★★★★☆ Revenge Fantasies 'R' Us

Crooked Kingdom

Leigh Bardugo

In Six of Crows Kaz Brekker and his team of six Crows broke into Fjerda's most secure prison, the Ice Court, and broke out their most valuable prisoner, Kuwei Yul-Bo. This they were hired to do by Jan Van Eck, at the promised price of 30 million kruge, and they succeeded at great personal cost. But Van Eck stiffed them. He refused payment and attempted to kidnap Kuwei. In this he failed, but he instead kidnapped The Wraith, Inej Ghafa, in the hope of exchanging her for Kuwei.

Of course, Kaz and team have no intention of letting this stand. In their view Van Eck has only elevated his debt from 30 million kruge to everything in life that he values. They can accept nothing short of his complete destruction. Come to think of it, every one of the six Crows has a long, long history of ill-treatment at the hands of powerful people who need to get their come-uppance.

Kaz puts into motion a plan with two goals. First and most important: revenge! Second, fabulous wealth! As usual, Kaz's plan has more moving parts than all the watches in Switzerland. Van Eck of course knows that Kaz is coming after him, so he makes his own plans to thwart Kaz. He is not entirely unsuccessful in that goal. Kaz and the Crows have to think fast and improvise to stay ahead.

As in Six of Crows, the delight of Crooked Kingdom is seeing Kaz's plan unfold. (At least, that was what delighted me most. You may be more delighted by the development of Wylan and Jesper's romance, which was barely hinted at in Six of Crows, or in seeing how badass Inej can be.) Kaz is a genius at improvisation, but he is also a genius at not needing to improvise because he foresaw the worst that his enemies could do.

All in all, it was very satisfying.

Now, Six of Crows ended on a cliff-hanger. You may have heard that Leigh Bardugo plans a third novel in the Six of Crows series, due to come out some unknown number of years from now. I therefore wondered when I began Crooked Kingdom whether it, too, would end in a cliff-hanger. The short answer is, not really.

The longer answer is that at the close, all the Crows have plans for their futures, and we don't know how these plans will work out. Thus, there is plenty of basis for a third novel. But unlike Six of Crows, there is nothing about the ending of Crooked Kingdom that is likely to leave you screaming, "I will DIE if I can't have the next book NOW!

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