A review by wise_old_fishie
The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

adventurous dark funny medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

it has now been a good 8ish months since I read it and have finally gotten around to reviewing it so i'll do the best I can :)

I really liked this book because I found that there was a lot of pretty interesting 'world-building' where we just got to kind of see jude's day to day life without too much BIG changes and wild plot-twists (well compared to the other 2 books especially. Though I kind of found Jude to be another boring mc (though bearable enough). I kind of liked cardan despite his actions, he is a silly (but mean) guy.
 
 
Personally i do think that cardan was really cruel in this book (and this doesn't make his actions excusable), after reading the rest of the books (and especialy after delving into how the king of elfhame learned to hate stories, we can see the roots of how he behaves and especialy why he treats jude the way he does. I also found jude's relationship/attitude towards MDOC kind of strange, I can both see where she's coming from with the whole 'he killed my parents' which I think makes perfect sense, but he also raised her for like, well alot longer than her parents did, and it's sort of in him to kill them, as he's a redcap. It's not like idk, an excuse, but Jude also should take into account that Madoc isn't a human, and that it's part of his nature and his race to do shi like that.
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