2025 & 2026 Reading Challenge discussion

This thread is to discuss Crooked Kingdom, the second book in the Six of Crows series by Leigh Bardugo.

Pages: 561 pages

Length: 2 months (July)

Participants:bailey, Lulo, Lorraine, Caterina, Celina, Kelly. Mara, Clare

Everyone reads at their own pace during a Buddy Read. Because participants can be at different parts of the book at different times, it is extremely important to mark spoilers so that the book is not ruined for someone who is not as far along as others!!!

Mark spoilers by placing {spoiler} before the text and {/spoiler} after the text but use the < and > instead of the { and }.

SarahKat updated the book to be a 2-month read. In light of this, is anyone interested in starting this book soon? Or should we wait until June?

I wont be able to read it in May. June will work better for me.

Lorraine wrote: "I wont be able to read it in May. June will work better for me."

I'll wait to start until June!

This has been moved to the June Buddy Reads folder

Thanks Sarahkat!

Caterina. I should be able to start slowly as soon as Monday. Would that work for you?

Sure, that works for me! I have the book so I can start whenever we want to start. I hope that others will also be joining the buddy read in June.

I have yet to grab a copy of this book yet so I might not start it for a few more days. I'm in the middle of moving and still need to go get a new library card. But I will definitely be reading it this month one way or another!

I also bave to postpone a little. Hope to start this weekend.

I am participating in the readathon over the next 10 days, so I will start this book afterwards.

Same here!

Read part 1. Good!

I have problems getting into this story. I find it is good but somber and a lot of time spent on getting ready for action. I think I will need more then the last 3 days of June to finish it. How is everyone going? Should we aksed SarahKat to add it in July or some of you decided to pass and wait for another time?

It's a great idea to extend it another month. I haven't started the book yet. I participated in the readathon and signed up for too many buddy reads, so this took a backseat. I just finished my tbr-twins book today and plan to finish Wuthering Heights tomorrow. And then I'll start Crooked Kingdom. I'm very excited to read it, but I did overextend myself this month.

I was hoping my hold on the ebook would come back in before the end of the month but it's not looking like that's going to happen. Might end up caving and buying myself a physical copy to read! So I'm absolutely for extending another month!!

I’ll ask SarahKat.

This has been moved to July's folder!

Thanks @SarahKat!

I've finished. It took me a while to really get interested in that story but when I got there, I had to finish the book right away. There is a lot of 'twists' in this story. When you think that something is going to happen, somethjing else does. We do spent a lot of time which each character and that's interesting. In the end, I think this is a good book.

Glad to hear you enjoyed it, Lorraine!

I finally caved and ordered a copy online so I’m hoping to start it this weekend or next week 🤞

I've read the first chapter finally! Which was once again a character not from our main cast so it was a bit slow to start. Hoping it'll pick up once we get back into where we left off in the last book.

I finally started this book last week and I have read through Part Four. So far, the twists have been so good!

Ch. 1 - I am also interested to see how Retvenko fits into the story.

Ch 7 - Inej - Excellent twist in this chapter! (view spoiler)[Instead of breaking out Inej, Kaz and crew kidnap Van Eck's pregnant wife. All of Van Eck's manpower was focused on guarding Inej, meaning they would have had no chance to break her out had they tried. I love characters outmaneuvering each other. (hide spoiler)]

Ch. 13 - Nina - Oops I think this chapter contained a spoiler for the Shadow and Bone series, so now I know how that ends. I read the first book and I requested the next two books in the series from the library. It appears to be super popular, because I am still waiting on those holds, almost two months later. If you're looking to avoid the spoiler, I would skip over the bottom half of page 192.

Ch. 14 - Wylan - I am heartbroken for Wylan.

I also LOVE the world-building in this series. It's so interesting to watch the humans and magical characters work together and see how each one can shine in different situations. It's not often that you read about a world where the most powerful beings, the Grisha, are indentured outside their own country. I also appreciated that there was a discussion about Ravka's money problems. We get a very nuanced description of the ramifications of a long war. I definitely plan to finish Shadow and Bone to understand what happened all those decades before.

The other aspect of this series that I love is the agency that every character has. Kaz is their leader, but the other five characters don't just follow him blindly. They have their own plans for the future and they push back on Kaz's decisions when those don't align with their own self interest. We saw in the first book but even more so in this book. I love that all of our characters have serious flaws but they are all accepted as they are. Even though this is YA, we get fully formed characters that are each looking to make their own choices and their own way in the cruel, cruel world they live in.

I find it surprising that this is YA, because from my experience, many books in fantasy YA don't portray this much nuance and depth.

All done and I loved the book! I wish this was a longer series, because I will miss Kaz, Inej, Nina, Wylan, and Jesper. (view spoiler)[Why did Mattias have to die? 😩 (hide spoiler)]