Take a photo of a barcode or cover
queenerdloser 's review for:
Crooked Kingdom
by Leigh Bardugo
So I love this duology. I loved Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom, at the very least, lives up to the hype. Bardugo succeeds again in giving us a group of unconventional and, in Kaz's case at least, unlikeable characters who grow and change over the course of the novel. Kaz is easily Bardugo's triumph in that regard - amoral, caustic, and removed, he still remains sympathetic and I still wanted to support him.
I also liked that since we got a lot of character development in the first book with Matthias/Inej/Kaz, we shift focus a little in this book to the development of Jesper/Wylan/Nina. Especially Wylan, who didn't even get a POV in the first book - he grew and changed a lot in this book and it was nice that Bardugo kept it even in who got the spotlight.
SPOILERS!
My only disappointment with the book was Matthias' death - not that he was the one to die (out of all of them, he felt the most likely to die) but the way that it was handled? It happens very late in the book, after all of the real action is over with and he's killed by a random nobody. I get that it's supposed to show that these are everyday characters who can get killed by random acts of violence, but it felt very... off-the-wall for me. Maybe especially because we don't get to see Nina's POV again after he's dead, so it feels like they all pause for two seconds to feel bad and then move on with their lives? And I guess I'm also a little disappointed that my plus-sized girl's love life had to end with a tragedy... But it's mostly just that Matthias' death didn't really feel like it added much to the books' overall point and was mostly there to show 'hey, these kids can die too! oh no!' which isn't... a good reason for a character to die, in my opinion.
Anyway - that didn't ruin the book for me in the way that it would've if it would've been any of the other ensemble characters had died, so I still wholeheartedly recommend this series to anyone. A final note that it might help to read The Grisha Trilogy BEFORE you read this series (if you haven't read either yet, or even just if you haven't read this sequel yet) because you get spoiled for a pretty big plot twist in TGT in this book.
I also liked that since we got a lot of character development in the first book with Matthias/Inej/Kaz, we shift focus a little in this book to the development of Jesper/Wylan/Nina. Especially Wylan, who didn't even get a POV in the first book - he grew and changed a lot in this book and it was nice that Bardugo kept it even in who got the spotlight.
SPOILERS!
My only disappointment with the book was Matthias' death - not that he was the one to die (out of all of them, he felt the most likely to die) but the way that it was handled? It happens very late in the book, after all of the real action is over with and he's killed by a random nobody. I get that it's supposed to show that these are everyday characters who can get killed by random acts of violence, but it felt very... off-the-wall for me. Maybe especially because we don't get to see Nina's POV again after he's dead, so it feels like they all pause for two seconds to feel bad and then move on with their lives? And I guess I'm also a little disappointed that my plus-sized girl's love life had to end with a tragedy... But it's mostly just that Matthias' death didn't really feel like it added much to the books' overall point and was mostly there to show 'hey, these kids can die too! oh no!' which isn't... a good reason for a character to die, in my opinion.
Anyway - that didn't ruin the book for me in the way that it would've if it would've been any of the other ensemble characters had died, so I still wholeheartedly recommend this series to anyone. A final note that it might help to read The Grisha Trilogy BEFORE you read this series (if you haven't read either yet, or even just if you haven't read this sequel yet) because you get spoiled for a pretty big plot twist in TGT in this book.