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[bloodthirstyreviews]

Crooked Kingdom (So/c 2)

(2/5*)

I still just can’t get on board with this one.. I really wanted to. I enjoyed SoC, well, the last half of SoC, and was told it all gets better once you get to that point. I was told that Crooked Kingdom is all go, totally action packed and awesome. Boy howdy what a letdown. I suppose it was action packed, but it was all over the place and not very gripping. Not once did this really pull me in.

It gets long, and spoilery at the end. 

The Good:

Nina! I thought I was going to hate her back in the beginning of SoC but she was possibly the most dynamic character out of all of them even to the end. Her story (besides that One Terrible Thing) was done justice. She was fleshed out. And then done a terrible injustice with that One Terrible Thing. Nina was struggling through withdrawals on top of her demons and figuring out who she is again, all while still being a badass involved in the many shenanigans of this book.

Wylan & Jesper. Again they are cute idiots and I love them. They both felt more real this time around, more meat to their personalities and neither of them got killed off. that’s the dream. That’s the real gay agenda.

The Bad:

Kaz. He’s the most boring main character ever. Everything is way too easy for him. Everything goes exactly according to some crazy plan he *just thought of*. He gets out of sticky situations with ease, even with a busted leg. Every time one of his plans went how it was supposed to (spoilers: every damn time) he makes some like *mic drop* comment that makes me hate him even more. The way his plans are written sometimes isolates the reader. “It worked because this thing I did that I didn’t tell anyone about and I’m the best” *mic drop*. He is written as someone Much older than we’re supposed to believe he is, which has always been my struggle with all of these characters. I think it just shows so much more blindingly with Kaz. Even if his whole life has been a struggle and he’s a hardened criminal... he still doesn’t have the thought processes of a 17 year old. He’s talked about as being some genius more than it is actually shown.

Only maybe Jesper & Wylan kinda seem like teenagers. I’m pretty convinced Bardugo was writing this book as adult fiction and then decided she wanted it to be YA after all and just reduced their ages down in number but nothing else. If I read them as 30-40 year olds it’s much more pleasant, but she has to keep reminding everyone they are ~17~ and that just ruins it all over again.

Inej. I liked her enough in SoC, but here she is reduced to just.. not much. Everything about her, in reference to her, that she says or thinks, is repetitive. I know I read the same line about her several times throughout this book. Her storyline in Crooked Kingdom felt like a constant backpedal. Like ooo we’re getting somewhere, she’s going to overcome something... and then we loop back to the starting position again. Just.. frustrating. No growth. Treading water.

A few paragraphs ago I say it is action packed. And it is, but that is not a good thing here. The fast pacing was a major downfall. There’s so much going on, so many odd plot lines. The beginning of SoC felt the same way for me. It feels like running loosely related errands. “We have to do this thing before we can do this but we also have several more things to do and...” ok. It’s like questing on Runescape but Worse. Do we need to pick up some milk on the way over also, Kaz? A lot of these plot lines / devices also kinda got abandoned. Really just feels like trying to rush through these smaller events to get to the Big Bad Event, not giving anyone time to process what just happened. There are no feelings, its just happening. There’s no real consulting about what they’re going to do, because Kaz is the ~mastermind~ and hes so ~witty~ and always just has the perfect plan that will go off without a single problem. I guess she is writing another book? But I’m pretty sure that is an afterthought. No Grisha uprising? No actual problems with Parem? hokay. sure. just gonna build to an actually interesting and good plot and flush it down the harbor in favor of a) another heist basically b) a boring ass villain who is really just a rich dude in a suit.

Dunyasha. Another rush through plot device. She’s incredible. She’s lovely. She’s going to murder Inej.. but nope. She was not done justice. Inej was so worthless during their fight, just getting stabbed left and right and not being able to fight back. I wanted more Dunyasha. Not just ~defeated~ and then is nothing more.

Van Eck was underwhelming as a villain. He was too easily defeated because ~kaz the mastermind~ He gets hauled off to jail.. for “committing” fraud... h’okay. and the gang gets all his money. woo. hoo. he did not have enough face time. there was basically no interaction with him. He was just some dull politician.. oo scary.

The vicious coupling. I’m literally just going to paste from my SoC review because its the SAME THING. “ It may actually be possible, wait wait hear me out, to end a YA series without pairing up EVERYONE. You can even end it without pairing up anyone. I mean yay a little nibble of lgbt rep, I’ll take what I can get. But ugh does everyone have to be together? It doesn’t bode well for plot/character development in the next book. Because that just sounds like a good plot device- oh wait! that is what it is! With Inej being kidnapped!”

Ummm this was basically SoC but just like. slightly different plot. Exact. Same. Algorithm.

The Really Bad.

KAZ OWNS INEJ KAZ, A STRAIGHT WHITE MALE, OWNS A SULI GIRL “The Suli, being a nomadic, stateless people, may have been influenced by Jewish or Romani cultures.” and the main character of this book. OWNS ONE. ONE WHO HE CALLS HIS INVESTMENT CONSTANTLY. THE BROWN GIRL HE OWNS IS ALSO HIS LOVE INTEREST???????” PLEASE. STOP SWEEPING THIS UNDER THE RUG. THIS SHOULD NOT BE OVERLOOKED. tHIS WAS PUBLISHED IN 2016 HOW IS THIS OKAY yall really out here ignoring some severe issues just because you love this ~tortured past~ ~witty haha~ ~genius schemer~ nasty vile 1 dimensional boring brick of a character

Matthias.

The character with growth and depth. The love interest of the other character with depth.... suddenly dead. His death was so dumb. It really came out of nowhere. We go through all this with him just for him to be expendable. No one even cared? Nina did, but the others didn’t have any thoughts about it. He did not deserve this. Nina did not deserve this. If anyone had to be viciously coupled, it should have been them. It made sense for them.

I wasn’t really planning on doing a full review, I didn’t want to put the effort in. But it kept bothering me, and I’d remember more things that bothered me. So here we are. I didn’t want to just hate on a book without thoroughly getting into it.