No Mourners No Funerals: Six of Crows Duology Book Review Part Two: Crooked Kingdom
Six of Crows Duology Book Two: Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo
*This review contains spoilers*
Introduction
The second book in the Six of Crows duology was absolutely everything that I hoped it would be. It has all of the same charms that the first book had. It took an already trippy story and filled it with even more twists and turns. Needless to say, I absolutely devoured Crooked Kingdom.
Summary & Review
After the prologue, Crooked Kingdom starts with Wylan finally getting his first POV chapter, which is something I feel was missing from the first book. We finally get to learn everything about what happened between Wylan and his father to pit them against one another, and how Kaz found Wylan to recruit him to the Dregs in the first place. It's because Wylan is dyslexic, and he was never able to read as a result. Van Eck felt that meant Wylan wasn't qualified to inherit his merchant empire, so he tried (and failed) to have Wylan killed. This is another dark and non-cliched backstory that Bardugo had been doing such a good job with in the first book as well. It works well for two specific reasons. For one, I've never read a book that included a dyslexic protagonist before, so it added some disabled representation. Second, this is another situation where Bardugo could have gone the overdone route. It would have been so easy to have Van Eck's disowning of his son be because Wylan is gay, but she didn't. Wylan just happens to be gay, but it has nothing to do with why his father mistreats him. Bardugo went for a more original story that added even more depth.
The development of Wylan and Jesper's relationship was both endearing and also added some beneficial moments of comic relief to the novel as well. Specifically, I'm thinking of the scene where Jesper kisses Kuwei, because Wylan has Kuwei's face, so Jesper couldn't tell them apart. I had absolutely no delusion that Bardugo would let Wylan and Jesper end up together before Wylan got his own face back, but I still didn't think that was going to happen, even though it was probably obvious. It was hilarious though, I laughed out loud reading it. Only Jesper would blame himself for not being able to tell apart two identical people because one of them is slightly taller.
I also think Jesper's character arc improved in Crooked Kingdom. I really enjoyed the introduction of his father, Colm Fahey, into the story. Introducing an adult character with this group of teenagers all aged between fifteen and eighteen is a great way of reminding the reader of an important point that I think often goes over people's heads in the first book: all of these characters are still children, thrown into situations that no child should be forced to deal with. Colm Fahey actually verbalizes this point himself because, clearly, Bardugo wanted her readers to remember this as the story went on.
Learning about Jesper's mother and how she died is also a great way of combining character development and world building (something else that Bardugo has been exemplary at in this duology). We learn that Jesper's mother was Grisha, but in her country Novyi Zem, the Grisha are called Zowa, and they are considered to be gifted. The difference in the way Grisha (or Zowa, if you will) are described in Novyi Zem adds some cultural differences to the Grish universe.
The history here also helps to explain why Jesper never embraced his identity as a Grisha, because in his culture he is not Grisha, he's Zowa like his mother. And after his mother died as a result of using her powers, his father helped instill in a young Jesper that embracing his power would be dangerous for him. Though this came from a place of wanting to protect his son, it still caused some unhealed childhood wounds in Jesper. I find this such an interesting dynamic, because a lot of times fiction likes to portray unhealthy father-son relationships as being explicitly toxic and abusive (such as Wylan and Van Eck). But in this instance, Jesper's relationship with his father wasn't outright toxic, but there were underlying issues, and this led to an arc where they were actually able to work to repair their relationship instead of being forced to let it go. Don't get me wrong, I love the overriding "found family" dynamic in the duology, and I think that it's an important theme. It shows real life readers who might not have healthy relationships with their parents that it's okay to choose the family that is best for you. But it's also good to show that some relationships can be worth salvaging if they mean enough to you too, like Jesper with his father.
All of the character arcs come together in this novel in such meaningful ways. I think, specifically, that we get to see a much more humanized version of Kaz. It's not overt or out of character; he's still the Kaz Brekker that we all know, but in subtle ways, the impact that the events of the last novel had on him do come through. These six characters have been through a lot together and care for each other very much. Kaz may not express it as explicitly as his companions, but if you're really paying attention, it's clear he's become fond of all five of them. I mean, he was willing to turn himself in to help the rest of them escape at one point. Even if he is Kaz Brekker and there are no chains that can hold him, no one would do that for people they don't care about--especially not the Bastard of the Barrel.
Of course, we already know how much he cares for Inej, but Bardugo goes the extra length in this novel to remove any potential for toxicity between them. When Van Eck has Inej hostage, he almost has her legs crushed, something that would prevent her from ever being The Wraith (Kaz' most skilled spy) again. In a moment of fear and pain, Inej declares that Kaz will never trade for her if Van Eck breaks her legs. In this moment, Inej is realizing an insecurity that she has about her feelings for Kaz, that he might not see her as anything more than The Wraith.
It would have been easy for Bardugo to let this conflict persist between them as a point of drama for the entire book, as I believe a lot of other authors probably would have done. Bardugo doesn't though; it's addressed as soon as it possibly can be, and I think she made the right choice. As soon as Inej escapes Van Eck and is reunited with Kaz, she takes a moment in private with him to confront him about this fear (instead of trying to repress it). Kaz makes it clear where she stands, that he would always go back for her no matter what. The communication and the clearing up of this conflict right from the start is impeccable in showing that these two may have their individual issues, but they are in sync with each other.
The infamous bathroom scene between Kaz and Inej also did everything it needed to do to highlight how intimate their relationship is, even when at this point in time, it hasn't involved any touching. Kaz takes those necessary first steps to be there for her when he takes off his gloves to tend her wounds. It's nearly impossible for him because Kaz really hasn't even begun the healing process from what happened to him on the reaper's barge, but Inej is enough to make him try. And he does try. He tries to kiss her, to be close to her, to touch her, but he can't because his healing has only just begun, and he's not there yet. Not only is it deeply emotional, but it's realistic.
Inej's friendship with Jesper also gets some much needed attention in Crooked Kingdom after the reveal at the end of Six of Crows that it was Jesper's mistake that led to the ambush by the Dime Lions that almost got Inej killed. Unsurprisingly, Kaz actually blames Jesper for this mistake more than it seems Inej herself does. She is willing to forgive Jesper, but only after he can make her a promise: "this action will have no echo." It's an expression from Inej's Suli culture that is a form of an apology that essentially means that the person apologizing will never let such a thing happen again. Jesper does have to work to ensure that he can fully live up to the meaning of these words, but by the end it isn't just Inej that he can promise this to, but also to his father, whose farm Jesper gambled away.
We actually learn quite a bit more about Inej's Suli culture in this novel, especially in the form of one of the book's minor antagonists, Dunyasha. If I had to nitpick and find a criticism of Crooked Kingdom, it would probably be the inclusion of Dunyasha at all. She didn't have that big of an impact on the plot other than injuring Inej as the lead-up to the bathroom scene with Kaz, and her status as a Lantsov claimant to the throne of Ravka (a callback to the preceding Shadow and Bone trilogy) didn't mean much in this series. However, I'm willing to forgive it for a few major reasons. One, we get to use Dunyasha as a means of exploring the Suli belief that every person has a "shadow," someone who is created out of one's own misdeeds and eventually grows to become worse than the person who created the "shadow." Not only does Inej believe that Dunyasha is her "shadow" (who she eventually defeats), but she suggests the idea that Kaz is the "shadow" of his nemesis Pekka Rollins, which is an interesting take on his character. This exploration of Suli culture and the introduction of existing Lantsovs who threaten King Nikolai's claim to the Ravkan throne are also important lead-ins to the plot of Six of Crows' sucessor series in the Grishaverse, the King of Scars duology.
Kaz' friendship with Jesper also goes through a lot of development as well. After the fight the two of them had at the end of Six of Crows, it's clear in this novel that Kaz is having a hard time trusting Jesper, and that in turn is frustrating to Jesper because what he did was a mistake, and that he's gotten it right for Kaz countless times before. Bardugo eventually goes deeper into the source of their conflict though, during a moment in which Jesper asks when Kaz will forgive him, and Kaz asks "Jordie" what he thinks his forgiveness looks like. This is telling for many reasons. On the surface, Kaz just called Jesper by his brother's name, which plays into the "found family" aspect of the story and indicates that Kaz sees Jesper as like a brother to him. But it runs even deeper than that. Jesper's story and Jordie's story are very similar, and that's not a coincidence. Bardugo foils them like this for a reason. Jesper and Jordie both essentially gambled away their inheritance. Even if Jesper's was more intentional and Jordie was swindled, it's similar enough. And whether Kaz wants to admit it or not, there is some part of him that blames Jordie for the choices he made (and where that landed them both as a result) as much as he blames Pekka Rollins. It seems that hes taking out those unresolved feelings on Jesper, however unfair it is. It takes for him to hear himself call Jesper "Jordie" to perhaps realize all this, and to admit to Jesper later that Jordie (and therefore Jesper himself) was someone he didn't want to lose.
Kaz' developing friendship with Wylan also follows suit witht his idea that Kaz is resolving his unresolved childhood wounds through the relationships with others that he currently has. With the exception of Inej, Kaz does seem to be a lot more patient with and protective of Wylan than he is with the other Crows. By the end of the novel, Kaz has also set Wylan up with a comfortable position being in charge of his father's obscene merchant wealth. It's never exactly spelled out for the reader why Kaz is so protective of Wylan, but in looking at the way that Wylan was forced to live in the streets of the Barrel at a young age, one can assume that Kaz sees a bit of his younger self in Wylan, and he wants to see Wylan's life take a different turn.
Crooked Kingdom does feature tie-ins to the Shadow and Bone trilogy in more than just dialogue and references. Nikolai, Genya, and Zoya (all major characters from the previous trilogy) actually make an appearance in the second half of this novel, with Nikolai posing as his infamous secret identity, Sturmhond. I love the way that Bardugo goes about including them, because it isn't necessary that you have to read the Shadow and Bone trilogy to understand these characters' inclusion, as they're mentioned in the narration of Nina's chapters enough. It simply adds another layer if you have read Shadow and Bone. To me, it also makes perfect sense that Kaz Brekker would have ties to the pirate (ahem, privateer) Sturmhond, and that he might just be clever enough to figure out that said privateer is actually the King of Ravka.
I also loved the fact that Genya was able to tailor Wylan's face back to looking like himeself. Even though I wasn't necessarily expecting a cameo from any Shadow and Bone characters in this novel, I had this lingering suspicion the entire time I was reading that one Genya Safin was the only tailor talented enough to make Wylan himself again. There's such an emotional layer to it too, with Genya basing his face off Wylan's portrait of him as a child, Genya being able to restore someone else's appereance after she couldn't salvage her own after what The Darkling did to her, and Jesper being able to fill in the missing details of Wylan's face because he was familiar with how he looked. I just loved absolutely every aspect of it.
In fact, this isn't the only part of the resolutions I loved. I think this novel had a perfect ending.
Time to discuss that character's death.
I never, in a million years, thought this book would end without one of the six crows dying. Their entire mantra was "no mourners, no funerals" (an expression that actually gets its origin story in this book), and so I always had this feeling in my gut that by the end, we would have five mourners and one funeral, so to speak. It also seemed like it needed to happen in order to offset the fact that, aside from Matthias' death, the Crows essentially pulled off their entire scheme perfectly and came out the other side victorious. A loss was necessary for balance and to make the ending feel more emotional and realistic. And I always figured it was going to end up being Kaz, as much as I hated the idea.
I never, in a million years, thought that Matthias Helvar would be the one to die. Looking back, it makes perfect sense. Kaz Brekker couldn't die because having him sacrifice himself in any way would not only be slightly out of character, but it would also fall into the cliches that Bardugo has been so cleverly side-stepping. Killing off Jesper or Wylan would fall into the "bury your gays" trend, killing Inej would be a huge mistake as it would fall into the trend of killing off a female character just to further a man's storyline, and Nina still had plenty left to do in the King of Scars duology, so that only left Matthias. Not only that, but Bardugo also had the perfect setup for it, with Matthias being a deserter of the druskelle, and it offset Nina's entire forthcoming Fjerda storyline.
It also tied in perfectly with Nina's new position as the Queen of Mourning (the change that jurda parem had on her Grisha powers, changing her from a Heartrender of the living, to someone who could control and commune with the dead). Naturally, upon Matthias' death, Nina takes advantage of this new power and tries to ressurect him as one of the corpses that she can control. Having her bring him back permanently or temporarily as some dark, undead, anti-Matthias would have been cliche and ridculous, and I'm so glad that Bardugo didn't do this. Instead, Inej is there to comfort her grieving friend and convicne Nina that Matthias wouldn't want her to do that to him and urges her to let him go.
The actual funeral scene is also amazing, with our surviving crows all surrounding Nina to help her mourn Matthias. Then those leaving Ketterdam board the reaper's barge pretending to be corpses, to escape. And of course, Kaz disappears at some point during this escape. It's explained away by saying that Kaz Brekker doesn't say goodbye, he just lets go, but I don't think this is entirely true. It's just Bardugo layering again. Kaz has a very traumatic experience with being trapped on the reaper's barge with a bunch of corpses, and so perhaps watching his friends lie down and live that same experience was just a little bit too much for him to deal with at the time.
This isn't the last we ever see of Kaz Brekker though. We get a very interesting scene between him and the council of the tides, revealing that his involvement of the council of the tides in his earlier scheme was faked (naturally) and leaves the story open to interpretation for future scheming in Kaz' now frosty relationship with the council. And of course, at the very end, we get what I believe was the most beautiful parting shot.
Kaz used his connections with King Nikolai to track down Inej's long lost parents. He's brought them to her. He's gotten her a ship, appropriately named The Wraith, so that she can live her dream of hunting down slavers. Essentially, he's willing to let her go. On top of all that, he's taken off his gloves, wearing his hands completely bare for the first time since he was a child. We're left off with Inej and Kaz gently holding bare hands as Inej invites Kaz to come meet her parents.
Some Kanej shippers were likely disappointed that this didn't end with a kiss, a declaration of love, or anything more intense than what we got, but I absolutely was not. This is the most realistic way that Kaz and Inej's relationship could have ended positively in this novel. They're both still healing, Kaz from his touch aversion and Inej from her enslavement. This kind of healing doesn't happen over night, and not enough time has passed in the duration of the novel to imply that this kind of emotionally intense healing had occurred. The moment that we got, however, is enough to give the readers just a taste, to imply that eventually, they will get there.
Final Thoughts
Crooked Kingdom earns 5 out of 5 stars from me. I loved the characters, the plot, the relationships, the ending. Just everything. It was the perfect conclusion to the story, and for me, it feels obvious that this was the ending Leigh Bardugo always had in mind for her characters, and she'd always been writing towards it.
Full Duology Review
I would also give Six of Crows as a full duology 5 out of 5 stars as well. Even though I docked a few points from the first book for a slightly bumpy beginning, looking back on everything, it was all necessary to set up the entire story that was to come. Each character went through such an amazing arc, and I loved all six protganoists. I loved all three ships, and I was so relieved there were no love-triangles (unless you count Jesper/Wylan/Kuwei, but I don't, as Jesper never had feelings for Kuwei, Kuwei just had an unrequited childhood crush on Jesper).
Not only has Bardugo's ability to develop characters and juggle plotlines matured since she wrote the Shadow and Bone trilogy, but her entire writing style improved as well. The prose in this duology was so much more mature and well-written than the rather basic young adult writing style we were used to in the previous series.
I also have to give Bardugo bonus points for making Van Eck the real villain of the duology. From the start, we're given the setup of Kaz' nemesis Pekka Rollins being the ultimate big-bad in this story, but she sticks with her avoidance of cliches and makes the antagonist Van Eck instead. Pekka remains a secondary threat that is looming in the background, and who is never really fully taken down by the end of the story. He's more of a ghost of Kaz' past. The epilogue of Crooked Kingdom does well to establish that Kaz' war with Pekka is not completely over.... and maybe it never will be. I love that Bardugo left it open for each reader to wonder about what may or may not have happened in the end.
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