Check out the newly revealed cover for Crooked Kingdom, the sequel to Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows!

Crooked Kingdom, the sequel to Leigh Bardugo‘s Six of Crows, has a cover and it’s wicked awesome!  The L.A. Times got the exclusive on this, plus an interview with the talented author.  Read it after the jump!

In the first book, revenge was a large part of Kaz’s goals. But now there’s a whole new villain involved and it seems to be saying that the stakes are higher. Are they indeed higher? And what sort of stakes are we looking at?

This is still very much a story about revenge and potentially redemption for some of the characters. In the first book you had the team moving, going out and having to journey to another country to pull off this heist. The second book is more of a con book than a heist book, there are heists in it, but it’s much more about the grand con.

What you have is all of these countries from around the world descending on [the city of Ketterdam]because they still want to get their hands on this drug, jurda parem. It could really change the face of magic, and warfare in the world. There are a lot of different players operating; the gangs of Ketterdam coming in to play, Kaz’s old rivals, international powers who have their own stake in the game.

Basically a war is going to be fought on the streets of Ketterdam for what’s going to happen to magic and everyone that’s influenced by magic in this world.

How much time are we going to spend in Ketterdam?

Ketterdam is pretty much the city I always wanted to write about. It’s a mix of the Dutch Republic, Amsterdam, Antwerp, old New York, Victorian London, Vegas. It has a lot of different influences in it and this is very much a book that’s tied to that city. You’re going to get a much better sense for sort of the different parts of the town and the way it works, and the way power works in the city as well. There’s a big world war that’s being decided in these streets, but you also have some decisions that are being made about Kaz’s future and the future of the city itself.

Your books like to mix the real with the magical. But the characters still eat turnips (or they replace watches with turnips). It’s still grounded in reality. How do you find a balance as to what the readers can take, as to what they find believable?

You know fantasy, you’re always walking this line between the fantastical and the real. And I think that what we’re really doing is taking the real world and applying a different kind of lens to it. We’re sort of looking at the gaps between things and sort of shadows and mysteries that appear between things and we’re just kind of diving into those.

I think the biggest thing that grounds the story is the characters. If you believe the experiences they’re having, then you’re probably going to be willing to invest in and believe in the world. I think as long as you abide by the rules that you set, you can do pretty much anything you want.

I think that people start getting frustrated with speculative fiction or with fantasy fiction, when they don’t feel like any rules apply. Or when the author sets up the rules and then violates them. There are times when I think, “Wow it’d be really great if I could magic myself out of this situation.” But it really doesn’t work that way. And you find different stories because you’ve set those challenges for yourself and you’ve set those limits for yourself.

What can you tell us about this new big bad?

Oh, well you know Van Eck is more powerful in some ways than Pekka Rollins could ever be because he’s protected by respectability. And that’s not something that Kaz has ever sought, but it’s something that offers a kind of protection and a kind of influence that he’s also never had to fight before. So it’s sort of like, if you’ve been boxing your whole life and all of the sudden you’re fighting a wrestler, it’s a whole different game. That’s really what Kaz is up against in this battle. It would be a mistake to rule Pekka out of the game too.

Crooked Kingdom is set to be released on September 22, 2016.

Read the full interview at LA Times