Point of Review: The Cruel Prince

***THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SLIGHT SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST BOOK IN THE FOLK OF THE AIR TRILOGY. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK***

The Cruel Prince is the first book in The Folk of the Air trilogy, a popular series written by Holly Black. For roughly a year now, it’s been making lots of appearances on the book side of social media, like Tiktok, Instagram, and YouTube. After seeing a lot of raving reviews for it, I read the book for myself. As someone who’s never read Holly Black or Fae* stories before, these are my thoughts on the wildly popular book.

SUMMARY:

The Cruel Prince follows the story of Jude Duarte, a human girl who lives with her human twin Taryn and her half-fey sister Vivienne. Originally from the human world, Jude and her sisters were whisked away to the High Court of Faerie when she was seven, right after her parents died. Ten years later, Jude is still trying to fit in. But it’s hard when you’re human and everyone else is a human-hating fey. And it’s even harder when your main rival is the youngest and cruelest of the High King of Elfhame, Cardan Greenbriar.

Jude knows that the only way for the folk of Elfhame to accept her is for her to secure a place in the High Court. And to get it, she’ll have to go deeper into the fey’s history, risk her honor and life multiple times, learn closely-guarded secrets, spy for some important figures, make deals with fey who wouldn’t have blinked an eye at her, and hone her own ability for trickery, lying, deceit, and murder.

RATING AND REVIEW:

I’d give this story a solid 4 stars.

This was my first time reading a Holly Black book, and needless to say, I’m extremely excited to get my hands on the two sequels. The Cruel Prince has it all: a strong female protagonist, betrayal, faeries, enemies-to-lovers, the whole package. It was quite a ride to see Jude’s journey through this book and how she and the other characters interacted.

One of my favorite things about this book is how Holly Black wrote these characters. She shows that these characters are not perfect people; they’ve done some bad things, some unforgivable. But what differentiates these characters from the truly evil ones is how they act upon those mistakes. Jude is very good at killing and fighting, and doesn’t hesitate. However, what she does in the end is for not only herself, but for her sisters as well. Vivienne might be reckless and disobedient, but she cares deeply both for her fey family and her human family. In the end, even Cardan can be seen as a semi-decent person. Their reasoning and good tends to outweigh the bad, and Black really emphasized this to make her characters more well-rounded.

In addition, the story itself was fun to follow. Yes, it is more of a character-driven story, but these parts of the plot are enjoyable and help with Jude’s character development. I loved every fight scene, every spy scene, every betrayal and every kiss. While some twists were a little predictable, there were others that I didn’t see coming, and were a great delight (and shock) to read.

But there are some issues here. There was a small plot hole, which I won’t reveal because it involves a major spoiler. But otherwise, I felt like the plot was irregularly paced, sometimes going very fast, and other times going very slow. It wasn’t super easy to follow. And like I said, some twists in the story were predictable. I found myself waiting for the big reveal and thinking ‘oh, here it is’. The first third of it was pretty boring, with the classic bully or bullies, and the misfit being bullied. Not very interesting. It was only after that when I really found myself into a wild ride. And boy, did I love it. In the end, I still really enjoyed this book!

WRAP-UP:

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to lovers of fae stories and fantasy in general. The Cruel Prince was a well-crafted tale of fey, death, backstabbing, and love. The world-building was enchanting, and the characters even more so. This book was one of those stories that takes you in with it, where you find yourself with your favorite character, dancing in the balls and fighting in the battles. Now with the sequels on hold, I’m ready to dive into them faster than Cardan can drink a goblet of enchanted faerie wine.

*Another slight misunderstanding a new fantasy or fae reader might see: Fae and fey. In The Cruel Prince, Holly specifically refers to Faeries as fey. However, the subgenre of stories with these characters is spelled Fae. Sometimes, spelling (fae vs fey) varies from author to author, but they mean the same general thing.