“What could I become if I stopped worrying about death, about pain, about anything? If I stopped trying to belong? Instead of being afraid, I could become something to fear.”
Blurb:
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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REVIEW:
The Cruel Prince… Where do I even start?
This was my first book by Holly Black, and I don’t really know what to think about it, to be completely honest. Looking at Goodreads, it has a lot of hype and 5-star-reviews, which made me pick it up in the first place. I also think the hype is what killed it for me in the end. I am a sucker for all things fae-related. Sarah J. Maas’ A Court Of Thorns And Roses series is one of my all-time favorites so I expected to absolutely love this book after reading the blurb.
Did I like the book? Yeah, I did.
I liked the writing, beautiful world-building and the differences between faeries and mortals.
Was it mind-blowing with twists and turns at every corner that made my heart race? No, it wasn’t. Not for me, at least.
The story starts off with the murder of Jude’s parents, who is the female protagonist in this book. So, Jude, her twin sister Taryn and her half-sister Vivi are whisked off to Faerie by Vivi’s father, a fae general named Madoc and their parents’ murderer. Fast forward ten years, we see that Jude and Taryn have adapted to life in Faerie and made it their home, but they were never accepted because of their mortality.
Being human means being less… being frail… being weak.
And here lies one of my problems with the book. Jude, to me, is not a strong heroine but rather a power-hungry girl hell-bent on being accepted as one of them, no matter the cost and what she has to do to get there. She doesn’t form strong bonds of friendship and allies with anyone but rather lies and manipulates her way to get a powerful position at Court. Jude doesn’t really have any sense of loyalty or honor, in my humble opinion. The only thing she cares about is being the human girl the Fae fear and that’s what drives her throughout the whole story.
The rare moments of Jude’s vulnerability sprinkled throughout the book where few and far between. They gave me just enough hope to push through hoping she’ll redeem herself in the end. To some extent I can understand how Jude feels and I sympathize with her, which is why I haven’t lost hope… yet.
Now onto Cardan, the cruel prince torturing Jude for his own amusement, or so it seems. For most of the book, the reader is kept in the dark about the reason for Cardan’s hate. Turns out that years of cruelty, mockery and meanness towards Jude are because of jealousy! And I get it.
His entire life Cardan has never gotten an ounce of love from his family. The only thing he got was pain and suffering, so he doesn’t understand how a human girl can be loved by a fae man who’s not even her real father. Cardan is confused by his feelings for Jude.
Besides, Cardan is only really cruel to Jude in the first half of the book… they get to a sort of understanding in the second half, which I loved. It made me warm up a little bit towards Jude and Cardan and kept me glued to the pages until the end.
That ending though? That Cliffhanger? Definitely makes me want to see what’s going to happen next. I have a feeling that Jude is not going to have it easy. Which, I have to say, she did it to herself! But I am curious and will continue with the series.
It's 3½ stars from me.
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