| Title: | The Cruel Prince, The Wicked King, The Queen Of Nothing |
| Author: | Holly Black |
| Genre: | Fantasy, Young Adult, Fae, Romance, Magic |
| Published On: | January 2, 2018, January 8, 2019, November 19, 2019 |
| No. of Pages: | 370, 336, 300 |
This is a review of “The Folk Of The Air Series” by Holly Black without any spoilers.
About The Folk Of The Air Book Series
There are 3 books in the series:- 1-The Cruel Prince, 2-The Wicked King, and 3-The Queen Of Nothing.
There’s also a short novella after the completion of the fantasy series “How the King of Elfhame Learned To Hate Stories” from Cardan’s perspective.
The Wicked King and The Queen Of Nothing won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction in 2019 and 2020 respectively. While The Cruel Prince was nominated in the same category in 2018.
Trigger Warning⚠️- death, murder, bullying, manipulation, war, blood, violence, poison, and torture.
The Folk Of The Air Series Summary/Plot
Jude was seven when her parents were murdered by her mother’s ex-lover. He takes Jude and her two sisters with him to the faerie land. Now after 10 years, she wants to belong there, as many faerie people despise humans. She is considered weak and some faerie bully humans just for fun. Especially Prince Cardan who is the youngest prince and her nemesis. They both don’t like each other.
Jude has a twin sister, Taryn who also goes through the same struggle. Jude spends most of her time training with swords because she wants to be powerful and capable of protecting herself and her sisters.
Now the High King decides to step down from the crown. The whole story takes turns and a lot of politics gets involved. Jude also gets herself involved in the High Court’s intrigues.
The Folk Of The Air Series Book Review
This is a dark fantasy book. Which has a lot to offer with not-so-likable characters.
The faerie world is very beautiful. It is written and described very well. It will make to want to see that or visit that world in real life. It’s hard to stop reading this book.
The Characters are not likable. It’s just who is more likable than others. The unpredictability of the story and the characters makes reading this series very enjoyable.
Jude hates that she wants to live in the faerie land. She also doesn’t want to live in the human world because she doesn’t know much about life in the human world. She grew up in faerie land which makes her feel that faerie land is her home.
Even though people in Faerie don’t like her they can’t do anything about it. As she was brought to the faerie land by her mother’s ex-husband who is a faerie and now her father.
Her twin sisters Taryn also goes through the same problems but she deals with them in very different ways. Jude’s other sister, Vivi is a faerie but she doesn’t want to live in the faerie land.
The high king has many sons and daughters. Now he has to choose the next ruler. Which results in bloodshed and too much politics gets involved. Even Jude gets herself involved in this. She discovers her capacity for trickery and bloodshed.
It’s amazing to read how she navigates through all these politics. She is a strong female character.
Romance is not the main theme of this series. It also didn’t feel necessary. But many people on social media have portrayed this book in a way that makes many readers think that it’s a Romance book.
There is angst between Cardan and Jude. Even though they think they hate each other but they also have feelings for each other.
All the characters are very unpredictable. You’ll never know what they are up to. It’s written in such a way that it doesn’t give you much time to think about it. Which is absolutely amazing thing about the series.
I liked all three books almost equally. But if I have to choose one then I’ll pick the 2nd book- The Wicked King because that one has many amazing twists.
I’ll highly recommend this book if you want to read a fantasy book based in a faerie world with well-written characters.
