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 Hight 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 became embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, discovering her own captivity 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.
Stand Alone or Series: Book 1 in the Folk of the Air series.
How did I get this book: Bought.
Format: Paperback
Dark fairy tales were something Merlin and I read a lot of when we first started Book Reading. All of these authors - Melissa Marr, Holly Black, Juliet Mariller, Patricia Briggs, Kim Harrison know about the Seelie and Unseelie Courts and creatures made of wood and air that live on the outskirts of our mortal realm and write about them in exquisite detail. However, a few years ago, I reduced the amount of material I read about this particular type of faerie—not as a slight to the pantheon, but simply because it seemed that the faerie renaissance that had been prevalent in Fantasy and YA SFF at the time had reached its lowest level. But everything changes when a new Holly Black book is released. The Cruel Prince is a tale of the fey of old–the ones who thirst for blood and have their way with humans, playing tricks, telling riddles, compelling and ordering and stealing their way to power.
The Cruel Prince, in particular, is the tale of the three sisters Vivienne, Taryn, and Jude. The eldest, Vivi, is a half-blood descendant of a fey father and a mortal mother. After their mother tricked and disobeyed her faerie husband and retreated into the mortal realm with her human lover, Jude and Taryn, the younger sisters actually twins were born. Together, the sisters enjoy their lives in the mortal world with their human parents that is, until Madoc shows up, blood-hungry. Years later, after learning that his mortal wife had lied and that both she and their daughter were still alive and well in the mortal realm and not dead in a fire, Madoc exacts his vengeance by killing both the mother and the father. Madoc, however, is an ancient creature bound by honour and the customs of his kind: he does not kill or abandon his child or the offspring of his murdered wife.
And so, two mortal twins (along with their half-faerie older sister) end up living as the daughters of one of the High Court of Faerie's most feared and powerful generals. Jude's life is harsh, dangerous, and full of danger among the fey, but it is the only life she has ever known. Jude despises her frailty and weakness because she knows that no matter how hard she trains and how skilled a tactician and warrior she becomes, the faeries around her will always be stronger, faster, and more talented than she is. Taryn chooses a different course of action, deciding to blend in as much as she can and accepting the almost certain possibility that she will marry and serve as a peace offering to another faerie court. The only faerie child of the three, Vivi, decides to rebel against her mother's killer, determined to go against everything Macon wants for her, no matter the consequences. Better still if she can cause trouble for her new stepmother, Madoc's new wife.
With time, the three girls settle into their roles as the defiant Vivi, the generous Taryn, and the ambitious Jude, and they develop a rhythm. When the High King of Faerie announces that he will be abdicating his throne and leaving the realm, everything changes once more, and Jude seizes the chance to compete in order to win a shield as a warrior under another Faerie's banner. Jude fights back when Taryn and Jude are teased and mocked by Prince Cardan and his cronies, the High King's youngest and most cruel son. She also violates another rule by attracting attention to herself.
Dark fairy tales that explore the crueller side of the fair folk make for difficult novels; as I've already mentioned, I read a tonne of them between 2008 and 2012 or so, by authors like Melissa Marr, Juliet Marillier, and, of course, Holly Black. This brand-new book is reminiscent of those stories, conjuring images of dreadful and lovely faeries and the mortals who dare to coexist with them. The fey are strange and otherworldly with their strength, their customs, and their abilities, and we clearly see the difference between mortal and immortal in Holly Black's latest darkly beautiful world. But a lot of books have done this in the past; what does it matter? Where The Cruel Prince differentiates itself is with its relationships, its focus on family, and all the lines one might cross in the name of that family. This is not a book about a young girl falling in love with a handsome faerie prince who mistreats her, despite what the jacket copy claims; rather, it is about a determined young mortal woman who is aware that she is in over her head but fervently wants to do the right thing for her siblings, brother, and her adopted kingdom. Jude is the one who discovers the covert plans that would either doom or save faerie and plans how to win the game, even though it costs her dearly. Jude is the protagonist of The Cruel Prince. Jude has grown up as a repulsive mortal in the world of the impenetrable, ancient, and cruel, so she has always learned to defend herself (and her other weaker family) from attack. In the end, Jude is less driven by power than by her understanding of power. Her narrative is defined by her tenacity and vulnerability, and I cherished our interactions with Jude.
There are, indeed, instances of laughably trite teenage melodrama, including at least one awkwardly timed romantic interlude that makes you smirk. BUT in a story this rich, with a conclusion that is simultaneously heartbreaking and satisfying, those issues are minor. The Cruel Prince is a fantastic dark fairy tale that I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone looking for one.
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Happy Reading…
