I Read Crooked Kingdom

Wow, I got very far behind writing these up.  Mea culpa.  Hopefully by the end of the day, I'll have the next month queued up.

This week's novel is Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo.  This is the Sequel to Six of Crows, which I read a while back.

The team has to rescue Inej, who was captured at the end of the last book, and then they must take their revenge on Van Ek, get paid for the job they pulled in the last book, and help a bunch of Grisha get out of town before they're kidnapped by super soldiers created by the Shu.  Multiple complex heists ensue!

I was impressed by the ensemble cast and the complicated heist of the last book, and those certainly continued in the second half of this duology.  I got to know the characters enough to celebrate their growth and cheer for their moments of triumph.  (Jesper gets this moment...it's so good.  I'm still pumped about it.)

But there's an added layer to this second book, because as the characters grow to rely on and trust one another, a sadness and uncertainty is built into the story, because if the plans all go perfectly, the team members will go their separate ways and never see each other again.  When they hated each other, this wasn't a problem, but now they've been through a lot.  It reminds me a bit of the last few weeks of senior year in high school, when everyone was excited to leave and start their lives, but with that came the looming realization that friendships weren't going to be as strong and many wouldn't survive.  This was like that, only maybe they would die or be tortured, and also the city where they all cut their teeth is way more horrible than a high school.  And yet they were still a little sad to leave.

This book also had an added layer in that they each had to make something of themselves.  In the last book, they all thought that the money from the pay off would fix all their problems.  It would pay off their debts and get them out of indentured servitude and get them passage back to their various homelands.  In this one, the money would still do all that, but they also needed to step up emotionally.  Nina, the drug addicted Grisha, has to accept that her powers will never be the same and she'll never be the same.  Matthias has to get over his biases against Grisha, rather than the "love the sinner, hate the sin thing" he had going on at the end of the last book.  Jesper has to get out of debt to save the family farm, but he also has to accept that his gambling addiction got him in debt in the first place, and he needs to work on that. Wylan needs to get away from his abusive father, but he also needs to accept that his father was wrong and Wylan has worth.

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Next week: Crazy Rich Asians, a rom-com set in obscene wealth in Singapore, by Kevin Kwan.