Category: Blades in the Dark: Discussion

Just Finished the Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo. Highly recommended!

The story once jumps between the crews’ points of view, giving us insight into each character’s view of the world, hiding and revealing plot points to some and not others, and – importantly, as a point of difference between Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom – delves far deeper into the lives of our protagonists than previously shown. This, I think, is where Blades players will dig the ebb and flow of the tale – it closely resembles the Score -> Downtime -> Freeplay sequence of playing the Blades RPG.

There is a slight change of pace to the hectic Six of Crows, and the scenes of character introspection peppered throughout provides some breathing time and caused me to be irreversibly hooked, as we found out more and more about why these broken people are who they are. Their ‘vices’ became detailed, their friends and enemies became connected to the story and the eponymous ‘success with serious consequence’ pervades the narrative.

However, the meat of the ‘score’, when we’re not in these reflective moments, the story progresses at Bardugo’s standard breakneck speed. Overall, the story is gripping, reminiscent of Lynch’s Gentlemen Bastards series in nature, but darker, with more broken and engaging characters struggling; fighting to grow.