Book Review: The Cruel Prince

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

By: Holly Black

Published By: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Publication Date: January 2, 2018

Page Count: 384

Buy it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or IndieBound

Source: Amazon Vine Review Program

Young Adult - Fantasy

I didn’t expect to like this any more than an average amount. I was looking for a story with magic and faeries, and when I wasn’t looking it snuck under my nose and stole my heart. 

 The Cruel Prince is everything a great story should be - unpredictable, captivating and lovable. The characters have depth and no one is as they seem on the surface; the language is easy to read while also offering new words to look up and savour; and the world of faery is rich and well developed. 

 The intrigue and dynamics between Jude, a human stolen from her murdered family, their murderer and her adopted father, Madoc, and Cardan, a pitiless faery prince, were formidable and a delight to unfold. It was never totally clear quite how much Jude could trust anyone, and this pushed her through challenges to emerge out the other side as a very sharp player in the future of faery. 

 I will be awaiting the next instalment eagerly, and heartily recommend this to fans of Julie Kagawa’s Iron Fey books.

Summary:

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. 

 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.