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

I used to never be a reader who gave into the hype and buzz a new book can sometimes bring along with it. But while Instagram has taken book marketing to an entirely different level, some books are becoming difficult to ignore. Literally thousands upon thousands of readers, reviewers, publicists, and enthusiasts are pushing the free marketing of books attached to hashtags and accompanied by beautiful and creative photography upon Instagram and other social media site purveyors daily. The Cruel Prince was one book that began to saturate my feed as readers latched on to the newest novel by fantasy maven Holly Black; their accolades and insistent cries that the book shattered them caught my interest and I decided to dive in. The opening is brutal. Young Jude and her two sisters are enjoying a quiet afternoon at home, the TV lulling them into a comfortable slumber while their parents tinker about in other parts of their cozy home. Unbeknownst to them, this is the day that everything they have ever known will change, as the man watching their home from across the street decides to finally make his move. The stranger barges into their haven and shatters the idyllic scene by murdering both of Jude's parents in a quick and succinct fashion. Whisked away to the land of Faerie, Jude and her sisters are forced into a life settled firmly on the borders of being outsiders. Her oldest sister, Vivi, being the cause of the disruption in their lives, is ironically the most unhappy with their new situation. She is only Jude's half-sister, the result of their mother faking her own death and spiriting herself and her pregnant belly back to the mortal world, with the help of a secret love. Previously attached to a brutal war general of Faerie, Jude's mother committed the ultimate act of betrayal by hiding the child, and the result was her execution. By the laws vested in Faerie, General Madoc became responsible for the children of his wife the moment she died at his hand, and he takes his responsibilities very seriously. Growing up in Faerie has had its difficulties, almost from day one. Jude is not one of them, not a member of the Fair Folk. She is human: dispensable and fragile; a veritable non-starter. Her saving grace, however, is that she is a member of the upper class and elite. Having been raised by Madoc garners her a touch of reverance. He is a man who commands respect and if he doesn't find it, he takes it by force. Having risen to become the right hand of the Faerie King by hook, crook, and buckets of blood, Jude is afforded a modicum of respect in Madoc's stead. But behind the scenes, she is taunted and ridiculed by her peers, looked at as a pretender, and as a frail human who has no real worth or talent. To say the situation is complicated is an understatement. The worst of those who bully her is Cardan, the beautiful young Prince of Faerie who chooses to amuse himself by taunting her and putting her right onto the cusp of deathly danger before ripping her back. He skulks around the periphery of her life with his band of merry friends, waiting for any opportunity he can find to make her life miserable. Her twin sister Taryn also suffers the same fate of having her life soaked in nasty words and actions . . . but there is something different in the way Cardan treats Jude - almost as if he divines immense pleasure from making her bleed from within, from personally making her feel like less than human . . . and more like an animal. Cardan is cruel, to say the least of it. But Jude has other things on her mind. She has to find a way to solidify her place in Faerie as the impending years of her adulthood begin to creep just over the horizon. She has some ideas on how to do this, but she finds that she's blocked at every turn by her pseudo-father, Madoc. He insists that he has her best interests at heart, and he has always treated her just the same as his true born daughter Vivi, but Jude is cloaked in a blanket of frustration and raw anger. She wants to fight. She's trained for it. So why won't he allow her her chance? She's also finding herself strangely attracted to a member of Cardan's vicious pack, but the man in question seems to have secrets of his own, hidden within the endless depths of his mysterious soul and locked behind the doors of the expansive empty mansion on the outskirts of the forest that he calls home. And then a proposition is brought to Jude, from the most unlikely of characters. The man most believed to become King after the current reign is over comes to her in secret, seeking an alliance. Prince Dain offers Jude her innermost heart's desires, in exchange for information. He wants her to become his spy, part of his Court of Shadows. And Jude must toe the thin line between safety and sure death to get the Prince what he demands. But before Jude can achieve her goal and find her place in Faerie, everything begins to unravel like so much thread from a well-worn sweater. And on an evening that was supposed to be dedicated to a fresh new start, Jude will watch everything burn to the ground, leaving her to pick up the pieces and put them back together all on her own. The Cruel Prince is the first book in the Folk of the Air trilogy, and before I recommend this to you let me say - you will be clamoring for more from the moment you turn the last page. This novel, set in the high-fantasy world of enigmatic Faerie, is sharp and deceptive, taking the reader on a roller coaster ride full of darkness and delight. The writing is masterful and faithful to the fictional world of Faerie as most high-fantasy readers know it. Sometimes YA books can come across as a bit corny, but this one was full of strong female characters and flawed systems. Nothing was obvious, and the plot was well-played. This is one book that lives up to the hype. Appropriate for readers ages 13+, fans of The Cruel Prince would be wise to look into the rest of Black's literary catalogue, as the worlds of her novels have finely tuned connections. Also, the cover art and a sneak peek excerpt has been dropped via Entertainment Weekly - both can be viewed on their website.

So as I am on my fantasy journey this was one that kept coming up on my for you page. So I dived in and was soon hooked. The story is captivating right from the start. You have action packed goodness from the beginning. In the mortal world Jude and her sisters lives are blown upside down when Viv's father Madoc comes crashing in and takes the lives of their mother and father. He then moves them back to Faerie. Judes life is forever changed. Mortals are not well liked there and jude and her sister are bullied from the start. Cardan dishes out the hate more than anyone. This book is fast paced and full of twists and action. Jude is a character you can't help but love she is strong willed, sassy and doesn't let things or people hold her back. She is very much like her adopted father Madoc. Determined to become a knight she takes her own path. Her twin sister Taryn is a different story. she is one person you don't trust from the start and Locke who you just can't help but think is up to something at all times. While this is a YA book it does pull you in and keep you reading. I decoured the story and moved on to the next book very quickly.

Rating: 4.75/5 Stars Title: The Cruel Prince Author: Holly Black Synopsis: Jude was seven years old when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King. To win a place at the Court, she must defy him--and face the consequences. In doing so, she becomes embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, discovering her own capacity for bloodshed. But as civil war threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself. Initial thoughts: I have read a few of Holly Black’s work when I was younger and I’m currently reading the Magisterium series she is writing with Cassandra Clare as they come out, so I have been exposed to her writing style before and have enjoyed her stories. This one I started a little late though because I wasn’t sure how I would feel about the characters as one of them is openly ‘cruel’. I decided to finally pick it up because there are so many people who have said that they enjoyed the story that was written. Excited for a new story involving magic and fae, I felt that I should give it a chance even if there was a chance I wouldn’t like the characters. Plot: What I liked: The main focus wasn't on the romance. Of course there was some romance (if you can actually call the toxic manipulation through emotions romance), but the main focus of this story seemed to be political and world building through the character’s actions which was something I really enjoyed. Jude was also a character that surprised me. I liked her characters a lot and how she handled situations based on her prior experiences learning from past mistakes. I also liked how Black made every character unique in personality and appearance. What I didn't like: I didn't really understand how Jude was so invested in a world that truly only hurt her and why she didn't want to leave. That seemed to be the only thing I had real issue with in this book. Characters: Jude: I liked her and how scheming she was. She was clever and used her skills to her advantage. She was stubborn and stuck to her goals trying to plan ahead even when things didn't always work out. Taryn: She was very selfish and only really thought about how things would affect her. She didn't seem to care about hurting others that trusted her so long as she got what she wanted. She was very similar to Jude in this way. Vivienne: I loved her! She was such a fun character and really cared about her family (other than her father) and was willing to get into trouble for them. Madoc: He was a very interesting character that played father figure and teacher, but also a warlord general. I enjoyed him and the way that he thought throughout the book. Valerian and Nicasia: They were horrible and I kind of hated them throughout the entire book. They were fantastic antagonists, but they really pushing boundaries when it came to what it was that they desired verses what their path toward it was. Prince Cardan: I think that he was the one who surprised me the most through this book. I didn't like him and I didn't hate him either. I hope he continues to surprise me. Oriana and Oak: I didn't like Oriana at first, but she grew on me pretty quickly. And Oak is just precious. Such a cute kid. Prince Dain: It felt almost wrong to like him. I liked him, but didn't trust him as far as I could throw him which isn't very far. The Court of Shadows: I loved each and every one of them! They were fantastic and willing to include which I found endearing to their characters. Overall: I really enjoyed this book and how it kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time and pulled plot twists that actually surprised me. I will be starting the second book when it comes out and look forward to seeing how Black handles the plot that she set up in the cliffhanger she had at the end of the book. I highly recommend this book for anyone looking for a gripping and dark fairytale.

Most of my positivity to this book comes from an appreciation of its technical aspects: I think the writer did a decent, though not exceptional, job of crafting her prose. She especially has a knack for describing clothing, and her research into archaic vocabulary helped add flavor to the story. Some of this was especially nice as it related to the food the characters ate, with some very interesting dishes pulled from both imagination and history. I felt she fell short with her descriptions, however. They were dashed off so thinly that I didn't acquire a very lush mental picture of what was going on. As a reviewer pointed out, it wasn't unusual for her to simply say, for example, that "a troll" was in a scene without even bothering to describe what a troll in this world looks like. In terms of story structure, I thought that she came up with some original ideas. But one place where the story failed, and failed hard for me, was with the characters. They were very well fleshed out as far as their personalities; unfortunately, I found them so dull and uncompelling that it was an absolute struggle to make it through this book. The main character was, for me, immensely uninteresting -- an incredibly flat character who has a couple of moments in the book when she wonders at how broken emotionally she is but does nothing about it. In other words, there is no character arc in this book--and I really rely on that to draw me into a story. Perhaps the protagonist has gone from someone who seeks personal power for hazy selfish reasons (so she can be safe? so she can one-up her enemies and "show them"? because she doesn't want to be controlled? it's never very clear, nor are her motivations very likeable) to someone who seeks personal power for new hazy reasons (so she can protect people from the danger that a new king might possibly, though not for certain, turn out to be a bad ruler? or is it all still mainly so she can protect herself? again, not very clear), but she's still power-hungry, and it doesn't feel like much of an arc. Nor does it feel very consistent that she would suddenly care about anything larger than herself. It doesn't help that her tiny arc doesn't start until the last 50 pages of the book or so. So it means that for most of the book, it's a real slog to follow a main character who has a taste for power and sadism, an inexplicable desire to remain in a brutal Faerie world that never really makes sense when she could just leave and easily survive in the human world, a desire to remain with a foster father who killed her parents for no good reason, who wants to be like a fae while also despising them ... it is just very, very weird. I would really have preferred if the book focused on the one likeable character in it instead: her sister, Vivi. Vivi had the sense to hate her murderous foster father and to want to leave Faerie. She even had a great character goal -- finding love with a human -- and impediments to that goal that added drama (having to reveal her fae nature, her family's disapproval, etc.). It's too bad we had to read about Vivi's unpleasant sister for the whole book instead. Vivi would have made a much more enjoyable protagonist.

Jude and her two sisters are taken to Faerie to live with their mother's former Fae War General lover, growing up in a harsh world of magic and unfriendly Folk. Jude hates that she is mortal and covets many things about the fey. Her life becomes dangerously entangled as her desire for respect, power and adventure meets the attention of the royals...especially Cardan, the prince she hates above all. THE GOOD The world, the diversity, the sense of each character--even the side characters. We aren't entrenched in learning only about Jude and her relation to the world as the MC. Instead there is an array of well-developed and independently driven characters who leave little breadcrumbs about what they've been through, where they've been, and who they've been with. Because the Folk can't lie, they craft their sentences in a way that can leave things with a lot of ambiguity, but when it all starts to click...it is one heck of a ride. From the first brutal pages, the author makes no apologies for the blood-driven power of Madoc, the true father of the eldest sister Vivienne, who has come to reclaim his daughter (and her younger sisters) from the mortal world. You can feel the immediate fear and reverence for the immortal. I love the way that Madoc is made; incredibly strong and strict, but also pliable and deferring to his daughters' whims and wills at times. And his family is, as you can imagine, is not a status quo, nuclear unit. His first wife is slain, his new wife is fey and has a son, and then he has Vivienne, Taryn and Jude. He loves, protects and educates all of them, but he is so much more than a father and the image he projects. Faerie and the mortal world. Yes, you get two coinciding worlds in this beauty of a book. Instead of making the worlds geographically separated by a wall or continent or a magic parallel world, these worlds are overlapped the way you may have seen in early fairy tales. Vivi, while she is one of the folk, likes to travel back to the mortal world with her sisters, and by herself at times. Her rebellion against Madoc is to shun Faerie and enjoy all the human joys of malls, a secret human girlfriend, and indulging her sisters with coffee, candy and shopping. One of my favorite moments is when Jude gets to glimpse part of the mortal world while in Faerie. The description was fascinating and gorgeous. It made me feel how close they were, how far they were, and where Jude's real interest was in this world. The royals are equally fascinating. We don't get to intimately understand all of them, however we learn just enough about each, chapter by chapter. The ailing king. The Crown Prince Dain, the "Cruel" Prince Cardan, the power-hungry Prince Balekin, and glimpses of the princesses and others, including royals from other courts. Cardan was by far my favorite, being deliciously complex and...well, I should move him to the next section. THE GREAT “He looks like a faerie lover stepped out of a ballad, the kind where no good comes to the girl who runs away with him.” The anti-love interest. I know I am a huge fan of anti-heroes, but I didn't quite understand the anti-love interest until now. But now I get it. And it's glorious. Cardan is Jude's main source of torment and her favorite thing to hate. So from this first introduction in the quote above, I'm sorry, but I couldn't help but to think of Rhysand from ACOTAR. The acknowledgment of an unworldly beauty that draws someone in, but also compels them in the other direction. They are satellites of each other in this book, much like Rhys and Feyre were in the first book...entangled by circumstance, but that is where the similarities end. Cardan is a tormentor to her. Jude is a disrespectful and unworthy human to him. Hence, their classmate and royal vs. human relationship statues hold magnificent tension. I don't want to spoil anything, but there are a few twists in this book for them. “I love my parents' murderer; I suppose I could love anyone.” Jude. Jude is the other great of this book. I loved her sisters, but I loved Jude the most because she is so incredibly flawed and aware of it. And what's better...she doesn't act like you would expect a heroine to act. Maybe because she isn't going to be a heroine, ultimately. Two more books to figure her out. She has some noble thoughts, but is also a jumble of envy, longing, rapid mood swings, sisterly love, sisterly hate, and a fair dose of scheming. She isn't described as particularly beautiful, which I think made me love her more because we are seeing her through her eyes. Jude comments on noticing things like her height and hips and the heavy weight of her breasts in comparison to the lithe fey bodies around her. She feels nearly gross with humanness, having to deal with things like deodorant and tampons. In short, she felt like a real teenager. My favorite thing about Jude though? She doesn't know exactly what she's capable of. She has a gut-sense of what to do, but mostly she seems to be getting by on her training from school, from Madoc, and instincts. It feels like she could fall off the very narrow blade she walks on at any moment. And that really propelled the story forward. BUY, BORROW OR PASS BUY. Absolutely buy. This series has only started and the rest of the series became an insta-buy for me after the first chapter. Oh Jude, you don't know what you've done. That ending is going to haunt me.

This book completely deserves the hype. The Cruel Prince pulls you into a cruel, political, and morally gray fae world from the very first chapters. The atmosphere is dark, tense, and emotionally charged, and the power dynamics between characters are constantly shifting. Nothing feels safe, and that’s exactly what makes it so addictive. Jude is a strong and complex main character. She’s not perfect, not soft, and definitely not naive. Her ambition, anger, and determination make her feel real, especially in a world that constantly reminds her she doesn’t belong. The writing is sharp, the pacing is excellent, and the court politics keep you hooked without feeling overwhelming. I won’t go into spoilers, but if you like fantasy with enemies to lovers tension, ruthless politics, morally questionable characters, and a dark fairy tale vibe, this book is absolutely worth reading. It’s one of those stories that makes you immediately want to grab the next book in the series.

I have no idea how to express how much I love this series. I’ve been reading Holly Black, starting with Tithe when I was in middle school and she’s the reason I love fantasy and romantasy today. The cruel prince is a true enemies to lovers story, and you can feel the hate and I love that, it’s like a lot of other ones where it’s enemies and there’s lust underneath not they hate each other and it is a true slow burn as well. Just go ahead and read it.

Bookstagram really hypes up this book, which I do not completely understand. This book was an easy read for me to the point I was able to guess most (if not all) of the twists and turns that occurred. If I read this book in high school I probably would have been obsessed with it, but as an undergraduate college grad, I got joy from reading this book but I am not completely entirely attached. I think the main character Jude is an amazing independent young lady! I think she was a perfect protagonist, but do wish that this series could have been written when she was in her twenties instead of her at seventeen. I think the author would have been able to add more sexual and graphic detail that it seemed like she wanted to add instead of keeping the romance/lust at the PG-13 level. Jude is a decent role model for girls in high school because she has courage, loyalty, and stands her ground, but I did wish she was not as enthralled with the idea of romance as soon as a male took attention with her. I do have to say that I despise Jude’s twin sister in this book and I cannot believe she did many of the things she did. The romance in this book was iffy because it was there, but not really there. I liked how the book focused more on world-building and drama instead of enforcing that romance had to happen. Somewhere in the middle of the book, it seemed like Jude was worrying about finding romance and she was going to let that fear distract her from her goals in life. Jude had so much determination to go for a certain ‘career’ that the fact that she was going to let the idea of romance get in her way was unbelievable to me. I almost wish the author left out any romance for the Jude and just let it be something for secondary characters. The author could have planted seeds of romance in this work to build up in the other books of the series if she truly cared about having a romance in this work. I think the drama and violence were enough to make this book interesting. I am conflicted over the interpretation of the fae in this work. I liked certain aspects but disliked others. I liked how heavily based on folklore the author created her interpretation of the fae! Actual fairytales and folklore warnings children were told were used as facts, which was refreshing to have an author that actually researched the supernatural creature they were using. There were some random additions that I was not interested in like having humans and fae be considered different species, but then supporting the fact that humans were needed to reproduce with because it could be difficult for fae the reproduce. Like I get humans and fae are different, but emphasizing they are different species that should have been separated and never reproduce together was weird when it was needed for this world. Like fae need the human gene pool, so why the hatred? Also, I thought it was weird the way the author went about discussing the subgroups of the different fae. I understand that there were different fae and the traits they had, but the author had some separated by their preferred values, the royal sibling’s court they were aligned with, and then there are other groups/kingdoms of fae. Maybe I am just used to fae reads having courts and certain groupings for the fae and this interpretation having more leeway of the grouping is throwing me off. So, I am going to applaud the author for taking an approach to grouping the fae in a way that is different than the norm. This book got 4 out of 5 stars because the author is clearly skilled in their writing style and if I were to read something of the author’s that was not exclusively fae based I would probably love it. I want to reiterate that the author is talented in their writing skills and I enjoyed how they wrote, I just did not love the story. I do have a slight obsession with fae based books, so I can be picky about how the story progresses. Things that would have made this a perfect 5/5 is to have the protagonist and other main characters are in their 20s, more adult themes instead of just hints to them, the build-up to the twists without being obvious, and either make romance a priority of this work or plant the seeds to it for the next book. As of right now, I do want to read the remaining two books in the series. I have been gifted with the second book in the series, so I will read it eventually. Unless I absolutely hate the second book, I will probably read the third book.