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A review by doughtah
The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
Did not finish book. Stopped at 14%.
5.0
Holly Black’s The Cruel Prince was a fantastic ride. As someone who enjoys political maneuvering, mean and imperfect characters, and books with faeries, The Cruel Prince was everything I could have wished it was.
Essentially, the plot follows Jude, a human 17-year-old who was brought to the Faeries lands as a child with her twin sister, Taryn, and half-sister, Vivienne. Jude’s beginning goal is simple: become a knight of the court and get the class bullies off of her and her sister’s backs for good. Things, as they tend to do in books, don’t go as planned.
One of the biggest parts of the book that I adored and what had me finishing the book within 24 hours was Jude. She’s fantastic. She’s not a kind person by any stretch of the imagination and she knows it, but she doesn’t revel in it. As the book is written in first-person POV, we the readers get to hear Jude’s internal monologue and every time she does or thinks about doing something cruel, she regrets it. But she does it sometimes! When push comes to shove, she does what she thinks is best and in certain situations, that appears to be the cruel thing. And as a mid-20s reader, I appreciate authors writing about girls who are mean as the main characters. Don’t misunderstand, the wholly good and kind protagonists have their place and they’re enjoyable, too. It’s just not very often that I get to read a book where a girl is written straight out of the gate as one of the better political players on the field. Usually that doesn’t happen for the main character until the third book right before she gives up her power to be Good.
Aside from wonderful, mean Jude, The Cruel Prince has fun in its setting. Yes, the Faerieland is dangerous, but Black gives her all in keeping Faerieland weird and fantastical. There are toad steeds set up right beside horses; strange, too-many-jointed fairies pop up; freaky fruit makes an appearance in one of the more horrifying scenes; and a prince has a tail. And Jude thinks of that world, the world she wasn’t born into but raised in, is far more normal than our human world. There are a couple times Jude ventures into the human world and she is just so uncomfortable in it, it’s amazing. This review feels like it’s turning into a “Jude is amazing” rant and I’m not very sorry for it.
I usually try to come up with something I don’t like about the book, but to be honest I can’t. A few warnings though about the book’s contents: there is a lot of blood and gore (usually artfully done and not crazy graphic), there are a couple instances where Jude and other characters lose their ability to control their moods or bodies but there is no rape, and none of the prominent characters are nice. They’re cruel, manipulative, violent, nasty pieces of work, all of them, I exclude no one from that statement. I know some folks get turned off at main characters being irredeemable and I just want to give anyone reading this review a heads up.
I enjoyed this far more than I expected after not having read a Holly Black book for at least 10 years or so. I’ll certainly have to go back now and read some of the works that have popped up in the interim. This was a load of fun y’all.
Essentially, the plot follows Jude, a human 17-year-old who was brought to the Faeries lands as a child with her twin sister, Taryn, and half-sister, Vivienne. Jude’s beginning goal is simple: become a knight of the court and get the class bullies off of her and her sister’s backs for good. Things, as they tend to do in books, don’t go as planned.
One of the biggest parts of the book that I adored and what had me finishing the book within 24 hours was Jude. She’s fantastic. She’s not a kind person by any stretch of the imagination and she knows it, but she doesn’t revel in it. As the book is written in first-person POV, we the readers get to hear Jude’s internal monologue and every time she does or thinks about doing something cruel, she regrets it. But she does it sometimes! When push comes to shove, she does what she thinks is best and in certain situations, that appears to be the cruel thing. And as a mid-20s reader, I appreciate authors writing about girls who are mean as the main characters. Don’t misunderstand, the wholly good and kind protagonists have their place and they’re enjoyable, too. It’s just not very often that I get to read a book where a girl is written straight out of the gate as one of the better political players on the field. Usually that doesn’t happen for the main character until the third book right before she gives up her power to be Good.
Aside from wonderful, mean Jude, The Cruel Prince has fun in its setting. Yes, the Faerieland is dangerous, but Black gives her all in keeping Faerieland weird and fantastical. There are toad steeds set up right beside horses; strange, too-many-jointed fairies pop up; freaky fruit makes an appearance in one of the more horrifying scenes; and a prince has a tail. And Jude thinks of that world, the world she wasn’t born into but raised in, is far more normal than our human world. There are a couple times Jude ventures into the human world and she is just so uncomfortable in it, it’s amazing. This review feels like it’s turning into a “Jude is amazing” rant and I’m not very sorry for it.
I usually try to come up with something I don’t like about the book, but to be honest I can’t. A few warnings though about the book’s contents: there is a lot of blood and gore (usually artfully done and not crazy graphic), there are a couple instances where Jude and other characters lose their ability to control their moods or bodies but there is no rape, and none of the prominent characters are nice. They’re cruel, manipulative, violent, nasty pieces of work, all of them, I exclude no one from that statement. I know some folks get turned off at main characters being irredeemable and I just want to give anyone reading this review a heads up.
I enjoyed this far more than I expected after not having read a Holly Black book for at least 10 years or so. I’ll certainly have to go back now and read some of the works that have popped up in the interim. This was a load of fun y’all.