The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

The Cruel Prince (Folk of the Air, #1)

by Holly Black

"Lush, dangerous, a dark jewel of a book . . . intoxicating" - Leigh Bardugo, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Six of Crows

Of course I want to be like them. They're beautiful as blades forged in some divine fire. They will live forever.

And Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest. I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.

One terrible morning, Jude and her sisters see their parents murdered in front of them. The terrifying assassin abducts all three girls to the world of Faerie, where Jude is installed in the royal court but mocked and tormented by the Faerie royalty for being mortal.

As Jude grows older, she realises that she will need to take part in the dangerous deceptions of the fey to ever truly belong.

But the stairway to power is fraught with shadows and betrayal. And looming over all is the infuriating, arrogant and charismatic Prince Cardan . . .

Enter the dramatic and thrilling world of the Folk of the Air, brimful of magic and romance from New York Times bestselling author Holly Black.

Reviewed by ladygrey on

2 of 5 stars

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So I totally gave in to peer pressure with this one. All the book quotes on pillows and graphics on Instagram, all the authors at panels who said Holly Black is so fabulous with plot. I was curious what all the hype was about.

And that’s the thing with hype, almost nothing lives up to it. This wasn’t a bad book, but I don’t think I’d have loved it even without all the hype.

Hype problem 1 - I know it’s a trilogy and while I’m not entirely spoiled I have an inkling off a few things to come. So a few plot points in this one like all the “I hate you, you hate me” with Cardan and her power plays I didn’t really buy into.

Non-hype problem 2 - I’ve read a few fairy books. So while I hasn’t quite worked out all the details, I wasn’t supposed by much. Faries can’t be trusted and the helpless assumptions are pretty much always wrong. So the good guys are obviously the bad guys—I didn’t believe Locke’s intentions for a second. Or Dain’s. The bad guy isn’t really the bad guy—of course Cardan is attracted to her and all her ideas about what he most be thinking are off base. Ok, Balekin was actually bad so that wasn’t a surprise. Cryptic messages never mean what you think they mean—so Oak was not a surprise at all. And when you don’t get caught in the misdirects in a story there’s not a lot of tension.

So your characters had better be good enough to carry the story without it. Jude worked well enough for this. I liked that she was both kind of naïve but also clever. I liked that she was a bit ferocious and determined.

But like most books, the interesting parts are when she’s interacting with Cardan and there’s not a lot of that. The first pay of the third act when they finally start talking for real and kind of working together was really the best part of the book and no her double cross of him want a surprise—in part because Black tips her hand with Jude trying to figure out how to hold the throne in Oak’s absence and also I knew a little about the second book. I will day that Card as n’s genuine hatred of Jude rather than the typical attraction making as hate and his contrasting desire for her was a good surprise.

While I definitely don’t think this is YA (from a content perspective), and it reminded me a lot of Julie Kagawa’s Iron King series (because they both draw from the same fairy lore) and it’s not bad but it’s also not spectacular— I have the whole trilogy from the library so I’ll keep reading to see how it ends.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 17 March, 2020: Finished reading
  • 17 March, 2020: Reviewed