A review by philatcs
Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo
5.0
what an epic conclusion to an incredible duology. six of crows and crooked kingdom have now become one of my favourite series’ of all time.
leigh bardugo has managed to create a heist with in depth and developed dimensional characters while also maintaining humour, romance AND action sequences. and it’s all written so well.
kaz brekker. i can’t go into detail enough about how much i love this character. kaz rietveld. the ruthless and terrifying criminal who would do anything to seek vengeance and avenge those he loves. i loved seeing him come to his breaking point in this book, and just as you think he’s finally going to fall apart - his fight with jesper and when he turned himself in - he only came out stronger. i love how he’s vulnerable around inej and how he started to become more open with his gloveless hands.
speaking of inej and kaz - leigh bardugo managed to create an incredible romance and relationship between these characters without even a kiss. all that tension and all those feelings and their ending was perfect. i couldn’t have thought of a better ending. kaz buying inej a ship and them going to sail together... AND kaz following inej after reuniting her with her parents at long last. i genuinely don’t think i could love their romance more.
inej ghafa. I FUCKING LOVE YOU! she is the baddest bitch and the ending cemented that for me. that last chapter where she promised to cut out pekka rollins’ heart cut by cut... i love her so much. i loved learning more about inej’s past and her acrobat flashbacks while fighting with danyusha. i loved how we saw how she realised she was stronger than she thought, and that she can be both a hero AND a violent badass criminal. her meeting up with parents and yelling mama and papa in the ending actually warmed my heart so much. she’s my baby!
nina zenik my love. nina went through so fucking much this book. the withdrawal of jurda parem and losing matthias. i am definitely going to read king of scars if it means i get to see her again. i feel like i didn’t get enough of her in this book compared to the last one but i enjoyed seeing this other side to her around the other grishas and how she wants to maybe go back to the army and how much power she can have over other people - and this strange new ability of raising the dead? i really loved nina’s character and a lot of the time i identified with her.
i’m so broken hearted about matthias for her sake but also mine because he came to be one of my favourites in this book.
jesper the fucking legend!!! jesper along with kaz and inej are probably my favourite characters in this duology. he’s a badass sharpshooter and i love his humour and his wit, but also his relationship with the crew, and wylan and his father. i loved seeing jesper’s relationship with his father and how much of a high regard he had for him. i also liked learning about his past with his grisha mother and how close they all were. jesper was consistently either hilarious or emotional and i loved all the chapters in his POV. he is written so well and he’s definitely a character i’ll remember.
then there’s wylan van eck. i definitely loved wylan a lot more in this book. getting to see him through jesper and inej’s eyes made me like him more than just reading his POV. his relationship with jesper and budding romance also made me like him more - we saw his humour and i liked seeing more of him and his mother, and how jesper went with them... i have this weird feeling with wylan which faded mostly when i realised him “betraying” the crew was actually a setup, but he was still possibly my least favourite of the crew.
the villains were also very well written in this book, as were all of the face offs. pekka rollins, jan van eck and danyasha were all written with weaknesses which were layered underneath and although it didn’t happen as much as in the ice court heist, i still went through the emotional turbulence of not knowing how they were going to get out of certain situations - and unfortunately matthias didn’t... still sad about this, because i thought that he’d survive.
i thought this would’ve been a four star read but the last 1/4 was so epic and emotional that i had to bump it up to a 4.5/5 out of 5.
leigh bardugo has managed to create a heist with in depth and developed dimensional characters while also maintaining humour, romance AND action sequences. and it’s all written so well.
kaz brekker. i can’t go into detail enough about how much i love this character. kaz rietveld. the ruthless and terrifying criminal who would do anything to seek vengeance and avenge those he loves. i loved seeing him come to his breaking point in this book, and just as you think he’s finally going to fall apart - his fight with jesper and when he turned himself in - he only came out stronger. i love how he’s vulnerable around inej and how he started to become more open with his gloveless hands.
speaking of inej and kaz - leigh bardugo managed to create an incredible romance and relationship between these characters without even a kiss. all that tension and all those feelings and their ending was perfect. i couldn’t have thought of a better ending. kaz buying inej a ship and them going to sail together... AND kaz following inej after reuniting her with her parents at long last. i genuinely don’t think i could love their romance more.
inej ghafa. I FUCKING LOVE YOU! she is the baddest bitch and the ending cemented that for me. that last chapter where she promised to cut out pekka rollins’ heart cut by cut... i love her so much. i loved learning more about inej’s past and her acrobat flashbacks while fighting with danyusha. i loved how we saw how she realised she was stronger than she thought, and that she can be both a hero AND a violent badass criminal. her meeting up with parents and yelling mama and papa in the ending actually warmed my heart so much. she’s my baby!
nina zenik my love. nina went through so fucking much this book. the withdrawal of jurda parem and losing matthias. i am definitely going to read king of scars if it means i get to see her again. i feel like i didn’t get enough of her in this book compared to the last one but i enjoyed seeing this other side to her around the other grishas and how she wants to maybe go back to the army and how much power she can have over other people - and this strange new ability of raising the dead? i really loved nina’s character and a lot of the time i identified with her.
i’m so broken hearted about matthias for her sake but also mine because he came to be one of my favourites in this book.
jesper the fucking legend!!! jesper along with kaz and inej are probably my favourite characters in this duology. he’s a badass sharpshooter and i love his humour and his wit, but also his relationship with the crew, and wylan and his father. i loved seeing jesper’s relationship with his father and how much of a high regard he had for him. i also liked learning about his past with his grisha mother and how close they all were. jesper was consistently either hilarious or emotional and i loved all the chapters in his POV. he is written so well and he’s definitely a character i’ll remember.
then there’s wylan van eck. i definitely loved wylan a lot more in this book. getting to see him through jesper and inej’s eyes made me like him more than just reading his POV. his relationship with jesper and budding romance also made me like him more - we saw his humour and i liked seeing more of him and his mother, and how jesper went with them... i have this weird feeling with wylan which faded mostly when i realised him “betraying” the crew was actually a setup, but he was still possibly my least favourite of the crew.
the villains were also very well written in this book, as were all of the face offs. pekka rollins, jan van eck and danyasha were all written with weaknesses which were layered underneath and although it didn’t happen as much as in the ice court heist, i still went through the emotional turbulence of not knowing how they were going to get out of certain situations - and unfortunately matthias didn’t... still sad about this, because i thought that he’d survive.
i thought this would’ve been a four star read but the last 1/4 was so epic and emotional that i had to bump it up to a 4.5/5 out of 5.