An instant bestseller!By #1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black, the first book in a stunning new series about a mortal girl who finds herself caught in a web of royal faerie intrigue. 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 … 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.
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Brilliant YA fantasy set in the world of faeries and the fey.
Such beautiful characterizations. I loved the complex relationships between everyone.
This book got so much hype and I must say the hype is well deserved, in my opinion.
I really enjoyed this book and everything about it. It is well written, fast paced and fun, thrilling roller-coaster ride.
I loved the world that Holly Black has created, an awesome mix of faerie land with yet a touch of the modern world as we know it. We get a great deal of fairie and its daily life which at times does not seem so different than ours. School, work, politics and the daily grind is the same in fairie as it would be here. Just a bit different and with different views on life, mortal or fae.
I just liked everything about the world.
I also really enjoyed all the characters. I never was sure to love or to hate them. Often both.
I loved Jude, our main character. She is feisty. Smart, cunning and despite being terrified all the time she never gives up. Never shows it . She never takes the easy route (like leaving to the mortal world) and never stops fighting. But she still has moments of stupidity, and where she seems power hungry and selfish but that made me like her even more. I loved her relationship with her sisters and Oak. The good, the bad and the ugly.
Madoc, I wasn’t sure if I should love him or hate him , and when the book ended I still didn’t know if I should love him or hate him. Don’t get me wrong it is made clear within the first five pages that he is indeed very cruel, with killing their parents and so. But throughout the book you can’t help to like him, the way he cares for them whether they are his kids or not and even though they are mortal . Well her and Taryn.
Cardan, the cruel prince. Well he is cruel all right, But of course he is also charming and beautiful and there is so much more to him. And honestly I can’t wait to read more about him in future books. I want to know more why he is that way who and what made him that way. I also want to hug him and tell him that everything will be okay. Again he is someone I loved to hate and hated to love.
Overall, this book was just amazing and even better than I thought it be. I absoltly loved it.
It is funny yet dark, with plenty of betrayal, lies and deceive with just the right amount of romance, humor and snark. It was just the perfect mix of everything that keeps yu asking for more. Every time you thing you have it all figured out everything spins you in a new direction so that you will not see the surprising end coming, I loved it and can’t wait to see what will happen next.
I rate it full 5
Messy high school drama and a complicated home life set in a dark faerie world will keep you turning the page–and literally gasping out loud in moments you don’t see coming.
Jude was seven when she, her twin sister and their big sister were stolen from the human world and forced to live in a dangerous faerie one. Fast-forward a decade, and every possible tension is amplified. Jude wants to not only fit in, but do so by earning a place of honor as a human among faeries on her own merit. The problem? Her expanded family, her peers and pretty much everyone else around her is plotting something, keeping secrets or actively making her life miserable (including fellow classmate/cruelest son of the retiring king) She has to find a way to be even more strategic than those around her if she can get what she wants.
I read this book in one day. Action, surprises, emotion, choices–it all kept me guessing and moving forward until the very end. Holly Black is about to get blamed for a lot of people disappearing from this world to dive into hers (sorry about that deadline, boss!). Wow. This was some damn fine writing. Highly recommend to lovers of fantasy, and those who are just stepping their toe into the genre.
This book was SOOOO good!! It sucked me in from the first chapter and spit me out at the end! What an awesome adventure with this story! I love how complicated and flawed all of these characters were!! I can’t wait to read more books by Holly Black and I’ve already pre-ordered The Wicked King because I NEEEEED that book! Bravo!
The Cruel Prince is a wonderful, wicked fantasy that travels between our world and the High Court of Faerie. The heroine, Jude, burns with barely contained rage and ambition; you can’t help but want her to win. I loved how rich and verdant the descriptions were, often detailed with the flora and fauna of Faerie. Waiting for the sequel!
“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.”
The Cruel Prince is the first installment in Holly Black’s young-adult fantasy series titled: The Folk of the Air. I found it to be fast-paced and incredibly engaging with a story line I am eager to follow. The many, many characters to follow gave me a little bit of trouble, but it may not impact you at all. Definitely a winner in terms of YA that appeals to many ages. Check it out!
The The Folk of the Air series includes the following installments as of May 2018:
#1-The Cruel Prince
#2-The Wicked King
#3-The Queen of Nothing
My husband bought me the series for Christmas this last year and I binged them in a matter of about 2 weeks. The hate/love relationship is intriguing, the tough nature of the main character keeps you wanting more, to know what’s going to happen next. The descriptions and imagination of the places and people, I love it. I will definitely be reading these again throughout my life. Amazing!
THE CRUEL PRINCE is the beginning of a new series, and it was awesome. Royal faerie intrigue – I mean, come on.
This Prince is just so immature to think that he’s a hundred years old fae!
The girl is very ambitious for a non-magic folk. But I love how feisty she is. and she just made everyone in this book look like a fool! LOL.
Cardan Greenbriar is my LIFE (not…in this book, but I’m so glad I kept reading the series!)
Jude and her sisters lived a normal human life until a man broke into their home one day, killing their parents and taking them away to a land across the water that they’ve only dreamed of. The man, Madoc, is a fairy, and her oldest sister Vivienne’s real father. He raises Jude and her twin sister as his own, but there’s no place for humans in the beautiful, dangerous world of Elfhame.
As Jude fights to earn her place as one of the royal knights, she also fights the young Prince Cardan and his friends, who delight in torturing mortals. But as much as her mortality is a curse, it’s also a benefit when the elder prince Dain, next in line to the throne, welcomes her into his underground network of spies. After all, humans can lie, making her mortality a very useful thing to have.
Jude longs to fit in and finally find where she belongs, but even her own family seems to work against her. As she unravels court secrets and tries to keep herself alive, it seems she might belong in the fairly world after all.
I wasn’t sure how I would like this book. I’ve heard mixed reviews and didn’t know how the book being YA would affect my score. But I was pleasant surprised by how much I enjoyed it, even without the dramatic romance I was promised. That is literally the only thing I felt was missing, but it is a YA book, so I didn’t expect Jude and Prince Cardan to get freaky in fairy land right off the bat.
The world building was amazing. I grew up on books like The Hobbit, Abhorsen series, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, so I appreciate the level of care and creativity Black put into this book. But it’s clear she also did her research into real fairly lore to build her characters and the rules by which they live by. She showed the fae as beautiful but dangerous, tricky and deadly. Perfection.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book and have already begun book two. I recommend it to all fantasy fans who love strong female characters, lovely world building, and court intrigue.
I loved it great book!
This is a great YA fantasy filled with the world of fairie…and a cruel prince.
As the title implies, it’s an enemies-to-lovers story and I’m about halfway through it.
It has great character development, and I really felt for the main character, who is a human who’s had to survive her parents being slaughtered by the very man now raising her and her sisters.
Since the main character is a human mortal, she is seen as ugly, temporary, and completely expendable. Just as everything finally starts coming together for her and her cruel prince, though, things unravel again.
I enjoyed some of the unexpected choices the main character makes, which kept me hooked and ready to read the next book.
Amazing!!!!!
Holly Black is a wonderful writer. I always enjoy her stories and this book is no exception. Her Folk of the Air are dark and twisty, nothing like Tinker Bell, or Disney for that matter. She writes raw, disturbed and ruthless characters with hidden vulnerabilities that lets the reader know straight away that she’s telling the truth. I love that in any book, especially YA.
She also takes us along the knife-edge path between love and hate, attraction and repulsion which I know from experience can be real. And treacherous.
The only reason I gave four stars and not five is because I loved the writing more than the story and for me, as a reader, I want the writing to disappear and the story, while I’m in the book, to be my life.
I will be reading the rest of the series for sure. Thank you Holly Black!
Reread 5/2021: This was still really fun to read! I wish there had been more of the scenes showing the tension between Jude and Cardan. Definitely picking up The Wicked King next.
Really enjoyed this! Nothing particularly unexpected so far, but very interested in seeing where it’s going in the sequel, and had fun reading it.
Was so interesting i didn’t want to put it down
While this book started off a bit slow for me, I’m glad I kept reading because once I truly got into the story I found it to be enchanting and engrossing! I’ve read fairy books before, but none that truly encompassed the world of the fae quite so exclusively. There were humans in the story, but they are the minority and I found that I loved having a story that was solely in the fairy realm.
The characters in this book were very well written, they had depth and personality and a distinct voice. And the world of Elfhame was described beautifully and horrifyingly at times. Such descriptive language allows the reader to truly enter this world and live right along side the characters.
I usually consider myself to be the kind of reader who predicts what will happen at the end of the book with some accuracy, but the ending of this book totally shocked me. So, if you like Fairies, being tantalized with a story you can’t predict, and being fully immersed into a new fantasy world, you’re going to love this book.
The prologue to the story hooked me right in and I had to know what was going to happen for Jude and her sister. While the story took off quickly, I found myself not warming up to Jude, the main character, as quickly; although by the end of the story I found her cunning and wanting to jump right to Book 2 to continue with her story arc. This book had me feeling a gamut of emotions and I am still thinking about details from the book even though I finished it hours ago.