'When fear arrives, something is about to happen.'

'Better terrible truths than kind lies.'

'What you want and what the world needs are not always in accord, Kaz. Praying and wishing are not the same thing.'

'I would come for you. And if I couldn’t walk, I’d crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were, we’d fight our way out together—knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that’s what we do. We never stop fighting.'

'You’re not weak because you can’t read. You’re weak because you’re afraid of people seeing your weakness. You’re letting shame decide who you are.'

'We can endure all kinds of pain. It’s shame that eats men whole.'

_________


In this Crooked Kingdom, the Wraith has needed the crews' saving her.

Plans after plans, after double-crossed over double-crossed.

And in the seconds follow there are a lot more needed saving -- lives and souls -- and the whole world eventually.

________


In this book we would be venturing through more schemes masterminded by Kaz Brekker and his crews -- Inej, Nina, Jesper, Matthias, Wylan and Kuwei and even more involvement of other characters. We would see how their plan would go down and how they would come up with new one. Meticulous and wise storyline, and conflict development I'd say.

It was a tense and trilling journey reading this book. The suspense was created well, you would almost scream no every single time. A character did die -- and that frustrated me the most, it was like the most ironic way of dying too.

And in light of all the scheming, the author also lets us learn more about the crew's background -- their families, their past. So we will get to be more personal with each character that surely create the emotional connection for me.

I was relentless the whole reading, and I'd say that's a good thing. An indication of a good book indeed.