Author: Holly Black
Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult
Series: The Folk of Air # 1
Hardcover, 370 Pages
Publication: January 2, 2018 by Little Brown BFYR
Source: Personal library.
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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.
The hype surrounding The Cruel Prince was and still is pretty extraordinary. Everywhere I looked someone was mentioning The Cruel Prince in some capacity. Whether it was through a review, about the characters, about the author or their overall love for the series. The reviews had the same sentiment with glowing five stars. With this much love, I thought it has to be good! To my surprise, I didn’t fall in love with this book like everyone else and found myself in the minority.
Unpopular opinion incoming. Boy, was this novel problematic. I’m going to start with the title. With a title such as ‘The Cruel Prince’, one would assume that The Cruel Prince (Cardan) would mean the story was centered around the prince or the prince would at least play a significant role in the book. However, there was neither. The novel is actually narrated by Jude, a human girl who was taken to Faerie at the age of seven and raised among the gentry as if she was a fair folk princess. At this point, I had a feeling it wasn't going to bode well when I realized how misleading the title was.
Then we had the heroine Jude. Oh how I hated Jude. Jude despised the fair folk and yet she desperately wanted to be one of them. Hypocrite much? She often mentioned how cruel and selfish the gentry were but she literally did everything in her power to be just like them or crueler…believing it made her better than them. It’s not an admirable trait nor something to aspire to. Jude had a shitty personality to begin with but it got worst when she joined a secret organization and became a spy for a powerful fair folk. All the secrets went straight to her head. She went around threatening people and went as far as murdering a fair folk because she thought she was untouchable (she claimed self-defense but let’s get real she wanted to kill him). She never felt remorse for her actions and had little to no care for the consequences (and of course it helped that she hid all the proof). Many readers saw Jude as a strong, kick-ass heroine and her actions as self empowering. But she was not. Jude was nothing more than a disgusting and despicable human being. How anyone can like her is a mystery to me.
Before I read The Cruel Prince, I saw people ‘shipping’ Jude and Cardan. Readers normally ‘shipped’ couples they loved, so again, I assumed Cardan and Jude were a couple. And big shocker, they were never a couple! From the moment the two characters met, all I felt was the loathing, animosity and frustration between the two. Every exchange and interaction thereafter between Jude and Cardan resulted in either the characters insulting one another or physically attacking one another. I was baffled. Why would readers approve of this? In an early scene, Cardan shoved Jude against a wall/or tree and proceeded to choke her and tell her how beneath him she was. The male character was literally emotionally and physically abusive to the female character and yet readers found this behavior acceptable…and I dare say, romantic? It’s not cute or romantic. It’s sick, revolting and unacceptable. It may be a fantasy novel and everything was fake but when real people start romanticizing it, there’s definitively a problem. And the book is marketed to teens no less. I love a good fantasy novel, I even love faeries but this book is not appropriate for children. I am surprised the book was approved and published because it was absolute rubbish.
The writing was not any better. Reviewers praised Black for her lyrical prose and even dubbed her as the Queen of Faeries but I didn’t see it. The writing wasn’t beautiful or lyrical. It was simple and basic as they come. The world building and characters were poorly developed and in my opinion unremarkable and unlikable. I’ve read far better faerie novels with complex world building and multifaceted characters; and best of all they didn’t romanticize abusive/unhealthy relationships.
The Cruel Prince was one of the worst book I’ve read in the last couple of years. It seriously boggles my mind how many people love this book. As I mentioned, the writing was average, the world building unimaginative, the characters unlikable but it was still nothing compared to an aggressor disguised as a love interest and violence and cruelty disguised as bravery and strength. That's messed up and twisted if you asked me. And If you haven’t read this book yet, do yourself a favor and skip it. It’s not worth your time or your money.
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