Review | The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air #1) by Holly Black

Title: The Cruel Prince

Series: The Folk of the Air #1

Author: Holly Black

Pub. Date: January 2, 2018

Publisher: Hot Key Books

Pages: 384

Format: Digital arc by NetGalley

Find it here:

Amazon, Book Depository


Goodreads 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 years old 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.

In doing so, she becomes embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, discovering her own capacity for bloodshed. But as civil war 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.


My Review:

An interesting read, full of action, a brave (maybe even too brave for her own good) protagonist and even YA politics.

I want to be honest in saying that I didn't get hooked by this book from the beginning. It actually started to make me unable to put it down around 2/3 of the way, which I thought to be considerably late.
That's when all the plot twists and scheming escalated, and when the real action began.
That's when I started appreciating the heroine, too.

That is the reason why I am giving this book 3 stars.

It was a good read, but its pace during the first half of the book was too quick, with too many back stories interrupting the narrative's flow, and scenes taking place so quickly sometimes, that it was hard for me to really connect with the heroine.
A heroine who I found a little reckless, more than brave, most of the time during this period.

I understand that the story had to be built, and the author wanted to get that quickly out of the way so that the action started, but it could have happened a lot more smoothly, in my opinion.

Maybe I am just not used to this writing style.
Nonetheless, I will probably read the sequel, because I would like to keep up with the story's progression.