Review: The Cruel Prince

The Cruel Prince review was originally posted on 31 May 2018 and has been updated to match the current format of my blog.

Title: The Cruel Prince

Author: Holly Black

Rating: 5 Stars

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Little Brown Books

Date Published: January 2nd 2018

Goodreads Description: 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 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.

As Jude becomes more deeply embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, she discovers her own capacity for trickery and bloodshed. But as betrayal 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.

General Thoughts

The Cruel Prince…SOBS. What a beautifully dark tale.

The Cruel Prince opens with the rather graphic murder of Jude’s (our protagonist) parents and the subsequent kidnapping of her and her sisters. We are immediately pulled into a dangerous world filled with faeries. The prologue sets up the entire tone of the book, highlighting how our protagonist will never be safe again. It also sets up, and ties in, with the first chapter, letting us know just how far removed the world of the Fae is from our own.

The tone of the entire book is frightening. Jude is constantly in danger. She is treated like filth by most of the Fae and her life is constantly threatened. She is humiliated on more than one occasion and constantly made fun of. Jude wants nothing more than to fit in, a trait that is inherently human, and a trait that makes her stand out even more amongst the Fae.

Taryn, Jude’s twin sister, wants to fit into the land of the Fae as well, but through compliance and conformity to what the Fae deem her social standing to be. Jude wants to fit in through her skills and wants to prove she is worth just as much as any Fae, which makes her a strong and compelling female character. Vivienne, Jude and Taryn’s older sister, is half-Fae, half-human. Unlike Jude and Taryn, Vivi wants nothing more than to be human.

Characters

I felt like the dynamic between the sisters could have been explored more. Taryn was often exasperated with Jude’s attempts to put the Fae back in their place and Vivi was mostly absent. Taryn is my least favourite character, probably because she didn’t have the gumption to stand up to the Fae. Although, I don’t know if I would have behaved the same way.

Jude and Taryn are constantly tormented by their peers, Prince Cardan, Locke, Nicasia and Valerian. Valerian attempts to murder Jude at least twice. Jude is strong, perhaps a little reckless, but she is no fool. As the book progresses, I feel like Jude realises it’s her humanity that gives her the upper hand over the Fae. Her introduction to Prince Dain’s Court of Shadows is a crucial moment in her realisation that she can be valued for who and what she is; a human.

Now let’s talk about Cardan. OMG SWOON. I don’t know what it is, some sort of bad boy infatuation perhaps, but DAMN SON, I would give anything to receive a death threat from Cardan. He’s ruthless, cunning and deceitful, and Jude gets under his skin like a splinter made of iron. He’s also not cruel just for the sake of being cruel.

I felt almost stupid for not seeing the immediate attraction between Jude and Cardan. Cardan HATES Jude, but only because he actually likes her. You know what they say, you can only hate someone if you love them.

Some spoilers, and some of my favourite quotes

And that brings us to my favourite scene in the whole book. Near the end of the book, Cardan admits to Jude that he desires her, saying: “Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It’s disgusting, and I can’t stop.”

DID ANYONE ELSE DIE A LITTLE INSIDE? Sorry, I’m getting shouty.

“But kissing Locke never felt the way that kissing Cardan does, like taking a dare to run over knives, like an adrenaline strike of lightning, like the moment when you’ve swum too far out in the sea and there is no going back, only cold black water closing over your head.”

Holly Black’s writing style is just amazing. The pacing of this book, the interactions between Jude and Cardan, the ending, all of it had me NEEDING book two desperately.