Crooked Kingdom was everything and more! Following Six of Crows, the conclusion to the duology has more of your favorite Dregs and higher stakes than ever. Leigh Bardugo has done a wonderful job with her characters and her settings, and I personally liked these characters more than the Grisha trilogy characters. It was a very satisfying story that left me wanting more!

First of all, I want to talk about the characters. Kaz Brekker is an incredibly deep character. I love the fact that he has such a tragic past that still holds monsters for him to defeat. A few times while I was reading the parts where he attempted to take his gloves off and touch others, I tried putting myself into his shoes and just imagining clinging to your dead brother's body in order to stay alive. I know I would definitely be messed up after that, and I don't know if it's something I could ever get used to again. The fact that he has a past where he has done things that are mainly viewed as disgraceful and abhorrent that he plays off as not a big deal shows just how far he's willing to go to get what he's after.
Inej is an interesting character as well. She has used her crappy past to turn into something not only useful, but lethal. She was able to turn her situation around and become someone who can protect herself. Her kindness towards Kaz is the work of a Saint, and the fact that she knows she might not be able to fix him but she will try until he doesn't accept her help anymore gives me hope for them, even though we may never know what happens to them.
Nina. Nina Nina Nina. Nina is probably my favorite character in these books. She is sassy and unapologetic and a fierce female. She will do anything for those she loves, even when it means coming back from the brink of death and not really knowing who you are afterwards. Nina comes back from her battle with jerda parem and can't connect with her powers, only to find much later in the book that she has a different power now, one that connects her to the dead. She finds it horrifying at first, but comes to terms with it as she uses it more and becomes a part of who she is. Her love for Mattias is fierce, and they have a relationship that I personally think is better than Rhysand and Feyre from ACOTAR (since a lot of people seem to want what they have).
Jesper and Wylan I am going to talk about at the same time because they are ah. love. I love them so much, especially together. The playful tension between them is so heartwarming in a time where everything is high stakes. I really loved watching them become closer with each other and surprise each other with the things that they did.
I had told myself that if something happened to Mattias that I wouldn't be that sad because he was the most stern and serious out of the group. But the fact that he stayed alive long enough to see Nina again before he died melted me. And the half page chapter that Bardugo gave him as he died had me dying inside, because even though he had made choices that his people said would have him not moving on in the afterlife to meet Djel, he was able to find his way there anyway. And he became a far more likable character through Crooked Kingdom, and his hard shell had begun to soften.

Now to talk about the overall plot and events. I really love the way Bardugo only gave the reader the story that anyone else might learn, not the overall plan of what was to happen. I felt myself getting nervous when one of their plans would be foiled, only to find that Kaz had planned on that happening, and set other things in motion to work for them in the end. I will admit that this did seem to happen with all of the plans, so by the time the chapter where we learn they planned to "kill" Kuwei, I knew that they weren't actually going to. But I always loved being surprised to find Specht and Rotty around in the city ready to aid the plan in odd ways. The fact that Specht was driving the bottleboat at the end and was yelling at Rotty just made me chuckle, because they were two of the Dregs that just kept showing up in unexpected places. I also really liked at the end seeing things that they did during other jobs came together to be part of the final act, like Wylan accompanying Kaz to his father's house to steal the seal and Kaz planted a will for Van Eck to have his fortune go to Wylan, how Kaz figured out that Rollins was talking about his son when he said he was going to be building an empire, and that Nina had planted the outbreaks of "plague" at all the places that Rollins owned.

I think that this duology just jumped to a high spot on my favorites list, and I'm finding that I already want to read it again! I can't wait until King of Scars so that I can dive into this world again, and hopefully hear about my favorite Dregs!