, but I’m not so sure about the others so far. With the way Leigh Bardugo is world building her Grisha verse, I’m noticing that she can make a pretty good job of it, IF you’re actually in that location for her to expand. But if you’re not visiting said area, then it’s difficult for her to make the nations she’s talking about through the characters dialogues stick in my mind, in the same effect as when we’re visiting that is. Is that a bad thing? Sometimes, but she’s not done yet so it can still be fixed.

Plot wise, it’s basically a scam and a heist once again. I really enjoyed that this part of the series took so much planning and time to do, just for the sake of how much it developed her characters or better yet, how many chances it took to focus on the characters’ themselves. Their insecurities, their strengths, their abilities, their importance and their hopes and dreams in another way as well. I don’t believe that it’s easy to have 6 main characters in your story, but I do know that Leigh Bardugo did a magnificent job of making each and every one of them a strong voice in their own right and more importantly, memorable. Because of the time she spent on her characters, it made the plot more exciting since now I can start expecting that Nina is going to do some awesome Grisha stuff (especially after the first book), Kaz is going to be as ruthless as ever and Jasper is going to be showing me some nice sharpshooting and so on.

Even when it came to the romance in the book, there are multiple relationships and thankfully none of them were shoved in my face all that much that it gives the impression the author is afraid I’ll forget if it’s not mentioned every few chapters. A natural progression when the time is right for it and it’s pretty nice to see that the couples do have some sort of a more noticeable chemistry and better yet, they make each other better, and not the other destructive way around.

I care about having compelling characters in any book I read because it helps me care for the plot line, even if it’s not the entire cast, then at least a few of them. There is nothing more boring then trying to get into a story that has characters I couldn’t care less about, just awful. For spoiler-y reasons I can’t really start discussing what each of them did here, but I can say that if we don’t proceed more than this, then I’m pretty satisfied with how it ended. A third book is in the works, if I recall correctly, so here’s to hoping I’ll be going from good to better. Even better yet when she brings in familiar faces that I absolutely adored in the Grisha trilogy who I’ll be seeing again in her upcoming duology!

Since I listened to the audiobook for this one, I’m still very happy to have made that decision because the narrators did a pretty good job of channeling the apparent personalities of each character and trying to make the experience as enjoyable as possible. That being said, the voice actor for Wylan is the one I have a bit of a criticism against, whenever he’s reading through Kaz’s lines in Wylan’s chapters, he’ll be trying to do this raspy voice that only comes out as incredibly annoying for me to listen to. The others don’t do it on the same level he does, so I’m not sure what the deal is, but other than that, it was a pretty good experience and hopefully we’ll be getting better things soon!

Final rating: 4.5/5