Not my favorite—don’t get me wrong, I’m loyal to John Green and TFIOS always. But she is talented: one of the most talented I’ve ever seen. No, I haven’t read every author ever; I haven’t read other staples’ books in Black’s dark fantasy genre (i.e. Cassandra Clare—I’ve read only some middle grade books from her—Leigh Bardugo, Sabaa Tahir, Renée Ahdieh), but it’s easy to see the quality in her writing—it actually gives me chills. And her character development? To. Die. For. (It’s funny because like half the characters die in this book.)
What’s Lulu getting at? you must be thinking. She’s never written a review about an author in general. Right you are, reader, and that pattern will not be broken today. No, today we are starting a three-part review on her Folk of the Air Trilogy, the third of which came out only a few weeks ago, November 19. The first book, The Cruel Prince, was the first YA book of Black’s that I’d ever been very interested in; it was an impulse buy (at my very first BookCon!) after binging her middle grade series co-written with Cassandra Clare (catch that foreshadowing earlier?), The Magisterium Series. Anyone else read those? Seriously, they were like a twisted Harry Potter—great read, check them out. (Note to self: start a middle grade tab on blog.)
Anyway, my point is that with little background on Black’s work in YA (and there’s a lot: she has over thirty books), I fell in love with her dangerous Faerie world and terrifying, beautiful characters. It’s awful and amazing and disorienting all at the same time. Just everything about it was out-of-this-world-incredible, but today we’re discussing the insanely amazing writing, the perfectly terrible characters, and the crazy plot twists.
I’m gonna give a quick run-down of the plot in case anyone reading hasn’t read it. Which, you know, might not be a good idea to be reading this because of all the spoilers, but, hey, I’m not here to tell you to stop reading my work. Anyway, the story is really complex, and I’m waaaay over-simplifying it, but I want to give you something for this review to make sense, especially because I’m going to be bringing these characters and all up in the next few reviews for this trilogy.
I don’t know. Summarizing is new for me, and I always overdo it. We’ll see how this goes.
So the story starts with seven-year-old human twins Jude and Taryn and their older faerie half-sister Vivi. They live in the human world with their human parents, but Vivi’s magical, violent bio dad Madoc comes and kills their parents, taking the kids to Faerie with him, where his new faerie wife Oriana is and his other younger kid, Oak. Also, just so you know, Madoc is a super-powerful war general for the High King of Faerie. His power-hungry, bloodlust side of him is important. Remember that for later.
Anyway, Jude, Taryn, and Vivi all grow up in this crazy Faerie world. Taryn and Jude accept this life: Taryn wants to be a lady of the Court, and Jude wants to be a knight. Vivi, however, doesn’t accept this life and fights it with everything she has, using her magic to sneak into the mortal world. This is a world where because they’re mortals, Jude and Taryn are bullied by the other students. The biggest culprits were the cruel prince (see what Black did there?), Cardan; a boy who “likes a story” (in his own words), Locke; a girl who “likes drama” (also in Locke’s words) Nicassia; and a boy who “likes violence,” Valerian. They target Jude, mostly, as she is the one who fights back in anger. Locke, however, starts to like Jude. They start dating, and she falls in love with his charm.
Also, faeries can’t lie. They just dance around the truth in their messed up world. Which is random but important.
Anyway, the High King of Elfhame is about to pick a new king/queen, and the prince expected to get the throne, Prince Dain, invites Jude to be one of his spies as a part of his Court of Shadows. She agrees, but only if he puts a geas on her that makes it so that no magic can be done to her. He agrees (except for his own magic, of course, because faeries are tricky like that), and she meets his three other spies: the Bomb, a girl who makes all of their explosives; a boy named the Roach; and a boy named the Ghost, who can sneak around silently. She trains with them, working to figure out if there are any plans to kill Prince Dain before the coronation. It turns out there are, in fact, plans against him; plans created by Jude’s own adoptive father, Madoc, made plans with another prince, Prince Balekin. The coronation becomes a full-on bloodbath, and the whole royal family is killed—all except for Balekin and Cardan, that is, and it just so happens to be true that only someone with royal blood can put the crown on the next High King’s head.
During the Greenbriar Bloodline Mass Murder (the official name, est. right now), Jude grabs Cardan and drags him to the Court of Shadows. She holds him captive there, and, after a long and tense and crazy scene, they kiss (but we don’t, not really, ship them. Not yet. They’re both too messed up from living in Faerie).
This is getting to be way too long, so the end is gonna be a little more concise: Locke betrays Jude—he was actually secretly dating her twin Taryn the entire time. He trapped Taryn into keeping their relationship a secret (with some freaky “test of love” nonsense); Jude now hates Taryn with a burning passion. Oak actually has royal blood. Jude gets Cardan under her control with magic so that, basically, if she orders him to do something, he has to. (Of course, if she isn’t specific enough, he might find ways around her orders.) She then lets her plan play out: Jude and Cardan go to this fancy dinner thing together with the whole Court. She gets the crown and has Oak put it on Cardan’s head. Madoc and Balekin are taken out of power. Jude becomes senchenal. Cardan’s literally just an extremely charismatic puppet on a string. Vivi takes Oak to the mortal world to have a normal childhood because he’s literally only eight years old.
The book ends with Jude trying to figure out how she’s going to keep her power.
So let’s start with Black’s writing. Just listen to the first sentence of the Prologue: “On a drowsy Sunday afternoon, a man in a long dark coat hesitated in front of a house on a tree-lines street.” Um, intrigued much? And that’s not even one of the most memorable lines of the book—that’s just an average sentence for Writing Goddess Holly Black. There were also sentences so powerful that they would come back to haunt the reader long after they’ve set the book down. Things that make you think: think about everything—about morals and opinions and mindsets and society. Things like: “If I cannot be better than them, I will become so much worse.” Things like: “If you hurt me, I wouldn't cry. I would hurt you back.” Things like—okay, wait. I’m going to stop now because if I keep going, the rest of this review will just be a bunch of Holly Black quotes.
Fun for me but not for you.
What I’m trying to say is that Black’s writing is haunting. The words creep into your soul and stay there. You read it, and it’s like your emotions are overflowing but you’re hollowed out at the same time; it’s like she knows how everyone has ever and will ever think. Emotion is a tangible thing to Black, and she takes it and puts it into words.
Speaking of knowing how people think, Holly Black made characters that are more three-dimensional than any other YA characters I’ve ever seen. She knows every side of everyone: I’m pretty sure—no, definitely sure that she could write this book from literally every single person’s perspective; even those who only had one or two lines. Like, there’s this one dude Jude meets in the mortal world for a brief moment, Milo, and she describes his appearance and mannerisms and speech patterns so well that I know him through and through. He’s not just a filler person just to make something happen (specifically for a mortal to flirt and for Jude to react by nearly killing him), he’s a real person. I’m certain that Black had a whole background and life story for him—had she needed the story from her perspective, I’m absolutely convinced she would have been able to do it. (Not unlike Nicola Yoon’s writing in The Sun is Also a Star. There are random chapters written from random character’s different perspectives to show how everything and everyone are affecting each other. Don’t get me wrong—that doesn’t happen in The Cruel Prince; it just feels like it could.)
Seriously, though, Black’s characters are so good they scare me. On of the main reasons that the character strength is noticeable is because Black’s understanding of Jude and Jude’s perspective is so strong. Take the portrayal Locke, for example. When Jude and Locke are still together, she loves him. Her heart is a little more open and sure at this point in the story—she still trusts Taryn, still respects Madoc, still despises Cardan. And then everything changes. Then Locke changes everything. He betrays her (more on that later), and everything clicks into place.
Let me explain a little better.
Locke says early in Jude and Locke’s relationship that he likes dramatics. (I mentioned that when I first introduced him, remember?) He later manipulates her into going to a party where *tea* happens. Everything he does is just an inch malicious, but it was brushed over so briefly that it doesn’t hit you—like, hit you, HARD—until his relationship with Taryn is revealed. It’s a really disorienting and aweing moment when it all clicks into place, when you see that he stood by just a little too often, forced Jude into doing things just a little too much, and you realize, “Oh shoot. I’ve been wrong this whole time, and the facts were right in front of me.” I guess that goes into Black’s amazing writing and being able to foreshadow so slightly that you don’t notice until it’s too late, but that wouldn’t be possible if she didn’t understand and portray her characters so well.
Also, Cardan. Just… Cardan. I love him and hate him and don’t know how I feel about him, but my opinions on him will wait until my Queen of Nothing review. It wouldn’t be fair to tell you now because I’ve latched onto the end of his arch.
Let’s move onto those plot twists. Somehow, Holly Black makes far-fetched things sound reasonable. It’s all of those foreshadowing skills, I’m telling you—but, like, seriously. Foreshadowing is important. And hers is amazing because she takes her time on it, you know?
So I guess before plot twists we’re doing foreshadowing. Spur of the moment decision, but here we go.
Right now I’m reading Matched by Ally Condie. You may or may not eventually get my full opinion on it here. It depends on how I’m feeling at the end of the book. Anyway, I don’t know if you guys know the story well, but, basically, Condie’s trying to slowly edge her way into the idea that Cassia and Ky are true love. I’m not sure how subtle it was supposed to be when they first met, but I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be really subtle because later in the book Cassia’s all I didn’t love him when we met. I just thought he was an interesting dude, and I’m like okay honey think what you want.
That sounded dumb, but seriously. It was not subtle in the slightest—like, bro, she even seemed in love with him during her flashback to when she was ten—and it kind of made the book (so far) mediocre. After that long-winded intro, my point is that Black doesn’t care how freaking long it takes for her to get from Point A to Point B: she knows she’ll get there eventually, so why not sprinkle in foreshadowing sparsely and subtly? At least, that’s how I imagine it’s like for her writing, and it pays off. The foreshadowing isn’t noticed until after the big reveal and then the reader is just like, OH MY GOD HOW DID I MISS THAT?
Now that I’ve gotten that excitement out, back to plot twists.
Holly Black wrote in some crazy plot twists. As I said before, she says some pretty far-fetched things, but it makes sense. Before she reveals Jude’s stepbrother Oak to have royal blood, it seems impossible. When Jude finally puts all of the pieces together, though, it makes so much sense. There were little things sprinkled all throughout—things like a letter that wasn’t making a hundred percent sense that Jude chalked up to be about Locke (Oak’s half-brother, believe it or not), things like a little golden acorn she found in Oak’s bio mom's dress pocket and also in his adoptive mom’s pocket—that added up well in the end. And I know what you’re thinking: those clues are literally so big; how’d you miss this, Lulu? So I’d just like to emphasize once again that it wasn’t so black-and-white in the book. These were sparse, remember? No judgement, please.
But that’s what all of the plot twists were like. Until Jude puts it all together, it seems impossible. When Jude does put it together, though, it’s like everything that just came out of her mouth just made sense. It’s an amazing feeling—the best realization an author can instill in their reader, and I applaud you, Holly Black, for doing it so gracefully.
That was a really long one. If you’re still reading, thanks for sticking with me. Sorry it’s been so long since my last post—over a month—but maybe this overcompensation helped? Anyway, The Cruel Prince was great. I can’t wait to give my opinions on the sequels. I’ll close off with another (final one, I swear) quote to get you thinking: “I have lied and I have betrayed and I have triumphed. If only there was someone to congratulate me.” Keep reading, reader.