Crooked Kingdom

By: Leigh Bardugo

Narrated by: Roger Clark, Jay Snyder, Elizabeth Evans, Fred Berman, Brandon Rubin, Kevin T. Collins, Lauren Fortgang, Peter Ganim

The highly anticipated sequel to the thrilling New York Times best-selling Six of Crows.

Kaz Brekker and his crew have just pulled off a heist so daring even they didn't think they'd survive. But instead of divvying up a fat reward, they're right back to fighting for their lives. Double-crossed and badly weakened, the crew is low on resources, allies, and hope. As powerful forces from around the world descend on Ketterdam to root out the secrets of the dangerous drug known as jurda parem, old rivals and new enemies emerge to challenge Kaz's cunning and test the team's fragile loyalties. A war will be waged on the city's dark and twisting streets - a battle for revenge and redemption that will decide the fate of the Grisha world.

©2016 Leigh Bardugo (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

Storytelling at its finest! L.Bardugo is a master

Leigh Bardugo does not disappoint in Crooked Kingdom the sequel to Six of Crows. It is the ending of the duology which could have easily been a trilogy...my selfish want as I love the world Leigh has built. As with Six of Crows the book continues with each character providing their POV. Not my favorite style of writing but Leigh pulls it off well in both books.
Don't want to provide any spoilers but the journey to the end is worth it. Ok..one tiny spoiler which made me VERY HAPPY is Kaz and the crew get help from some very special characters of the Grisha trilogy. Yeah it felt a bit gratuitous on Leigh's part but I enjoyed it anyway.

Now for the narrators...anytime it gets past 2 narrators I find it distracting. Elizabeth Evans (Nina) and Lauren Fortgang (Inej) were brilliant and well cast to the characters. Their last scenes at the end of the book were AMAZING and worth the whole listen! As for the men...returning narrators Fred Berman (Kaz), Brandon Rubin (Jesper), Jay Snyder (Matthias), Roger Clark (Pekka) gave very consistent performances to Six of Crows and matched the characters well. Jay Snyder made me fall in love with Matthias or maybe with Jay himself ;-). New to Crooked Kingdom...Kevin T Collins (Wylan) and Peter Ganim (Jan). I don't think Kevin gave a bad performance but he had almost all the pronunciations of the characters and the world incorrect which made his performance distracting. I kept correcting him while I was listening. Don't let it deter you from choosing to the book. Just know that it is coming and you will have to suck it up a bit when you listen.

excellent

whoever did wylan's voice should find a different career path...awful. everything else was great though.

a great sequal

SoC-duologi rating:
Six of crows: 4,25⭐
Crooked Kingdom: 4,5⭐

Very strong sequal. I liked it even better than the first book!

The plot was well crafted and strong,just packed with sceeming,twists and turns. I think the plot itself and the pacing was a bit stronger in the first book, but there were so many other things about Crooked Kingdom that totally made up for that,and made it overall an even better reading experience than SoC.

First of all, the characters and the dynamics between them. Bardugo really upped her game when it came to developing her characters, giving them more personality and far more back story. Nina was already a fenomenal character in the first book, but in this one I absolutely loved her. I also love the bantering between her an Mathias. Mathias may not have the strongest individual story or personality,but the contrastful chemistry between him and Nina is delightful. And the fact that they are both soldiers ment to be enemies ,bring some emotional and political debt to the whole thing.
We also get to know Wyland and Jesper a lot better, and they both had really interesting backstories and were so so likeable in each their way. Escpecially I loved Jesper.
I'm not a huge fan of Kaz as a character , somehow he doesn't quite work for me, but he is still an asset to the story ,with his sceeming mind, heartbreaking backstory and urge for revenge. Without him ,none of the books would have worked.
Inej also has a powerful story, and may be the most nuanced of the cast. She manages to be both a bad ass superhero, and a warm, vulnerable ,relatable human being. And the bad guys. Come on. They are so delishously evil. Just when you didn't think you could hate anyone more than you hate Pekka Rollins, you find an even deeper level of hate in your heart for Yan Van Eck🖤 Caring for the main cast ,and hating their enemies more than before, I also felt more invested in the plot this time around. I wanted these people to succeed, to be safe, to get redemption, to have their revenge. So the fact that the plot was a bit off on the pacing, and a bit less cohesive, was not a big problem for me.

Realizing there are conveniantly YA-ish three ships among the six crows, kind of made me roll my eyes. But they are three very different ships, and they take up just the right amount of space. While I don't feel super invested in any of them,I liked that they were there. They worked just fine, and nothing was ruined by them.

The writing:
I think Bardugos writingstyle has improved from SoC to the CK. Just like before,her action scenes are on point, perfectly paced. She builds up anticipation in a masterful way, and there is always some kind of pay off. She does lean on some plot conveniances and a lot of luck, but I don't mind. I didn't come here for a super realistic story, I came to be entertained. Otherwise I think her writing/prose has gone from fine/good to rather impressive.
It is quite beautiful and atmosferic at times, and so so funny. The cheezy dialouge is just cheezy enough. Overall ,there is great balance between the action,emotion,pacing, dialouge,light and heavy.

I also pretty much loved everything about the setting of Ketterdam. It is dark and gritty, interesting and so well described, that the city almost feels like a character of its own.

I expected a satisfyingly vengeful, entertaining sequel,and that is presicely what I got! But it was even more fun and interesting than I thought it would be. And I was not expecting it having this much of an emotional impact. I actually teared up a couple of times towards the end.

(About the Audiobook: It was definately not bad,but I have some mixed feeling about this production. As it had 8 different narrators,I'd hoped for a full cast production, with one main narrator ,and the rest reading each characters lines. That's not what I got, there were just one narrator for each third person perspective. Wich worked OK, but not great. Because this ment that each narrator read several characters lines,and it made the whole thing less cohesive. I escpecially enjoyed Jesper,Inej and Ninas chapters, as these narrators had a great style. While Wylands chapters were read in a way that was very breathy and felt stressful. It did not ruin the book, though. It was still great.)

An entertaining and engaging read!

If you could sum up Crooked Kingdom in three words, what would they be?

Fast-paced intriguing action!

What did you like best about this story?

The character development combined with the action.

Which character – as performed by the narrators – was your favorite?

Kaz

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

When the only one you can rely is yourself, who do you trust?

Any additional comments?

Looking for an entertaining and engaging read? Crooked Kingdom will definitely meet your needs.

This book....

Amazing!!!! I seriously cant even explain just how much I enjoyed this book. I cried, I sighed, I fell in love with each and every character. My heart broke towards the end and I do hope there will some
day be a third book to wrap up.... I need more Kaz!!!!

Near perfection

Loved it. The star lost for performance is because no one can seem to figure out what accent Jesper has. Even with that flaw the audio is still really good, though

Amazing!!

Loved it so much, it was just completely incredible!! The story and characters just pulled me right in!!

AMAZING

This book was seriously amazing. The only reason the performance got 3 stars is because of the reader in the opening chapter. What is wrong with Kaz's voice?! I almost didn't push through the book because it contradicted the image I had of Kaz so much...

Beautiful

From the narration to the depth of the story, I enjoyed every flavor this series has offered so far. Can’t recommend it enough!

I really enjoyed this book

I loved these books one and 2 but why does pekka get a chapter in both? I want more!