The Cruel Prince

(Book Review)

By Monique Joseph

Photo by Monique Joseph

The Cruel Prince is the first novel of a trilogy series by Holly Black that goes by the

name of Folk of Air. It is one of her best selling books with over a million ratings on Goodreads.

The story follows a girl named Jude trying to survive as a human in a realm of magic, fairies, and their politics. Using her strength and wits, she must prevent falling under their control by

becoming a spy for an upcoming king. There are many twists and turns, she learns the hard way that there are few she can trust. There’s also a character named Cardan, who is doing everything he can to get in her way as a prince.

Jude herself is a decent protagonist, she is strong with a sword but not with her emotions.

The same can be said for most other characters, like red cap who took her and her sisters in after brutally killing her parents. Both their new father and mother figure are not what they seem and have their own reasons for why they do the things that they do. Both of her sisters have their own side plots that we sadly never seen through Jude’s perspective, hopefully this gets fixed in the next book of the series.

A major problem with the novel is the lack of descriptive writing. Most of the setting is

described for the audience no matter what the location or even the item. Near the climax, Jude is given a sword that serves an important purpose. It was crafted by her father who died when she was a child, yet it is not described what it looks like other than “really pretty.” There was no statement on why it looks so pretty. Is it embedded with gemstones on the hilt or made with gold?

However, there are some items that are heavily described and it is the dresses. It makes

sense as to why because the main target audience are young adult women. Most romantic fantasy books have multiple paragraphs just to show off the clothes along with the accessories. The

Cruel Prince is no exception even though it was published in 2018, before the Romantasy craze came to popularity.

Overall, this is a decent start to a three book series. Although there are writing problems

here and there, the ending of the first book can leave the audience craving for more with all those twists and turns. It stands out among other books about the fae for being its own thing instead of a copy of others. One can tell from how the mystical creatures are written that Holly Black did her research.