The Cruel Prince

The Cruel Prince

Author: Holly Black 

Rating: 3.5/5 

Recommend: Fans of authors like Cassandra Clare and Leigh Bardugo are welcome to try this book. The Crown Prince feels like an extension of Cassie’s world, where we see the politics of the fae. There are some truly great parts to it such as the beautiful illustrations in every chapter and the cover, and the well-planned plot line. 

I don’t usually give ratings below four to bestselling novels, but there’s just something about The Cruel Prince that didn’t feel quite so compelling to me. Nevertheless, I’ll begin with it as I always do: first with a plot summary, and second with the parts which both appealed and did not appeal to me. 

Welcome to Faerieland – a place where both your sunniest dreams and your worst nightmares can come true. This realm and its inhabitants are as beautiful as they are deadly; they make up for their inability to lie with cruelty and madness and hate. This is the place where young Jude, along with her twin sister Taryn and their elder fae sister Vivianne are thrust into as children. They’re raised under the care of the Faerie who murdered their parents and mere mortals, Taryn and Jude, are hated by almost all of faerie-kind. Ten years later we follow the story of Jude: the hate she has faced while growing up, the intense bullying from the cruel fae prince in her class which is getting worse, and her struggle to defend herself against these alien creatures that are so much stronger than her. 

Stunning fan art of Jude

I loved the first few chapters of this book. They presented an intriguing story with lots of emotions of the characters involved. It was when the bullying really started that my dislike for it started to get to me: the fae teens (including the prince in the book for whom it is named) were immensely cruel to Jude. To be honest, except for Jude’s older sister and the three other thieves in the Court of Shadows, there is not one other fae character in the book that I liked because they were either A)the ones inflicting pain or B)the ones who stood and watched the others inflicting pain. After all that Prince Cardan, aka “The Cruel Prince” has done to Jude and countless others besides, it just seems wrong that they should fall in love. Seriously.

The Cruel Prince, Cardan on the left and Jude on the right

The three thieves nicknamed Bomb, Roach, and Ghost were the only three faerie characters in the book that made Jude feel accepted, and more importantly, had some personality other than needlessly hateful/jealous/mean. Vivianne was a constant support through the plot too. Apart from these role, the faerie land was depicted as such a beautiful, yet horrible place that I couldn’t help feeling sorry for our protagonist; the creatures are truly vile. I felt the need for a lot more character development in the novel. Holly has done a great job coming up with a twisted and complex plot line, yet Jude is the only character whom I could understand to an extent. 

One of my favorite scenes!

Jude’s sister Taryn has just been made out as weak, selfish and a traitor: but, I want to know why she did the things she did! What could have driven her to betray and go against her own sister? The same goes for Cardan. I get that he has been tortured too, but his feelings for Jude need to be made far clearer than simply “desire and shame in his eyes”. Maybe switching the character viewpoints in the next novel will help? Oh, and we’ve also been left hanging on the subject of Jude’s mother: why did she run, and why did she say that Jude is “no one’s child”? There are a lot of questions and very few answers. 

I also loved the illustrations in The Cruel Prince, which is the one thing that made it stand out from the other fiction novels similar to it. Despite the fact that the events near the last few chapters got a little rushed, Holly Black’s plot twist was a stroke of genius. 

Yes, yes, they begin to fall in love

The Cruel Prince is the first book in The Folk Of The Air series, with the second book planned to release in January 2019. Will I read it? Definitely. I’m quite eager to find out how Holly will continue the story in her next novel, though at the same time am desperately hoping for something that feels a little less hateful and a lot more exciting.