I am pretty torn over this book.
On one hand, the first half I hated. I thought the plot had potential, I just strongly disliked the author's writing style. On the other hand, it had a kind of.. addictive quality to it. Especially into the second half, I found myself needing to know what happens next.
The author does include some folklore. And I appreciate that she actually took time to research and what is included is relatively accurate. Additionally, after a certain point I just found myself needing to know what happens next. I didn't care for Jude's love interests or the weird tournament she entered or her immature bullies and especially not for Cardan. But, without giving any spoilers, I felt things beginning to mature towards the end. It was more about fantasy politics opposed to an annoying MC being bullied by her classmates.
In the first few chapters, the main character's parents are murdered. And it's so boring. There is no emotion, there is nothing to make you empathise with Jude as she's witnessing this tragedy. It's not written like a tragedy at all, and that doesn't feel intentional. And this continues for a lot of the book, it just makes it pretty boring.
There's no proper set up for the world Jude finds herself in. In my opinion, a good book is one that is able to explain a world within the plot, in the first few chapters. For me, a good example of this is Shadow and Bone, this book sets up and explains the magical world very well, but without going out of its way to do it. That book incorporates this explanation into the plot, while The Cruel Prince doesn't. This book doesn't explain some key & reoccurring concepts until about halfway through. Black seems to just throw the world and its characters at the reader without much explanation or context, and expects us to go 'oh yeah that makes perfect sense'. In my opinion, even plot twists shouldn't be entirely out of the blue. This was one of my initial introductions to the fantasy genre, but I had read a lot of mystery. And in most of these books, the big reveal or realisation is a massive penny-drop moment – but you had enough clues and small details throughout that it makes sense. It makes you go 'Why didn't I see that coming?', whereas this book just makes you go '…what?'.
Also, I despised Cardan. I've seen so many comments and reviews saying they love him, but I hate him with a burning passion. I cannot stand the hot bully love interest, and Cardan is no exception. He treats Jude awfully the whole way through the book, and as soon as HE needs something, he starts treating her a little better but still like an entitled jerk. Abusive and problematic men being treated as the ultimate love interest is just gross to me. Now, I have since read the two sequels to the trilogy, and it gets a bit better – especially in The Queen of Nothing. And yes I know it's the whole character arc thing, but it's still gross.
And finally… there was very little substance. Until the last few chapters, I felt very little actually happened. A lot of a human girl being bullied, and that weird, boring tournament I completely forgot about until writing a review… but towards the end it did hugely improve. Spies, murder & plotting. More like fantasy politics. And I liked that.
Of course, this is just my personal opinion and I would love to hear others, no matter if you agree or disagree. At the end of the day, this book wasn't bad. I did somewhat enjoy it towards the end. And the two sequels were incredible in comparison. I genuinely loved The Queen of Nothing.
by Ghost_Wyvern
14 Comments
I have similar feelings to yourself. I kind of got intrigued by the story and finished the whole series. Is it a particularly good book? Not really but it had the right amount of suspense and character building to keep me entertained. The whole plot with Cardan I could let slide, there’s plenty of people into enemies-to-lovers type of plots so it just played into it.
Coincidentally I’ve just binge read the trilogy. Cardan’s behaviour towards Jude in the first book put me in mind of a boy pulling a girl’s pigtails in the playground because he likes her. There’s something of the spoilt toddler about him, with a hefty dose of projected self-loathing
DNFed fast. Character was absurd and writing was terrible.
Yeah, I kept reading, hoping it would get better, but it’s just a log of abuse this woman takes. Might as well read the police blotter if you just want to read about women being abused.
I didn’t really like it, honestly. Even though he’s supposed to be this cruel, racist character who is stronger than the MC could ever hope to be, the prince feels extremely lacking.
The tournament was full on ridiculous. I will not apologize for saying this. It was ridiculous to portray Jude as this strong character that can beat supernatural creatures.
I also feel like the characters overall are not very well portrayed. The relationship between Jude and her stepfather, if you can even call him that, does not feel realistic at all and is barely expanded upon, Cardan’s cruelty feels like it was copied and pasted from diary of a wimpy kid (or any other book set in middle school) and the spy plot was weird as hell.
I agree with you on almost all points and the blind love I see for the series surprises me.
I mean credit where credit is due, the series has mettle, (it obviously isn’t easy to write one), it is engaging in parts and sub plots. It flew by smoothly for me and I don’t regret reading it.
I did enjoy court politics and related twists and turns but was absolutely disgusted by the set of bullies. I never liked Cardan, he was straight up a mean bully and no please stop justifying cruel behavior with stuff like he’s being abused or he likes the MC. This wasn’t an enemies to lovers done right imo.
And the other twin’s love interest- forgot his name- but I don’t know why he brought up an insane level of revulsion in me anytime he came onto the pages. He wasn’t a human/fae character to me, he was just a ghoul-animal hybrid in my mind.
I did prefer the 2nd and 3rd books cos they had certain better plots. But left me wanting!
I just got the books to look pretty on my shelf…
I hated it and then several years later I picked it up again and loved it. So I don’t really know.
Love it. I have never understood why people say it’s boring. I think the narrator is supposed to be a child in the prologue and a teenager throughout the rest and that is accurately captured.
Basically, I disagree with every single thing you took away, but different strokes!
For the tournament, I think it (intentionally) shows that, while the fae have magic, they aren’t necessarily physically stronger than humans.
And I don’t think you’re particularly supposed to like Cardan in book 1. In fact, what I like throughout the series is that both MCs aren’t particularly nice people.
And I like that the story starts out one thing and turns into another, which you discover with your narrator as it unfolds.
Though I personally never felt this way, many people end up saying they like the subsequent books but had to slog through book 1.
>There’s no proper set up for the world Jude finds herself in. In my opinion, a good book is one that is able to explain a world within the plot,
The Cruel Prince is the **fifth** book in an established universe. I don’t think Holly Black predicted that a huge portion of her audience would come from booktok. It’s reasonable to assume that people reading the Cruel Prince had read the 4 others first.
>Also, I despised Cardan. I’ve seen so many comments and reviews saying they love him, but I hate him with a burning passion. I cannot stand the hot bully love interest, and Cardan is no exception. He treats Jude awfully the whole way through the book, and as soon as HE needs something, he starts treating her a little better but still like an entitled jerk. Abusive and problematic men being treated as the ultimate love interest is just gross to me. Now, I have since read the two sequels to the trilogy, and it gets a bit better – especially in The Queen of Nothing. And yes I know it’s the whole character arc thing, but it’s still gross.
​
I think you’re supposed to despise Cardan, as the cruel prince is not a romance. It’s a YA Fantasy-Court Intrigue novel, and he’s a major antagonist. I hated him too, and honestly I wasn’t quite fond of him by the end of the trilogy either. His negative impact on her life drives her to do many things, some great, some not so great. Their relationship in the first two books is largely Jude trying to gain as much power as possible over him. The only book of the trilogy I would call a romance would be ‘The Queen of Nothing’, but even then it’s a subplot. This series is not a romance, and it isn’t about the romance. It’s Jude’s coming of age story. This trilogy is about Jude trying to gain agency over her situation.
I read the trilogy and all I can say is that Queen of Nothing carries the series. Sorry 😭
I didn’t dislike Black’s writing and the story but the characters make me so impossibly mad that it’s hard for me to continue the series. I feel FOMO from everyone loving The Cruel Prince and having such a big fandom but honestly its just not for me. I’m willing to give The Stolen Heir a try whenever my ‘To Read’ list gets shorter.
Personally, the writing was very immature and sentence structure seemed empty at certain points. The romance area of the book seemed forced and predictable and it seemed to throw fantasy facts everywhere. I know this book is a favorite to many but for me it was not the best.
I really think that most of the issues you’re stating has to be due tot he fact that this story is told in a limited POV. We only get Jude’s POV on everything and everyone around her. And we only recently got Cardan’s in another book.