Series: The Folk of the Air (Page 2 of 2)

BOOK REVIEW: The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air #1) by Holly Black

January 30, 2019 / Arielle / 4 Comments

The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air #1)
by Holly Black
Purchase on: Amazon, iBooks
Add to: Goodreads

Synopsis:
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.

“Nice things don’t happen in storybooks. Or when they do happen, something bad happens next. Because otherwise the story would be boring, and no one would read it.”

Ahhhahah. Hahaha. Haha. I’ve read a lot of books with a lot of twisty, turny plots at this point in my life, really I have. I usually assume that by now, it’s going to be pretty hard to pull one over on me. But this was not one that I saw coming which is CRAZY because I feel like people have been in wild frenzy over this and The Wicked King for the last month now. I’ve been very careful about reading reviews and looking at quotes and while that was basically IMPOSSIBLE, I still didn’t come across anything that spoiled that ending for me and thank goodness for that.

“Have I told you how hideous you look tonight?” Cardan asks, leaning back in the elaborately carved chair, the warmth of his words turning the question into something like a compliment.
“No” I say, glad to be annoyed back into the present. “Tell me.”
“I can’t.”

The last Holly Black book that I read was The Darkest Part of the Forest and had a similar host of wild and conniving faeries. Since then, most of the books I’ve read featuring fae have turned them super sexy and more LOTR-elven like (mainly thinking about ACOTAR here). And that’s fine. I obviously love those books and those characters but I will say that there’s something…maybe satisfying(??) about reading a book with redcaps and brownies and dryads and the like. When the Seelie and Unseelie courts are places of cruel beauty and where they speak in silver tongues that can only speak the truth but also can omit things to lie in a round-about kind of way…

The fae in this book are a ruthless sort and our main character Jude knows all about that first hand. When she was young, her mother’s past fae lover comes and murders her parents in front of her and her two sisters. He then pledges that he will take them into his world and raise them as if they were his own (her oldest sister, Vivi, IS in fact his daughter). Instead of growing up to hate and resent Madoc though, she and twin sister Taryn accept that world as their own. In fact, Jude’s goal in life is to become a faerie knight and serve the king. She is forbidden to do so though because her mortal talents are vastly underestimated.

“We don’t need to be good. But let’s try to be fair.”

Basically I don’t really want to get into this plot at all. Like I said, I didn’t know what the ending was going to bring until it was literally unfolding before my very eyes. The only other thing I want to talk about is of course, Cardan. Cardan is the youngest son of the current king, Eldred. Throughout the entire book Jude makes it VERY well known that the two hate each other’s guts. It’s great. What I think you should know, is that he doesn’t really come into the story full force until about the last quarter. Obviously everyone is obsessed with him (it’s easy to see why) but I was SO confused when I got through about half of the book and he had hardly any page time. Don’t expect to see his character more until the end. When I did finally get to know him (or at least what he allows to be seen) I was delighted. I actually thought he was hilarious and no where near as malicious as I figured he was going to be??? He had a lot of really good and subtle one-liners that were genius in my opinion lolol. You’ll see. But that’s it. There you go. If you are a fan of the fae, of KICK ASS, BRAVE, clueless, DARING, oblivious, and CUT THROAT leads, Jude is your gal and this book is definitely for you! (P.S. only kind of joking about the clueless and oblivious part—mainly poking fun at Jude for thinking Cardan wrote on that paper because he hated her lololol, oh Jude, you silly girl)

“I am going to keep on defying you. I am going to shame you with my defiance. You remind me that I am a mere mortal and you are a prince of Faerie. Well, let me remind you that means you have much to lose and I have nothing. You may win in the end, you may ensorcell me and hurt me and humiliate me, but I will make sure you lose everything I can take from you on the way down. I promise you this is the least of what I can do.”

BOOK REVIEW: The Wicked King (Folk of the Air #2) by Holly Black

January 16, 2019 / Chelsea / 7 Comments

The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air #2)
by Holly Black
Purchase on: Amazon, iBooks
Add to: Goodreads

Synopsis:
You must be strong enough to strike and strike and strike again without tiring.

The first lesson is to make yourself strong.

After the jaw-dropping revelation that Oak is the heir to Faerie, Jude must keep her younger brother safe. To do so, she has bound the wicked king, Cardan, to her, and made herself the power behind the throne. Navigating the constantly shifting political alliances of Faerie would be difficult enough if Cardan were easy to control. But he does everything in his power to humiliate and undermine her even as his fascination with her remains undiminished.

When it becomes all too clear that someone close to Jude means to betray her, threatening her own life and the lives of everyone she loves, Jude must uncover the traitor and fight her own complicated feelings for Cardan to maintain control as a mortal in a Faerie world.

I wonder if there’s a limit to what I will let them do, if there is something that would make me fight back, even if it dooms me.
If there is, that makes me a fool.
But maybe if there isn’t, that makes me a monster.

I guess that’s the thing about being in love with a series. You love the first, you anticipate the second, and then wonder what’s to come with the third-but you can’t ever really know if that author is going to do what you want. Do things that make sense to you while also coming off as exciting and better than you possibly could have anticipated. If that author will make you happy while also crushing your soul, like the best possible twist of the knife and manipulation of your heart. This never happens. Yes, I have MANY favorites. YES, lots of things happen that I like and that placate me. But rarely-VERY RARELY-does an author do every maniacal thing I could possibly imagine-and even take it farther than I could even fathom. And this is what Black did. She came. She wrote. She F****** conquered.

“Power,” he said. “Power is the ability to get what you want. Power is the ability to be the one making the decisions. And how do we get power?”
“We learn how to fight well?”
“We get power by taking it.”

I just…this NEVER HAPPENS. Yeah, there might be one little thing I wish wasn’t a part of the end. But, like, that is nothing in the way of how excellent, how thorough, how utterly magnificent she wrote this book. The scheming. The lies. The betrayals. The heat. The ROMANCE. There was not one thing that I love about a fantasy book that was not in this story. There really and truly wasn’t. In fact, this book taught me far more about myself than I’ve learned in a long time.

“It seems I have a singular taste for women who threaten me.”

If you recall, or care at all, I read Outlander and The Diviners (how could you forget?) last year and they were so far out of my comfort zone that I read them YEARS after I was told to. A big mistake, I’ll admit. And they consumed me-I’ll just say it. Especially the prior, making the month of October a big waste of a TBR because all I read was the three books available in that series. But Outlander did something to my being, too, that possessed me for quite some time around the holidays. To say I was possessed in body, mind, and soul a few times last year would be an understatement. I even found Mariana Zapata and was a big ‘ol mess when I read her books, too. Let’s just say that 2018 was interesting, to say the least.

“The three of you have one solution to every problem. Murder. No key fits every lock.” Cardan gives us all a stern look, holding up a long-fingered hand with my stolen ruby ring still on one finger. “Someone tries to betray the High King, murder. Someone gives you a harsh look, murder. Someone disrespects you, murder. Someone ruins your laundry, murder.

But then this. THIS masterpiece. The thing is, I’ll be frank, that I hate middle books. I LOATHE THEM. They never go right. Ever. And I actually have started to hate final books, too, because authors just don’t have what it takes to end things right, to wrap them up nicely, and, I’ll say it again, rarely do they meet the expectations I’ve upheld through the series and give me what I am craving, needing, wanting to put the series down wholly satisfied. And-I always try not to have any expectations, to not fangirl too much before a release, and to not expect much. Sadly, I still always fail. My entire being always wants more, whether I try to keep it chill or not, and I end up with a broken heart. Always.

He smelled like smoke and dried blood, and Jude let herself sag against him. It was good to be hugged. Even by a monster.

But here’s the thing, and my entire point: I didn’t, not once, doubt Holly Black or her writing before the release, so I anticipated and fangirled freely. I’ve read her White Cat series, and it was nothing short of all consuming, even if not many talk about it. I loved it. Cassel was my first thief and conman, and he lead me to Kaz from SOC. So, to say Holly Black can finish a series with a bang, wrap things up neatly and how I love and expect is, again, an understatement. I legitimately, for the first time in as long as I can remember, wasn’t the least bit worried that I would be bored, unhappy, or underwhelmed. I had that much confidence in this author. I had no worries at all. Well…except for what was to come. But that’s a different beast entirely.

“Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold on to.”

What came with this story wasn’t a fairy tale romance, nor an underhanded, leisurely stroll in politics (following the first book’s end). No, it wasn’t action every minute…but there wasn’t a chapter that didn’t steal my breath away. This book was pulse-pounding, heart-stopping, butterfly inducing panic and mayhem, wrapped in sexual tension and explosive….erm….developments. It was underhanded, dirty, and altogether a total mind bender that never let you have your guard down, your mind not spinning, and your soul not entirely invested. It was a home run, triple play, and home base stealing ride-you could never take your eyes off the page for reality and day to day activities because you couldn’t ever possibly get enough.

“For a moment,” he says, “I wondered if it wasn’t you shooting bolts at me.”
I make a face at him. “And what made you decide it wasn’t?”
He grins up at me. “They missed.”

I read both too fast and too slow, a perfect symphony of chaos and calm, and I never wanted it to end-But I had to know what was coming next. Where it was going…and what predicament my darlings would inevitably get themselves into, in the end. And I couldn’t be happier with the absolutely soul-crushing finish.

My body has acclimated, and now it craves what it should revile.
An apt metaphor for other things.

And, before I can wrap this up, I have to embark on the journey that is Cardan and Jude. I can’t say much, and I promise I won’t (though it kills me slowly not to), but you must know that any feels that overcame you, possessed you, enraptured you in TCP…they are tenfold…and you just cannot be prepared. I don’t believe in overhyping-in fact, I discourage it. But here, I am confident that even if you don’t love this, you will feel something when it comes to the sexual tension between these two. I am THAT confident. And I would never do that to you, unless I believed it with my very being.

…and the single last thing in my head: that I like him better than I’ve ever liked anyone and that of all the things he’s ever done to me, making me like him so much is by far the worst.

The heat, the tension, the pure and utter HATE they have for one another…it’s so intoxicating. Sick. Depraved. Wrong. Yet you can’t not ship them. You can’t not love them. And, inevitably, you can’t not hope for them to just do it already. He loves her. I know it. And she loves him. I know that, too. THEY HAVE TO. I just….I can’t say anything. But, I will say this: I got everything I could ever want and more-without getting everything I want….and more.

It occurs to me that maybe desire isn’t something overindulging helps. Maybe it is not unlike mithridatism; maybe I took a killing dose when I should have been poisoning myself slowly, one kiss at a time.

So, to say I didn’t love this and that another book will pass by my love for it this year would be a lie-so I just won’t say it. What I will say is this: If you didn’t love the first, I don’t know that you will love the second. But maybe you will. It has even more lies. Deceit. Chaos. Heartbreak. Longing. If you dig that, this is for you. It has it all. And it doesn’t just come from the human in a faerie world. Just. F’in. Sayin’.

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I am angry editing my Instagram pictures right now. My nerves are shot, my stomach is a mass of nervous butterflies. When, only moments before, they were butterflies of hope and romance and so much more. So, I guess what I’m saying in a nutshell is: Holly Black got me. She got me fucking GOOD. I am not alright. I am not okay. And I just don’t know if I can pick up the pieces of my fractured heart off the floor for this one-And I don’t think I’ve ever said that. Well played, Black-You own my soul.

**************

OMG JUST GOT MY EXCLUSIVE OWLCRATE VERSION BOX EARLY SO GUESS WHO IS STARTING THIS OMG THIS IS THE FIRST OWLCRATE BOOK IVE TAKEN OUT OF THE PROTECTIVE PLASTIC TO READ OMGGGG I CANT EVEN

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BOOK REVIEW: The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air #1) by Holly Black

August 10, 2018 / Chelsea / 6 Comments

The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air #1)
by Holly Black
Purchase on: Amazon, iBooks
Add to: 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 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.

Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest, with black hair as iridescent as a raven’s wing and cheekbones sharp enough to cut out a girl’s heart. I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.

This book gave me life…for the second time around.

And it’s crazy, really, that sometimes it takes reading a book at a different time in your life (less busy, in my case) for it to really become something to obsess over. I’ll admit that, while I adored Cardan and Jude the first time around, it was a 4 star for me. It was wonderful, really, but that obsessive spark I find myself tapping into often didn’t quite appear. So, when my friend read it and didn’t quite fall hard for it, I felt a fierce need to defend it. Not because it doesn’t have 1,000,000 reviews and reviewers singing it’s praises, because it does. And it certainly doesn’t need my little review to defend it. However, sometimes the fangirl reviews are just that-fangirl reviews. And I like to bring a little reality to the table.

I cannot seem to contort myself back into the shape of a dutiful child.
I am coming unraveled. I am coming undone.

I’ll admit I’ve fallen prey to this many times, writing reviews from the bottom of my little fangirl heart. But a lot of times, random people who stumble onto a book’s page think that all the praise means it’s a sure thing. And, frankly, it’s not. Just because I love and obsess over a book doesn’t mean it is without it’s flaws. For instance, what’s good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander, ya know? So, even though I LOVE harsh, simplistic writing instead of a heavy poetic prose, that doesn’t mean that everyone feels that way. In fact, it might surprise people because they are expecting the best of the best….and, to many, it was, but to others they might wonder what the fuss was about because it was so understated and simple. But that’s why I am forever a fan of Holly black (I loved her White Cat series)-The subtle severity wrapped in beautiful, simplistic words.

I want to scream at him: Do you know how hard it is to always keep your head down? To swallow insults and endure outright threats? And yet I have done so. I thought it proved my toughness. I thought if you saw I could take whatever came at me and still smile, you would see that I was worthy.
You’re no killer.
He has no idea what I am.

For me, that was the beauty of this book. Mean, cruel, unrelenting fae and the humans who were swept away into a world where they have to adapt to be just as cunning and harsh as those that surround them, lest they be taken advantage of…or worse, die. The beauty was in the simplicity of the delivery of such nasty moments. It’s not as cruel if it’s not stretched into three descriptive, over the top sentences, right? Wrong. It’s almost worse-and that’s why I’m so so here for it.

Do not reveal your skill with a blade. Do not reveal your mastery over glamour. Do not reveal all that you can do.
Little did Prince Dain know that my real skill lies in pissing people off.

Jude was, I’m sorry, literally such a sly, devious bada**. She makes mistakes, clearly, but she meets Cardan’s worst moments head to head with nary a look of fear on her face…even though she’s shaking from the inside out. Now, that varies between anger and fear, I’ll admit-but keeping a calm, cool, and collected persona in the face of your nemesis is amazing, no matter the fluff on the inside.

What they don’t realize is this: Yes, they frighten me, but I have always been scared, since the day I got here. I was raised by the man who murdered my parents, reared in a land of monsters. I live with that fear, let it settle into my bones, and ignore it. If I didn’t pretend not to be scared, I would hide under my owl-down coverlets in Madoc’s estate forever. I would lie there and scream until there was nothing left of me. I refuse to do that. I will not do that.

And sweet, tortured, menacing Cardan. I loved him even more the second time around. How? I don’t know. But he is bae now. He is everything…I lapped everything up he did-and I have to wonder if it’s because I knew about all his layers beforehand, so I was already a goner, then I got to re-lap him up and drool over him some more. All the while knowing all his deepest, darkest secrets and his true intentions or the menace behind his words. It makes a difference, for me, to be honest. To know someone’s true face behind a mask-thus, I fell for him harder.

“So I am to sit here and feed you information,” Cardan says, leaning against a hickory tree. “And you’re to go charm royalty? That seems entirely backward.”
I fix him with a look. “I can be charming. I charmed you, didn’t I?”
He rolls his eyes. “Do not expect others to share my depraved tastes.”

And that’s why I waited SO LONG (I read this the day it came out in January) to write this review-I bided my time so I could refresh myself and write a review that was worthy of such an epic novel, so it could be fresh in my mind and so I could give it fair review. And here is where I will capitalize on what I mentioned earlier-I LOVE to fangirl-but many times we love a book so much we don’t tell people the whole story. We don’t give a circumspect view on an otherwise addicting story, so those who aren’t just all about this or that know better than to even give this a try. Like, okay, I trust a review a LOT more if someone does sour AND sweet, as opposed to just sweet. I may love a book, but I can see the flaws, too. Like, for this book, I loved everything about it-though, I do wish there was more school where they were all mean to Jude. Yeah yeah, I’m masochistic, okay? But, this time around that didn’t bother me as much. I saw how the story unfolded and wanted to just bask in every moment. And while I love the nastiness…some might find all the characters a bit unredeemable.

Whatever essential thing the other Jude has, whatever part that’s unbroken in her and broken in me, that thing might be unrecoverable. Vivi is right; it cost me something to be the way I am. But I do not know what. And I don’t know if I can get it back. I don’t even know if I want it.
But maybe I could try.

While many of us LIVE for unredeemable characters (and honestly, they ARE redeemable, but it’s hard to see that haha), lots of people want kindness or more to root for on the GOOD side, not just the revenge side, like all of us relentless, bloodthirsty, vicious fans 😉. And, honestly, if you didn’t like fae before, you’ll likely not like them here-this story is a great example of the worst side of fae, and therefore won’t win you over…unless you like lots of, as mentioned above, vicious, unrelenting bloodshed to get what you want lol.

Faerie might be beautiful, but its beauty is like a golden stag’s carcass, crawling with maggots beneath his hide, ready to burst.

So see? I don’t mind a little horrificness with my cereal, but many do. So that was my warning. Where I see depth and amazing character arcs, many would be affronted. Not I, though. And, the writing. I’m sorry, but the GD writing. Good LORD I loved it. So simplistic yet so beautiful! I can’t even hardly stand it!

Of course, Taryn is right about stories. Bad things happen to those princesses. They are pricked with thorns, poisoned by apples, married to their own fathers. They have their hands cut off and their brothers turned into swans, their lovers chopped up and planted in basil pots. They vomit up diamonds. When they walk, it feels as though they’re walking on knives.

So I guess I’ll leave you here. It’s all about what you like/want/need in a novel. For me, a little peril, a forbidden romance, some cruelty and smexy I-hate-you-but-let’s-make-out is all I really need-BAHA! I mean, what more could I possibly ask for? Do I think this is overhyped? Partially-it’s not fair to say it’s wholly overhyped because it is a truly wonderful book and it deserves so much praise for such subtle severity wrapped up into such a sexy little book package. And people deserve to love it how they want. However, I’ve read 5 other books I loved just as much that are hardly talked about at all. Ten, even. But that’s just how it goes, right? Some stand out above the rest. My biggest advice, if you live under a rock, that is, and haven’t read this yet, is to go in with the mindset that it’s overhyped and not to expect too much…and frankly you’ll adore it. And, come on, not only do I have a MASSIVE crush on my cruel prince, but I have a girl crush on the human, Jude-the girl who (view spoiler)[outsmarted them all (hide spoiler)]. But, to be honest, I had a crush on her long before that. What can I say? I love a girl who isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty *shrug*. I’ll jump in on that hype.

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Re-reading bc why not?? I LOVED this (Cardan) in January and I literally am in the mood for nothing. Plus I still owe this masterpiece a review. Let the blood bath begin…

You haven’t seen the least I can do >.<