Reviews with content warning for Blood - Crooked Kingdom

I had an awful reading slump whilst reading this book and I feel like that may have affected my rating for this book (Even though I am giving it 5 stars, it is more of a just about 4.5 stars because of the reading slump and the reading slump only type of situation) but even with that I still majorly enjoyed this and my reading experience cemented the Grishaverse series and particularly the Six of Crows duology as some of my favourite series of books. If I had been more consistent with reading I would have liked Crooked Kingdom even more than I already do.

I absolutely love the Crows and their dynamics with one another. It expanded on them even more from Six of Crows, particularly with the relationships of Kaz and Inej, Jesper and Wylan, Jesper and Kaz, Nina and Inej etc. It was so fun seeing all of the characters continue to flourish and to expand upon their already established relationships as well as build new ones and it was one of the main things that kept me coming back even with my reading slump in full force. I liked the endings we got for our Crows as they felt both satisfying and open-ended enough to allow for a sequel or for them to show up in other stories like Nina in the King of Scars duology.

The plot, while I don't think I loved it as much as the Ice Court heist, was still very interesting and was not what I expected going off of the ending of Six of Crows and where this book started off as the plot twists felt cleverly planned out and implemented without feeling like they were done to simply progress the story lazily. The last part of the book - Part 6: Action & Echo - was extremely interesting and one of my favourite parts of the boom because the chaos flowed very nicely to make it an unpredictable, fun, and memorable reading experience. Matthias' death was unexpected and while it wasn't extremely emotional for me as Matthias is one of my lesser favourite Crows (though I do still really like him as a character), it was still effectively done and I'm interested in seeing how this will affect Nina's story going into King of Scars.

Overall, I really liked this book and while I do feel like reading this through a reading slump affected my opinion on the book, though to no fault of the book, I think it was very successful and met my expectations on how to end this duology yet left it in an interesting place to open up into another book to make it a trilogy, which I would not be totally against. I'm most likely going to continue on with my Grishaverse binge and read Nikolai's duology with Zoya and Nina, King of Scars, next as well as hopefully soon rewatch season 1 of Shadow and Bone as well as finally watch season 2 for the first time as I've been waiting until I finished this book as I have been unsure whether or not they included elements of this and Six of Crows into season 2 or not.

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xaaamyy's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

MATTHIAS :(((((

Only reason it's not 5 stars is cause I normally despise long book hahaaa

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anitchka's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense medium-paced

4.0

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jackacj's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

A great continuation of Six of Crows. The characters were still amazing, I enjoyed the prose - this time, the plot also had a bigger focus. I loved the book - but I have two and a half problems with it that prevent me from 5/5. Major spoilers ahead.

The final part of the book, "Action and Echo", felt very rushed to me. I knew Matthias was going to die and it still felt sudden, and not in a good way, but in an extremely abrupt way. We were shown the emotional consequences of this on the crows, but I still felt the book moved on too quickly, and set the death up even quicker. Ninna completely disappears a bit after Matthias's.
The second problem is the resolution to Wylan's plotline - I actually loved how it ended up, but I hate we were only told he got back his mother and she is starting to become herself again but it's going to be a long process. Why couldn't we have had another POV chapter of Wlan's? Can you imagine how powerful that would be? Marya Henriks overall feels like a plot device, not a character, which is a pity - alas, instead of expanding on her character and writing a beautiful emotional reunion we had a chapter of Wylan taking the Van Eck mansion. The last problem is much smaller - Inej. While I love Kanej was resolved and wouldn't have it any other way, we should have seen Inej talk to her parents. The whole book builds up to I nej telling her parents what she's done - if she could justify it somehow, if what she did right. The second conflict was resolved in her fight with Dunyasha, the second? Never, apparently.

Even so, I love the book.

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