Crooked Kingdom is the sequel to Six of Crows and therefore this review may contain spoilers for the previous book.

Kaz’s crew are left reeling after their daring break in to the Ice Court. Nina’s fighting withdrawal and Wylan’s stuck with the face of a stranger. The stranger who holds secret of jurda parem and is safely in their custody. Kuwei is Ketterdam’s most wanted man, can they smuggle him out the city or will they hand him over?

We meet fear. We greet the unexpected visitor and listen to what he has to tell us. When fear arrives, something is about to happen.

My love of the Grishaverse has certainly been slow to bloom. I wasn’t that impressed with the first book (which was called The Gathering Dark at the time) but didn’t write off the trilogy. In the meantime, the fan following grew and eventually I gave in and read the others. Six of Crows really was the turning point though, and Crooked Kingdom is my favourite by far.

Even though I went and read King of Scars first, so I had quite a big thing spoiled. I don’t know what I was thinking, I’d got it into my head that it was a prequel and, well, it wasn’t. Now having read Crooked Kingdom, I wish I had read in order as Nina’s continued story would have had more oompf. I got to the end and I was desperate to know what happens next, even though I’d already read what happens next!

The characters are what make this duology so good, and having had their personalities established in advance, I could fall straight into rooting for them. They are all flawed, fighting with their personal demons, addictions and personal intimacy issues. And the fact that they all care for each other, this band of criminal teenagers, even if they don’t always show it.

I would have come for you. And if I couldn’t walk, I’d crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were, we’d fight our way out together-knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that’s what we do. We never stop fighting.

I also love that it’s like Mission Impossible in its tropes. What genre is that, like they’re not spies and it’s not simply a heist? Anyway, it was oodles of fun and emotional, and I wish there were more books set in Ketterdam.

It’ll be interesting to see what Netflix do with their adaptation. I’m not sure how they’re going to smoosh Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows into the same season, they’re not meant to be happening at the same time and they are such separate storylines. Her later books feel much darker and more grown-up, and I’d really like to see that in the TV show.

ATY Challenge: 1. A book with a title that doesn’t contain the letters A, T or Y

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