Published in 2016, Leigh Bardugo’s young adult novel Crooked Kingdom is the sequel to Six of Crows; the two form a duology set in Bardugo’s broader Grishaverse. The fantasy world takes its name from the Grisha, individuals with the power to control the elements of nature, the workings of the human body, and inorganic matter. Crooked Kingdom earned a starred review from Kirkus Reviews and was nominated for a 2016 Goodreads Choice Award in the category of Best Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction. The novel takes inspiration from heist fiction and alternates between the viewpoints of various Dregs, a crew of teenage criminals who enact daring schemes and fight for revenge and redemption in a gritty, fictionalized version of 19th-century Europe. The Dregs and the rest of the Grishaverse inspired the Netflix drama series entitled Shadow and Bone. The adaptation, which draws from both Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone Trilogy and the Six of Crows Duology, premiered in 2021. Citations in this study guide refer to the first edition hardcover volume published by Henry Holt and Co.

Content Warning: The source material contains depictions of human trafficking, sexual abuse, physical abuse, substance abuse, and ableism.

Plot Summary

Crooked Kingdom takes place in the city of Ketterdam in Kerch, a merchant-controlled country in Bardugo’s Grishaverse that is based on the Netherlands. Though slavery is technically illegal in Kerch, indentured servitude is common and often coerced; one of the novel’s main characters, Inej, is a survivor of this system. Other important regions include Fjerda (based on Scandinavia), Ravka (based on Russia), Shu Han (based on China), and Novyi Zem (less analogous to any particular place but loosely based on Australia and the Americas). Relationships between the various countries are complicated and often intersect with attitudes towards Grisha; Fjerda, for example, views Grisha with suspicion and even trains people called drüskelle to hunt them, whereas Ravka employs Grisha as soldiers.

In Six of Crows, the first novel in the duology, a merchant named Jan Van Eck hires teenage criminal mastermind Kaz Brekker to break a prisoner out of the Ice Court, the most heavily guarded stronghold in the nation of Fjerda. The prisoner is a chemist who has created a drug called jurda parem that turns Grisha into powerful weapons. Kaz assembles a crew with a range of backgrounds and skills to tackle the job: a Fjerdan Grisha-hunter named Matthias, a Suli (a nomadic people from Ravka) acrobat-turned-spy named Inej, a Zemeni (from Novyi Zem) sharpshooter named Jesper, a Ravkan Heartrender (a Grisha who manipulates the human body) named Nina, and Wylan, who is Van Eck’s disowned son and a budding explosives expert. When they reach the Ice Court, they discover that the prisoner they sought is dead and break out his teenage son, Kuwei. When Kaz tries to exchange Kuwei for the fortune that Van Eck promised, the merchant betrays them and abducts Inej.

At the start of Crooked Kingdom, two Grisha-enhanced soldiers from Shu Han attack one of Ketterdam’s harbors and abduct a Ravkan Grisha named Retvenko. Elsewhere, Kaz and Wylan break into the home of Van Eck’s lawyer and find information that will help them rescue Inej. Meanwhile, Inej attempts escape but is caught and nearly maimed by Van Eck’s men. The threat of a life-altering injury forces Inej to confront her fear that Kaz only values her if she is useful to him, and she loses hope that he will come to save her.

Jesper’s father, Colm Fahey, comes to Ketterdam to discuss the loan that he took out on the family farm to finance Jesper’s education. Jesper gambled away the money, but the Dregs tell Colm that Jesper lost the money to swindlers. They assure Colm that they can regain it in three days’ time and arrange for Colm to stay in a hotel under an assumed name. The Dregs then abduct Van Eck’s pregnant wife and exchange her for Inej. When Van Eck and Kaz trade hostages, the merchant sets the city’s police after the Dregs. Inej and Kaz escape to safety, but Nina, Jesper, Matthias, and Wylan are attacked by more Grisha-hunting Shu soldiers like the ones who abducted Retvenko.

Back at the Dregs’ hideout, Kaz unveils his plan to ruin Van Eck and make them all millionaires by destroying the sugar in the merchant’s silos. Inej refuses to participate until Kaz agrees to smuggle every Grisha in Ketterdam to the safety of Ravka. Matthias and Nina find these Grisha refugees hiding under the Ravkan embassy and convince them to let the Dregs sneak them out of the city on Van Eck’s ship. Meanwhile, Wylan discovers that his mother, whom he believed dead, is alive and wrongfully confined in an asylum on Van Eck’s orders.

Unbeknownst to the Dregs, Van Eck partners with Pekka Rollins, the mob boss who ruined Kaz’s life by swindling him and his brother when they were just children. Rollins’s men lay siege to the Dregs’ hideout, and Matthias devises an escape plan that utilizes Jesper and Kuwei’s Grisha powers. Rollins also sends an assassin named Dunyasha after Inej, preventing her from completing the silo job. However, Nina uses her Grisha powers to order an army of corpses to save Inej and drive off Dunyasha. Pekka Rollins himself appears at Van Eck’s mansion and prevents Kaz and Wylan from stealing the seal that they need to finalize the documents for the ship. Kaz and Wylan escape Rollins and Van Eck’s guards, but their plans are ruined. Kaz’s crew and Kuwei gather in Colm Fahey’s hotel room and watch as every gang in the Barrel (Ketterdam’s criminal district) unite with the city’s police force in search of them. Kaz briefly considers turning himself in so that the others have a chance to escape but then concocts a new plot.

In accordance with Kaz’s new plan, Kuwei puts himself on auction so that the Ravkans can purchase his indenture, and Jesper’s father tricks the Kerch Merchant Council into investing in a fictitious jurda consortium. Kaz’s crew needs reinforcements to pull off the scheme, so he goes to the Dregs’ headquarters and wrests control of the gang from its former leader, Per Haskell. The night before the auction, Nina and Kaz take a sample from a body in the city’s morgue. The next morning, two Dregs disguise themselves as members of Rollins’s gang and take Wylan to his father, who orders them to beat the details of Kaz’s plan out of his son.

During the auction, the Grisha refugees disguise themselves as Ketterdam’s mysterious and powerful Council of Tides and put a stop to the proceedings, declaring that Van Eck conspired to funnel money to the Shu (amid other crimes). The police arrest Van Eck, leaving Wylan in control of his father’s business empire. After achieving his vengeance on Van Eck, Kaz torments Rollins and tricks him into fleeing the city by pretending that he buried Rollins’s son alive.

While the auction is going on, Nina uses the sample from the morgue to make Ketterdam’s citizens think a plague is spreading. Amidst the ensuing chaos, Jesper uses his Grisha powers to shoot Kuwei with a rubber bullet. Matthias ensures that the police believe Kuwei is dead, but a young Fjerdan charges him with treason and shoots him before he can rejoin the crew. Matthias makes Nina promise to continue fighting against the hatred and prejudice between their nations and dies in her arms.

The Dregs say their goodbyes to Matthias and to one another as Kuwei, Jesper’s father, and Nina prepare to sail from Ketterdam. Three weeks after the auction, the members of the real Council of Tides demand that Kaz give them Kuwei’s location, but he makes them stand down by threatening to spread the plague to their towers. Kaz gives Inej a warship, and they resolve to fight together to rid Ketterdam of all who profit from slavery. Kaz works one more magic trick; the deal he made with Ravka reunites Inej and her long-lost family. In the novel’s final chapter, Inej frightens Rollins into abandoning his life of crime forever.