Holly Black

The Cruel Prince is worth the read

I looked at the Cruel Prince on Audible many, many times, before buying it. The premise was interesting—human sisters raised in faerie land—but it seemed like it would be unhappy and gritty (the sample included microwaved fish sticks, which are both unhappy and gritty).

I wasn’t really wrong, but I wouldn’t describe the stories as dark. Black’s stories don’t really include much humor, some have the melancholy of bare trees in a snow-less winter. Her stories explore family relationships, trauma, humanity, and power. No story does this more than the Cruel Prince trilogy.

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Here is the Goodreads 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 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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I eventually gave in and tried it because I was so intensely curious.

I’ve now read most (all?) of her stories read in the Folk of The Air world, and one of her other series as well (The Curse Workers).

Folk of the Air is very much not her first rodeo—she also co-wrote the Spiderwick Chronicles if you remember those being made into a film (she’s won awards and written a lot of things!).

I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to describe her writing style—it’s atmospheric the way Hemmingway is atmospheric. Her writing is concise, visceral, and…I keep wanting to say things like “bleak” but then I can’t because the stories are actually quite hopeful. Then I swing around and think “lyrical” but that isn’t right either because she does absolutely nothing to romanticize anything at all.

These are not Tolkien’s elves or even romantasy’s beautiful fey. This world has more in common with Celtic and Welsh mythos. The fae possess power and immortality, but most lack….humanity. Many of the faeries are ugly, have sharp teeth and claws, and do truly horrible things like it’s nothing. But Black never lets you forget that it’s horrible. There are authors who do, but Black isn’t one of them.

All of the Folk of the Air stories are set in the northeast corridor of the USA—so very familiar landscape for me. Black tells stories that center on people who look like people I saw at the mall or worked with when I was growing up, but whose lives and perspectives I didn’t know anything about. She tells stories about kids with bad homelives and recognizably broken families, almost exclusively.

I don’t mean bad like set in a time when women were property or having a protagonist who has to hunt to feed her deadbeat family even though she’s only 17 (hi, Feyre). I mean, set in a recognizable 90s or 00s, kids with absentee or otherwise unreliable parents, or really messed up situations. Neglectful families.

Jude and her sisters are in a more fantastically messed up situation….being lovingly raised by the redcap who killed their parents. Because one of their parents was the redcap’s wife, and when he killed her in a very redcap fit of rage, her children became his responsibility, and he was honor bound to raise them.

I have seen The Cruel Prince described as Jude learning about power, and that’s true. Jude learns the shape, cost, and weight of power through the series. But Jude and Cardan both grapple with the idea of love, and whether or not people as broken as they are can find and keep love.

Since I like this series, you know the answer is yes, they can and do.

Black leans into uncomfortable feelings and highlights parallels you don’t normally think of—things like fear and falling in love both have pounding hearts and shortness of breath.

Narratively, I am extremely impressed with the fact that though this story is first person present tense from Jude’s point of view, she does such a good job describing the actions of others—particularly Cardan—that you can pick up on both what is going on and why Jude has interpreted it the way she has.

Jude, who struggles with a world she both loves and hates and would rather be powerful and safe than good, is a compelling narrator. Whatever a reader is looking for–heart-in-throat action, deadly romance, double-crossing, moral complexity–this is one heck of a ride.

—Booklist, starred review

The Cruel Prince trilogy is one of my favorites now. Cardan is one of my favorite characters (honestly, Jude, too). I don’t really know how to talk about the why’s without spoiling things—but both characters grow, and you learn why they are they way they are, and they don’t want to BE the way they are, and when they find a different way to be, they have the courage to try.

There is a strong supporting cast of characters who all feel real and three dimensional. The political intrigue is intense and complicated by family connections. There are a lot of people to root for (Roach and Bomb 4EVAH) and the fate of Faerie—and even the surrounding human lands—is in the balance.

I pick up the Darkest Part of the Forest when I want something in that vein without wanting to commit to a trilogy (although it is a very thin trilogy), and I’ll pick up Modern Faerie Tales when I miss Roiben and Kaye. The characters from both those standalones have cameos in The Cruel Prince trilogy, but you definitely don’t need to read them in order to read the Cruel Prince (I read them while waiting for the Queen of Nothing to be released).

The Folk of the Air is about family, love, power, and healing. There are some really good characters, complex family dynamics, and satisfying payoffs. ¹

In fact, I’ve about talked myself into a reread. Please excuse me while I go dive into the audiobooks again (oh! And book 2 of the sequel/spin off series about Oak is coming out in March 2024! Pins and needles over here!)

If you enjoy political intrigue, a certain measure of angst, dark fairytale settings, and happy endings, then I recommend giving The Folk of the Air a try.

1. The Folk of the Air books are 1-3 on the spice-o-meter. I think one of the Curse Worker books goes into a little more, but on the whole Black’s catalogue is high on tension and chemistry without being high on explicit scenes. There is some atmospheric sensuality—because fae and parties. There is an on page sex scene between a married couple (I can’t remember if book 2 or 3) but it’s not long and it focuses more on the emotional significance of the event.