Crooked Kingdom

By: Leigh Bardugo

Narrated by: Roger Clark, Jay Snyder, Elizabeth Evans, Fred Berman, Brandon Rubin, Kevin T. Collins, Lauren Fortgang, Peter Ganim

Length: 17 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's Summary

The highly anticipated sequel to the thrilling New York Times best-selling Six of Crows.

Kaz Brekker and his crew have just pulled off a heist so daring even they didn't think they'd survive. But instead of divvying up a fat reward, they're right back to fighting for their lives. Double-crossed and badly weakened, the crew is low on resources, allies, and hope. As powerful forces from around the world descend on Ketterdam to root out the secrets of the dangerous drug known as jurda parem, old rivals and new enemies emerge to challenge Kaz's cunning and test the team's fragile loyalties. A war will be waged on the city's dark and twisting streets - a battle for revenge and redemption that will decide the fate of the Grisha world.

©2016 Leigh Bardugo (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

Storytelling at its finest! L.Bardugo is a master

Leigh Bardugo does not disappoint in Crooked Kingdom the sequel to Six of Crows. It is the ending of the duology which could have easily been a trilogy...my selfish want as I love the world Leigh has built. As with Six of Crows the book continues with each character providing their POV. Not my favorite style of writing but Leigh pulls it off well in both books.
Don't want to provide any spoilers but the journey to the end is worth it. Ok..one tiny spoiler which made me VERY HAPPY is Kaz and the crew get help from some very special characters of the Grisha trilogy. Yeah it felt a bit gratuitous on Leigh's part but I enjoyed it anyway.

Now for the narrators...anytime it gets past 2 narrators I find it distracting. Elizabeth Evans (Nina) and Lauren Fortgang (Inej) were brilliant and well cast to the characters. Their last scenes at the end of the book were AMAZING and worth the whole listen! As for the men...returning narrators Fred Berman (Kaz), Brandon Rubin (Jesper), Jay Snyder (Matthias), Roger Clark (Pekka) gave very consistent performances to Six of Crows and matched the characters well. Jay Snyder made me fall in love with Matthias or maybe with Jay himself ;-). New to Crooked Kingdom...Kevin T Collins (Wylan) and Peter Ganim (Jan). I don't think Kevin gave a bad performance but he had almost all the pronunciations of the characters and the world incorrect which made his performance distracting. I kept correcting him while I was listening. Don't let it deter you from choosing to the book. Just know that it is coming and you will have to suck it up a bit when you listen.

16 of 16 people found this review helpful

Perfect, but now what?

Loved it. This book leaves me with that rare feeling that I don't know what to read next. Actually, the even rarer condition that I need a break from reading so I can continue to savor this book a little longer. I don't think I can review it properly. However, it's a story intricately wound and wonderfully wicked. I loved getting to know each of the characters, even though Kaz is the star, you learn to appreciate all six of the gang. The settings and fantasy elements were great - sometimes helter skelter and at other times melodic. The ending. That was perfect. It's worthy of recommendation!

PS - Agree with others that Wylan's narrator was terrible for the part, and still this didn’t affect my enjoyment of the book.

29 of 30 people found this review helpful

WHY YOU TAKE MY FAVORITE NARRATOR?!

You get four stars, sir, simply for not using my favorite narrator from last book. This story is so good, but I felt like I was slapped in the face when we get to Kaz's POV maybe halfway through and IT'S NOT THE SAME GUY! UGH!

10 of 10 people found this review helpful

Great story, so-so performance and production

The story was great. Kept me on the edge of my seat. I really didn't like the narration for Wylan, though. His rendition of Kaz's voice was hard to listen to, his pronunciation of names, places, and words was gratingly inconsistent, and there was an audible hiss throughout.

8 of 8 people found this review helpful

Great except for one thing

Book is awesome! I loved it.....except for whoever narrated Wyland and whenever Wyland was talking for Kaz.....holy evil old man gravel. Sort of rediculous!

35 of 38 people found this review helpful

I love a lot of narrators

Except for this time. As mentioned, Wyland's voice for Kaz sounds like he was the Wicked Witch. The fact that every narrator did a different voice for each character made it a bit hard to follow. I didn't listen to Six of Crow, I read the physical book, and everything made a lot more sense that when I started listening to this one. Since each character sounds completely different, it's harder to follow, but it still wasn't all bad.

I loved the actual story, I think it was a great follow up to Six of Crows, and I hope there is another book in the series soon!

16 of 17 people found this review helpful

Great story, hit or miss performers

First of all I love this story, and the different voices are mostly wonderful. Each lends so much to the tale, and whether it was planned this way or not, each sort of lends their own viewpoint--we get to see how each character sounds, from the point of view of each character. The performer for Wyland was a bit off, though--i can't quite describe it, but it was somewhat jarring to listen to, and he made Kaz sound like an old lady, which was an odd choice.

The performer for Jesper was odd too--after having a normal American accent for the last book and most of this one, towards the end he started having a sort of bastardized cockney/Australian lilt to some things, and not only when Jesper was speaking but when other characters were speaking, too! It was super weird, like why is Nina suddenly talking this way? It made the whole thing seem poorly edited or poorly directed, which is a shame.

All that being said, this is still one of the most engaging and fun stories I've listened to in a while, and the performers for Kaz and Inej in particular were fantastic. I would absolutely listen to it again.

15 of 16 people found this review helpful

Stunning end to a story that I hope will continue!

Where does Crooked Kingdom rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

After listening too close to 1000 audiobooks, this book along with part one of the story has to be in the top five if not the best. One has to read to first book in order to truly comprehend this book.Both books have been created by a master storyteller and it shows.

What did you like best about this story?

This book has a number of twists and curves in it; just as you think you know what is going to happen, your thrown for a loop and a whole new story is there for your experience. I also like books that bring out our emotions when listening and this book has a lot of that.

What does the narrators bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

It took a few chapters to get used to multiple narrators doing each character but once I got used to it it was fine. I am particularly partial to Lauren Fortgang, really like her body of work.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Don't double cross a person who less to loose then you!

Any additional comments?

If I was stuck on an island for a long time and could only take a few books with me the Six of Crows and the Crooked Kingdom would definitely be with me. Buy it, read it, and revel in the emotional experience...

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

ocean's 11 with a darker twist and a bit of magic

amazing, absolutely amazing. consider me a fan of the author. I will gladly seek out their past, and future works. while I do agree that it would have been interesting to have each character read their own lines. I didn't necessarily mind the change of pace from one chapter to the next.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Finally, new concepts

This relates to both "Six of Crows" and "Crooked Kingdom." I read A lot, and sometimes start to feel that the story formula is repeated , only with tweaked characters and settings, etc. This is the first compelling story that really made you unceartain what to expect (in a good way).

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Great book, terribly read

More of an enunciation contest than a performance. While a few of the narrators do a great job, most of them emphasize the wrong words in the sentences and make it difficult to keep the thread of the action. And while some of these improve a little, or maybe I became accustomed, as the story goes on, whoever is narrating Wylan's chapters sounds like he is doing a practice exercise for elocution lessons, and failing.

Luckily the story is so well constructed that it can cope with the mauling, the characters are well developed, and it is usually clear how the author intended the passage read.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

Awesome story ... shame about Kaz's voice

In Six of Crows, Leigh Bardugo introduces us to the Ocean's Eleven of the fantasy world. The only difference is they are brimming with more character and oozing more cool than George Clooney and his pals ever could. There's also magic. Danny Ocean couldn't do that. Crooked Kingdom takes an already rich cast and focuses on adding to their depth rather than their number. This was a pleasant surprise, as many authors tend to dump extra characters into the reader/listener's lap and hope it makes us feel all happy about what we've been given. Not here. Here we are given a truly deeper feeling of every character. We knew them before in Six of Crows, but now we are given an almost intimate connection with each one in Crooked Kingdom. And it felt good. Better than good.

The story, as with Six of Crows was a complex plan hidden within another complex plan buried deep within the twistedly brilliant depths of Kaz Brekker's mind. He really is one of those characters that you can't help but love but also can't help but thank your lucky stars he isn't a real person. He's equal parts bad ass and just bad all at once. But he's just the right mix that you can't help but wonder why you can't stop yourself from loving him.

For me, I felt Crooked Kingdom played upon a range of emotions, more so than Six of Crows. There is one scene in particular that I did not expect to happen but DAMN, if it didn't hit me where I didn't want to be hit!

As with the vast majority of my seemingly praise-gushing reviews, this one will not be all niceties. There is one crime against my ears that I just cannot keep hidden. I rarely use the word 'hate' but in this instance, and the instance of Six of Crows, I genuinely hate the voice used as the main narrator for Kaz Brekker's bits. His voice is so bad, so gravelly, so 'I've been smoking for fifty years and swallowing glass for another ten' that I just hated it when Kaz's bits came on. Honestly, his voice is so grating on the ear that I, an author myself, struggle to put into words how unsuitable it was for ANY character to have that as their actual voice. I couldn't take it seriously. That fact was upsetting due to Kaz being one of my favourites. The rest of the vocals were on point and, dare I say, perfect. Matthias is very well-done, gives you the image of a strong man attached to the voice. Nina's makes you think of a sexy young girl who knows exactly how to get what she wants. Jesper sounds effortlessly cool and cocky. Kaz just sounds ... wrong.

But enough about my Kaz-voice hating. We can't all be happy 100% of the time so I will be content with the 99% of the time in this book. I am sure there are some (admittedly odd people) who thought Kaz's voice was just ... lovely.

Another good point about Crooked Kingdom is that Leigh brings back a few characters from her previous trilogy (Grisha Trilogy), so fans of that series will get that little happy moment when reading about characters they remember fondly.

All in all, I am very glad to have listened to the Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom duology. Kaz Brekker's band of thieves have made for excellent literary companions and I hope they make appearances in future books from Bardugo.

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

loved it

Everything from the story, to the characters and the people narrating them, was amazing.

Full of twists and turns and a cast of characters to fall in love with.

A great tale

Kaz Brekker is the character that holds this and the previous together. The story is solid and the themes well thought out. But the anti-hero is well played here with a line walked well. A book well worth reading. The change of narrators was off putting at times but you get into the swing quickly.

Great characters, suspenseful!

I really enjoyed this. I found the characters very interesting and the plot clipped along at a great pace.

Epic duology - must read

I can’t recommend this two part series highly enough! You do not have to read the Grisha trilogy before hand, but it does help flesh out the context if you have. These two books are packed with far more than 2 books worth of fast paced plot, character building, back story, depth and world building - it’s a miracle to me that so much can be achieved, without compromise on quality, in so few tomes. If you like Terry Pratchett’s Ankh Morpork underbelly, or the grimy streets of Sarah J Maas’s Rifthold, then this series is a must read for you!

I've read and listened to this book ....

I've read and listened to this book over and over and can't help but be drawn back to it. I love the characters and how complex they are but Kaz has to be my favourite as he seems to change and evolve the most. I would highly recommend this book and the first (Six of Crows) to anyone who wants to be taken on an adventure.

Brilliant sequel

I really loved this duology. The performance by the narrators was brilliant and just so perfectly fitting. The story is a little slower than Six of Crows but still really clever and entertaining.

Great conclusion

Story - 5 Stars
Performance - 4 Stars
Overall - 4.5 Stars

Unlike the first book this one was straight into the action from the point where the first one left off. This book went places that I didn't expect it to go keeping me both on my toes and on the edge of my seat from beginning to end. This series left me feeling like I was part of Kaz's crew and this book left me feeling like they were family, broke my heart a little and left me wanting to spend more time with these characters... I wish there was more, I'm not sure I'm ready to leave these characters yet.

Once again because the narrator read a character's chapter rather than just one specific character it made it slightly tricky to tell one character from another but luckily it didn't spoil my enjoyment of a great story.

Amazing 😀😀

Great performance . The voice actors are amazing. They add so much to the story. Would definitely recommend.