Hello, friends! The Folk of the Air trilogy was filled with vicious faeries and a whole load of betrayals. I didn’t pick up The Cruel Prince when it was first released and missed the height of the hype. I didn’t know who Jude and Cardan were and why everyone was shipping them. Now, I know!
Navigate through this post with the titles below:
👑 The Cruel Prince | 🗡 The Wicked King | 🐍 The Queen of Nothing
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The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
Series: The Folk of the Air #1
Published January 2nd 2018 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Age Range: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Paranormal
Rating:
Synopsis:
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 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.
As Jude becomes more deeply embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, she discovers her own capacity for trickery and bloodshed. But as betrayal 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.
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Holly Black knows how to write a fantasy faerie novel. After all, she’s the queen of faeries. Like most, faeries in The Cruel Prince are beautiful but nasty, bloodthirsty, and arrogant. Regarding mortals as toys, Jude’s classmates in the faerie world are terrifyingly childish and awful. Jude became their target. It made me question why everyone was shipping Jude and Cardan since he was one of her bullies.
Jude was a badass. In the land of faeries, she was underestimated and belittled. Unfortunately, Jude can fall under their glamor and be forcefully commanded to do things. Gradually, Jude became more strategic in her comebacks and learned to fight with words. Naivety and innocence won’t work in faerie land.
“Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It’s disgusting, and I can’t stop.”
A complex character, Cardan made contradictory actions which made me wonder who he actually was and what he was actually thinking. While he has an intriguing perspective, Cardan can often abuse his position as a prince. Readers soon figured out that Cardan is more than the “party and get drunk all night” prince.
I read The Cruel Prince incredibly fast. Every page was entertaining. Holly Black just pulled me into the world of faerie. Holly Black is a new-to-me author so this was definitely a treat! The Cruel Prince was perfection and wild and vicious and deadly with lots of tabby scenes and manipulation.
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Navigate through this post with the titles below:
👑 The Cruel Prince | 🗡 The Wicked King | 🐍 The Queen of Nothing
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The Wicked King by Holly Black
Series: The Folk of the Air #2
Published January 8th 2019 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Age Range: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Paranormal
Rating:
Synopsis:
You must be strong enough to strike and strike and strike again without tiring.
The first lesson is to make yourself strong.
After the jaw-dropping revelation that Oak is the heir to Faerie, Jude must keep her brother safe. To do so, she has bound the wicked king, Cardan, to her, and made herself the power behind the throne. Navigating the constantly shifting political alliances of Faerie would be difficult enough if Cardan were easy to control. But he does everything in his power to humiliate and undermine her even as his fascination with her remains undiminished.
When it becomes all too clear that someone close to Jude means to betray her, threatening her own life and the lives of everyone she loves, Jude must uncover the traitor and fight her own complicated feelings for Cardan to maintain control as a mortal in a Faerie world.
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The world definitely extended past the Faerie land in The Wicked King. Orlagh, The Queen of the Undersea and Nicosia’s mother, visited the land. As terrifying as the Undersea is, I wished we had more time to explore the place. Holly Black’s writing is still captivating and entertaining. Filled with betraying, stabby, and vicious faeries, The Wicked King was fun.
Betrayals! Hidden plans! Secrets! Glamors! Faeries gleefully misdirect truths into falsehood without outright lying, willing to kill and torture. One mortal girl is trying to survive in this horrid situation. Honestly, Jude may be inferior to the faeries in terms of their faerie abilities but she’s capable of standing on her own two feet with her fighting skills, tactical mind, and scheming. Even in a world where outmaneuvering is tough, Jude still managed to do it most of the time. That being said, she needs a break.
“Kiss me again,” he says, drunk and foolish. “Kiss me until I am sick of it.”
Although Cardan was crowned the High King, he never held legitimate power. Cardan spent more time at revelries than meetings with his council. To everyone, he’s a useless king. Nobody knew why he voluntarily appointed a mortal girl as his right-hand man. Due to the promise between Cardan and Jude, there was no knowing when he was heeding her command or when he was actually doing things of his own volition. We got a glimpse of Cardan’s hidden self in The Wicked King as he explained his horrible behavior in The Cruel Prince.
The tension between Cardan and Jude was brilliantly written. They were always opposites, at each other’s throats, and consistently hiding secrets. Their chemistry is great! The flirting veiled by threats got me swooning.
I couldn’t get enough of The Wicked King and the scheming and the deceit and the mind games, especially that ending! What!!! It definitely bumped up The Queen of Nothing to the top of my TBR.
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Navigate through this post with the titles below:
👑 The Cruel Prince | 🗡 The Wicked King | 🐍 The Queen of Nothing
🐍🐍🐍
The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black
Series: The Folk of the Air #3
Published November 19th 2019 by Little, Brown
Age Range: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Paranormal
Rating:
Synopsis:
He will be destruction of the crown and the ruination of the throne.
Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold onto. Jude learned this lesson when she released her control over the wicked king, Cardan, in exchange for immeasurable power.
Now as the exiled mortal Queen of Faerie, Jude is powerless and left reeling from Cardan’s betrayal. She bides her time determined to reclaim everything he took from her. Opportunity arrives in the form of her deceptive twin sister, Taryn, whose mortal life is in peril.
Jude must risk venturing back into the treacherous Faerie Court, and confront her lingering feelings for Cardan, if she wishes to save her sister. But Elfhame is not as she left it. War is brewing. As Jude slips deep within enemy lines she becomes ensnared in the conflict’s bloody politics.
And, when a dormant yet powerful curse is unleashed, panic spreads throughout the land, forcing her to choose between her ambition and her humanity…
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Before going into The Wicked King, I knew how The Queen of Nothing wasn’t up to expectations. Now that I’m done with the finale, I can understand where the disappointment is at. However, I’m not in that group. For a trilogy that is filled with vicious faeries and schemings, the lack of fights and injuries, and deaths seem unrealistic. Many things were predictable and certain things were more said than done. I didn’t care about that much because I wanted to know more about Cardan and Jude.
“To you, I offer honey wine and the hospitality of my table. But to traitors and path breakers, I offer my queen’s hospitality instead. The hospitality of knives.”
The Court of Shadows had some issues when they found that someone has betrayed them in The Wicked King. Also, we found out about the secret pining within the group. Both situations developed further in The Queen of Nothing.
After two books with snarky comments and hated hate-kisses, all I wanted is for them to be reunited in Faerie land. Cardan and Jude brought enemies-to-lovers to another level. The two of them are finally depending on each other to tide through hardships. Despite Jude’s manipulation in pushing Cardan to be High King and him reluctantly becoming her puppet, Jude and Cardan still trusted each other’s instincts. I’m honestly soft for them.
let’s chat:
this trilogy is my first reads from holly black. i can’t wait to read more from her.
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