Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo

Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I will and do read everything by Leigh Bardugo, because I love her worlds and characters. This is another excellent read, but unfortunately, I didn't love this quite as much as all the others. The first book was definitely better, even though I was happy to have more time with these characters that I adore.

This is fiercely plotted, but still, the story feels just a bit drawn out at times. I hate that, because usually it's the longer, the better with Bardugo. However, there's a bit of spark missing from this story for me, at times, and most of it is in the interactions between characters. It's still well-written, so it's not exactly about the writing. I think I wanted the characters to grow a bit more than they apparently were capable of. That might have been unfair of me, but alas, I'm a greedy reader.

Also, I am not quite in love with how things ended up. I don't expect everything to be perfect and wonderful, but I just wanted something a bit more epic from the ending, since it's the last book in the series. It was off-putting that the final scene was from the POV of the villain, who I was already over and no longer cared about at that point. It's not how I wanted to leave the story. I would have rather it wrapped up from a better and more satisfying viewpoint.

Honestly, I think what this boils down to is that everything is great in how the fantasy/heist part of the story wrapped up, in general. I'm just not completely happy with how all the relationships developed and wrapped up, as I craved something more. I wanted the characters to dig to some deeper emotional levels.

Don't get me wrong. I'm still happy I read this book. It's good in a million different ways. But it's just shy of magnificent, and I have come to expect magnificence from Bardugo.

Pages: 560