I finished reading this book. Finally. The enjoyment was unquantifiable, perhaps no chart could visualize this feeling. I rarely review books but when I do, the book has to be good.

Spoiler alert.

1. Matthias Helvar was shot and died. Poor Nina Zenik. She cried and some pages were flooded with her tears, even I had to autoclave the book to save it from further damage.

2. Jan Van Eck now had a job at a prison. It required him to stay still and not making any suspicious movement and must reside behind bars without making any fuss.

3. Pekka Rollins and his little son now on the run, presumably because they had nothing left in Ketterdam.

4. Kaz Brekker now seemed so nice, not like a real thief at all. What a transformation!

5. Wylan Van Eck couldn’t read or write, but when he read, he then miraculously owned the estate his father (Jan Van Eck) did not intend to give him in the first place. And now living with his (resurrected from a graveyard) mother (Marya Hendriks) in a mansion shared with his pregnant stepmother (Alys Van Eck).

6. Poor Nina Zenik. Seriously. On the good side, she could now summon zombies. Oh, she was on her way to Fjerda to bury her boyfriend in thick permafrost.

7. Jasper Fahey had reunited with his father, Colm Fahey. And they were financially viable to save their farm. Just so you know, Jesper could bend a bullet’s trajectory from his sniper rifle.

8. Kaz Brekker made a deal with King Nikolai Lantsov to scout for Inej Ghafa’s parents. Inej finally reunited with her parents and even got a nice gift from Kaz, a ship named after her epithet, The Wraith.

Kaz is the best main character. His wits unseat that of Detective Skulduggery Pleasant’s.

First book: Six of Crows (a.k.a let’s kidnap a chemist in a country that looks like the Iceland, filled with blonde hunks, but the chemist died so let’s kidnap the chemist’s son, who turned out to be a chemist-in-progress).

Second book: Crooked Kingdom (a.k.a let’s get our paycheck and put our employer behind the bars for swindling us, and let’s spread a plague so people are scared shitless because chaos creates order).

Caution: You might want to read the Grisha Trilogy first before jumping into Six of Crows & its sequel, Crooked Kingdom. I didn’t actually read the Grisha Trilogy, but I survived. They share the same universe, prior knowledge about the settings do help. Also because some characters were recycled in this series (e.g. Zoya Nazyalensky, Genya Safin, Nikolai Lantsov, etc).

Note on the countries: Kerch sounds like the (Republican’s version of the) United States (very pro on free market, but don’t bat an eye to the working class), Fjerda is Northern Europe, Ravka is Russia, Shu Han is China, Novyi Zem is South Africa.