Review: Crooked Kingdom - Leigh Bardugo

Genre: YA Fantasy

Published: 27th September 2016

Length: 546 pages

My rating: 9/10

Overview: The sequel to 'Six of Crows', this book shows the aftermath of the fight with Van Eck as Kaz and the gang try to save themselves and get their money whilst the city turns against them.

I reviewed Six Of Crows about a month ago, and I wasn't overly enthusiastic about it, saying it didn't live up to my high expectations. However, I thought this book was ten times better than the first one and was captivated from start to finish. Although it still had the fast, punchy pace of the first book it felt less rushed and more like it happened in a realistic time frame. I am really disappointed that this is only a two book series as I would love to hear more about these characters, they are truly wonderful.

One of the things I didn't really enjoy about the first book was that so much of Kaz' plan was kept hidden from the reader, and that is kind of true of this one as well although it was less irritating this time round. It is also kind of predictable in the sense that whenever there is a opportunity for something to go wrong, it always goes wrong. These are the only reasons I didn't give it 10/10 but I was very close. I enjoyed the plot a lot more, especially the elaborate plan at the end. How on earth did Leigh Bardugo come up with so many intricacies to it, it blew my mind.

My favourite thing about the first book was the characters, and it is the same here. I'm really glad we got more Wylan because he was definitely the one we knew least after the first book, and he is my favourite character. Similarly to the previous book, we have flashbacks to the past about each character which helps the reader understand them better and is a nice touch. There is a good amount of character development for each of the six and the relationships between the group are really sweet, I particularly love the friendship between Inej and Nina. Nina definitely delivers the best jokes in this book. Van Eck is a thoroughly corrupt villain that you can just love to hate and it is very satisfying whenever Kaz manages to one up. I would have loved to see Pekka Rollins, the other antagonist, meet a more conclusive end but apart from that the end of the book was satisfying.

In my opinion, overall this book is a lot better than the first and is exciting to read from start to finish.

#leighbardugo #review