The Wicked King

Introduction

The Wicked King was written by Holly Black and published on January 8th, 2019, by Little Brown Books for Young Readers publishing company, just over a year after the release of The Cruel Prince. This book is a solid follow-up to its predecessor, and those who haven’t read it yet can go to the Spoiler-Free Thoughts section for a general overview of my opinions. Those who have read it or who don’t care about having the plot of this book spoiled for them can move down to the Thoughts section for a more in-depth analysis. I love reading what others have to say about the books I review, so please feel free to leave a comment below or message me through 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

Acting as puppeteer and sentinel is taxing as the power Jude schemed for herself begins to fall away. Her year and a day are slipping by, and her options are narrowing with Cardan unwilling to offer more and adversaries waiting for her to fail.

Spoiler-Free Thoughts

Something I love about this series is that there are no insignificant details, and each character serves a purpose. The pacing of this book was interesting in that it began quickly, undoubtedly helped by the lack of a need to world-build, but that didn’t remain consistent as the story went on. Some events felt like they were a long time coming while others sprang at me. The ending in particular came on quickly, which I did enjoy here, but I felt that the grand scheme had been temporarily ignored by even the smartest characters. This does frustrate me because I know these characters are cleverer than this, and I badly wanted them to acknowledge the game being played.

I did appreciate the way that many themes and story devices employed by the first book were flipped on their heads in this one. The slow growth of the individual characters matched with the trickery that took an entire book to unravel had me continuing to turn each page. What Black has done well with this series is answering questions I didn’t even know to ask until Jude had thought to present them and seek the answer herself, and maybe that is more telling of me as a reader, but I would like to think that it is indicative of the story-telling that I so enjoy from this series.

I found this to be a solid sequel, but it wasn’t as good as the first book, and the third one has even more to offer, so I rate this one a 7.5/10.

Thoughts

As mentioned above, there are no wasted characters. Mother Marrow offers an opportunity to show more of Jude’s cunning mind while also displaying the types of enemies Jude will have to face. Madoc and Balekin were aggressive in their play for the crown, but others were sneakier about it.

I appreciated hearing more about Cardan’s backstory in this book; it felt like it was a nice transition for him following the events of the previous installment while simultaneously preparing us for what comes next. It’s a slow progression, but I prefer it that way, and it was aided by the always interesting conversations between himself and Jude. They are rarely consistent, in that at times they seem remarkably tolerant of one another while at other times, they seem to loathe each other. The binding thread through these interactions is the undercurrent of romantic tension between them.

Something I thought interesting about Jude was her lack of censorship, even within her own internal monologue. The only thoughts she as a character shied away from were those of Cardan - specifically any feelings for him that were not deep hatred - no matter how depraved those thoughts may have been. It’s as if she views those feelings as even worse than the other wicked things she does, or maybe it’s a result of her strategy training. Love will only get in her way, so it’s more pragmatic to ignore it. I also love the use of Taryn in this book. Following her betrayal of Jude in The Cruel Prince, she has evolved from Jude’s sole tie to the human world to a warped reflection of what Jude never could be. That came to a boiling point when Taryn betrayed Jude for Madoc, using the earrings Jude had gifted her to trick Cardan with feelings that Jude had scarcely recognized. He trusted her implicitly, and her unwillingness to believe that made them both vulnerable to manipulation.

The earrings made Taryn more beautiful, leading Cardan to believe she was Jude. In the previous book, Jude was able to best Madoc because he underestimated her, making her a living blind spot that she then exploited. The reverse is true here. In not recognizing what was between her and Cardan, Jude allowed Madoc to manipulate both of them through Taryn. It was such an interesting reversal of her own strategy in The Cruel Prince that you almost have to wonder how she didn’t see it coming until it was too late.