Crooked Kingdom - Leigh Bardugo | Book Review

Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows Book Two)

Leigh Bardugo

Reviewed 1/18/2025

Rating:

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Review (NO spoilers):

Crooked Kingdom moved slower than Six of Crows; it was still engaging, but not amazingly so. There are some… questionable writing decisions. I didn't have high expectations for this as a sequel, and it didn’t exceed my expectations; but regardless, I still enjoyed it (more so in the first half). If you liked Six of Crows, read the sequel, but it's not better than the first book.

Scroll down for review with SPOILERS

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Review (SPOILERS):

My girl Dunyasha was treated SO poorly. She was introduced as a worthy opponent for Inej -- a better version of the Wraith -- but her skyscraper potential was thrown out the window (or, to be more accurate, off the roof!). She believed she was the heir to the Ravkan throne and Bardugo did nothing with that. Dunyasha purely existed as a pointless piece of filler to waste TWO of Inej's chapters: priceless time in a book split between SIX point of views. She should've killed Inej, but instead she died because of Inej's plot armor and dumb luck. WHAT WAS THE POINT? I loved Dunyasha when she was introduced and hated her underutilization. She was filler with wasted potential; poor writing.

Matthias’ death was also quite poor writing. It was absolutely unnecessary, did not evoke any emotions, and was at a point that did not impact the plot whatsoever. I didn't like him; but I felt bad for Nina (even though I disliked their relationship).

As a Certified Romance Hater, I do appreciate that the romance in this series is not too much and I was relatively unbothered by it. But was it really necessary to give every main character a romance with another main character? Kaz + Inej was sweet as a friendship but I did not feel romantic chemistry. Kaz just feels way older than his stated age. Jesper + Wylan was cute but I also kinda liked them as friends…? Nina + Matthias was really pushed in the previous book and I still didn't like them, but I guess it was better without the do I love him do I hate him does he love me does he hate me?! angst.

Crooked Kingdom was also a bit less… directed, for lack of a better word, than Six of Crows. SoC was driven by the heist, while CK was basically just oh no! Kaz plan. Oh no! Kaz new plan. Et cetera. Instead of giving us real twists, it was more so just unrevealed parts of Kaz's master plan.

Speaking of Kaz… why do we like Kaz? He’s kind of selfish and definitely cruel. This series more or less just hammers in the idea that doing bad things to bad people is okay. I would've liked to see further exploration into the nuance (it's mentioned, sure, but not delved into). 

Overall the character dynamics and conversations were fun to read, but the romantic relationships were unnecessary. However, it didn't take too much away from the book. I did enjoy reading Crooked Kingdom, even if I'm mad at some of the writing (justice for Dunyasha!!!!) and it was slower than Six of Crows. I have a lot of criticisms, but it's still a decent book. I really enjoy the world and will be continuing to read the other novels in the Grishaverse (I just picked up Shadow & Bone from the library!).

Note from future self: Shadow & Bone sucked.