Short and Sweet: The Folk of the Air by Holly Black

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
Published by Little, Brown, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers on January 2, 2018
Pages: 384
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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.

*****

The Wicked King by Holly Black
on January 8, 2019
Pages: 336
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You must be strong enough to strike and strike and strike again without tiring.

The first lesson is to make yourself strong.

After the jaw-dropping revelation that Oak is the heir to Faerie, Jude must keep her younger brother safe. To do so, she has bound the wicked king, Cardan, to her, and made herself the power behind the throne. Navigating the constantly shifting political alliances of Faerie would be difficult enough if Cardan were easy to control. But he does everything in his power to humiliate and undermine her even as his fascination with her remains undiminished.

When it becomes all too clear that someone close to Jude means to betray her, threatening her own life and the lives of everyone she loves, Jude must uncover the traitor and fight her own complicated feelings for Cardan to maintain control as a mortal in a Faerie world.

*****

The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black
on November 19, 2019
Pages: 300
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He will be destruction of the crown and the ruination of the throne.

Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold onto. Jude learned this lesson when she released her control over the wicked king, Cardan, in exchange for immeasurable power.

Now as the exiled mortal Queen of Faerie, Jude is powerless and left reeling from Cardan’s betrayal. She bides her time determined to reclaim everything he took from her. Opportunity arrives in the form of her deceptive twin sister, Taryn, whose mortal life is in peril.

Jude must risk venturing back into the treacherous Faerie Court, and confront her lingering feelings for Cardan, if she wishes to save her sister. But Elfhame is not as she left it. War is brewing. As Jude slips deep within enemy lines she becomes ensnared in the conflict’s bloody politics.

And, when a dormant yet powerful curse is unleashed, panic spreads throughout the land, forcing her to choose between her ambition and her humanity…

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black, comes the highly anticipated and jaw-dropping finale to The Folk of the Air trilogy.

*****

I improperly judged these books before reading them due to their YA designation (and my repeated struggles with anything YA as of late). I am prepared to eat crow. These are excellent fantasy books that happen to have a young batch of protagonists, who occasionally suffer bouts of hor-monstrous feelings.

While each book seems to have the same slow-paced start and are lacking significant character development, the plot and world building is awesome. The twists are oh so twisty and the ending of each book just made me crave the next all the more.

I’m semi-glad that I waited to read these until I could binge all three together, because the waiting between installments would have been sheer torture. But I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel a little bit that I missed out on this awesomeness over the past few years.

Have you read these? And if you did, my most important question is, where you as creeped out by Cardan’s tail during *certain* scenes? 

XOXO