The Cruel Prince

Introduction

The Cruel Prince was written by Holly Black and published on January 2nd, 2018, by Little Brown Books for Young Readers publishing company. This is one of my favorite fantasy trilogies out there, and I generally recommend this one to people who love smart protagonists and are looking for an incredible slow burn romantic subplot with minimal smut. It is also specifically a faerie romance - in a similar vein of Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses series. If that sounds interesting, but you haven’t read this book yet, I recommend reading it before this review; however, the Spoiler-Free Thoughts section will not contain discussion of any major plot points for this book, just a general overview of my opinions. For those of you who have read this book or who don’t care about spoilers, the Thoughts section contains a more in-depth discussion of my opinions. I would love to hear what others think of this book and series, so please feel free to share your thoughts in these comment sections or in my DMs!

If you want to keep up to date with Holly Black and her upcoming projects, visit her website at https://blackholly.com and follow her on social media @blackholly.

Plot

After losing their parents, twins Jude and Taryn Duarte find themselves in the faerie land of Elfhame. Between their bloodthirsty adoptive father, the cunning royals vying for the throne, and her unique ability to lie, Jude is forced to navigate the magical land and her own vulnerable power alone.

Spoiler-Free Thoughts

The book really starts with a bang. The prologue is well-written, and I found it to be a captivating hook, especially in conjunction with chapter one. I did enjoy the writing style as a whole; even from a third person point of view, I felt like Jude was telling me a story, a twisted fairytale. It’s immersive, even more so because most of the characters - the most central ones, anyway - had complicated backstories that I looked forward to delving into.

I would consider this book a young adult fantasy romance, with emphasis on the fantasy. There is little romance in this book - though there is a romantic subplot - and even less “smut.” Where this book really shines is the scheming and strategizing. With her adoptive father, Madoc, being a war general who delights in bloodshed, she was raised half on a battlefield and half in a strategy room. Watching her terrible odds - due to being a human living in Elfhame - be defied solely by her own wits and honed skills, is amazing. It has made her one of my favorite protagonists and has solidified this series as one of my favorite - if not my favorite - fantasy trilogies.

This is all made even richer when factoring in a simple fact of this world: humans can lie, but faeries can’t. They use language like an art form, twisting the meanings of phrases so that every word spoken is true, but only on a surface level; a land of liars speaking only the truth. Rereading it is particularly rewarding because many of the events could be predicted simply by reading between the lines and paying attention to the subtext. By the time everything comes together to form the bigger pictures, the results are tragically satisfying. The ending itself is astounding, and while the book did wrap itself up cleanly, there were enough loose ends that I was itching to read what happened next.

I really love this book, but there is more to come, and I know that the series does get better from here, so I’m going to rate this book an 8.5/10.

Thoughts

Cardan, true to the title, is portrayed as irredeemably as possible within the first several chapters, and it could honestly be a toss-up whether he or Madoc is worse at first impressions. He is predictably and unreasonably cruel, not to mention ruthless without any justification outside of self-righteousness. I really loved to hate him at first. Then there was a slow addition of depth to his backstory and motivations that made me reluctantly start to like him. His abuse at Balekin’s hand was one thing, but for it to be punishment for not harming a human servant, for not learning to fight at all as a result of his distaste for violence, made me believe his cruelty didn’t run as deep as initially portrayed. In fact, he appears to be the other side of Jude’s own coin; both were expected to be a certain way, so they chose to lean into expectations and make themselves worse than anyone could have imagined, both products of others’ assumptions. He also chose to turn his weaknesses into his strengths; he cannot fight or defend himself with a sword, but he made himself remarkably observant and skilled with language. Despite everything, he manages to be almost charming. All of this came to a boiling point when he confessed that not only was he obsessed with Jude, but he absolutely hated himself for it. It is one of my most anticipated parts of the book because he cannot lie. Every word spoken is true, which only amplifies its intensity.

It is eventually established why Jude feels she couldn’t go back to the human world; she has been molded by Madoc for Elfhame, despite its inhospitable tendency towards humans. As far as Madoc is concerned, some of my favorite chapters were within his household, solely for the character dynamics there. I feel like he does care about Jude and Taryn - in the way Madoc can care about anything - but faerie prejudices run deep. Despite training her himself, Madoc has minimal faith in Jude’s ability. Better yet - as frustrating as that is for her - she turns everyone’s underestimations of her into her greatest advantage against them. In fact, Jude is phenomenal at turning her own weaknesses into strengths, as Cardan does. The best examples of this are the gease she is granted from Dain, ensuring that her human mind can never be ensnared by a faerie's glamour, and her mithridatism. Much as she hates it, she is complementary to Cardan, the sword to his crown. Though they loathe to do it, they work well together because of this. And of course, their arguing and bantering makes it all the more entertaining.

Another interesting relationship was between Jude and Taryn. I feel like I don’t see twins - or even a twin - as the primary protagonists in a lot of the books I read, and while a sibling bond is one thing, that between twins arguably runs deeper, or at least more intense. Jude would do just about anything for Taryn, the only thing she struggles to grant her sister is the invisibility she so craves. Taryn would rather roll over and play nice with the faeries because for humans, being unnoticed is their safest option. Jude feels the opposite, craving notoriety for her skill and refusing to grant the faeries the satisfaction they seek in humiliating her. All of this makes Taryn’s eventual betrayal with Locke just that much worse. Jude became exactly what she never wanted to be, a pawn in their twisted games. Something to be used and discarded for their entertainment, and so much of it was done at her sister’s selfish hand, either directly or indirectly, despite all Jude gave for her.