The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
- The Wicked Reader
- Jan 6, 2018
- 2 min read
Author: Holly Black
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: January 2, 2018
Pages: 384
Format: Hardcover
My Rating: ⭐⭐1/2
Purchase Links: [Chapters/Indigo] [Amazon]
Goodreads Synopsis:
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.
My Review:
Well that was underwhelming...
I've constantly seen this book buzzing around bookstagram and twitter. People are raving about it, preaching about it and so I fell into the hype and picked it up. Note; it also had a catching title and nice cover. I didn't really get anything from the synopsis so I was going in completely blind.
What I loved was how Holly Black described everything. The world building was deep and vivid. The precise detailed description of the Faeries was spectacular. One of my favourite detail was where she describes a fairy who has goat legs and I automatically thought of the goat man, Mr. Tumnus, from Narnia!
I didn't like or loath any of the characters, I was pretty much indifferent. Everyone, other than Jude and Cardan were really a mystery. The side characters have shallow personalities and eventually fall flat. The climax and sudden twists were very predictable and not really impactful. I felt this book was simply just about a silly school bully. The book is called Cruel Prince, and I expected a character with hard dose of malevolence, but instead got an uninteresting boring bully. Jude was being bullied by her classmates because she's mortal and she gets fead up and starts to fight for herself. It’s said that this was a dark and dangerous book... to me it was plain average.
Overall, nothing really stood out. I’m glad I got to introduce myself to the book, but doubt I will continue the series.
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