#Pretty average Selkie story to be honest.

[melonthesprigatito]

I feel like everybody who's freaking out over the Typhlosion folklore story from the Teraleaks needs to be introduced to this video

[aquaburst3]

Well, I bought another book after work in two months. This time it was The Cruel Prince by Holly Black. Reason why I did was because I saw some posts saying that Jude was a badass and painted the novel as if it was some Game of Thrones revenge fantasy with fae. Was it worth it? Honestly, no. 

Like my other review, gonna divide this up into the good and the bad. 

Bad

-The pacing in this novel felt extremely off. In my anime fandoms, I joke around with my friends that some animes have what I like to call “Second Half Syndrome”. This is where the first 12 episodes of 24 series are amazing, but it loses some of that luster in the second half. This novel, strangely enough, has that in reverse. The first half is extremely dull. Nothing happens outside of high school mean girl antics and petty fae drama. Around half way through the book things picked up a lot more and I was pretty into it. 

--While Jude was a decent enough as a lead, and I liked her in the second half a lot since she reminded me of a Game of Thrones character there, her character felt inconsistent and poorly constructed to me.   

The development she undergoes here is odd. In the first half, she was an average, timid girl.  Out of nowhere, she became a badass spy, who wasn’t afraid to murder and kidnap people. That was jarring to me. To use Game of Thrones comparisons, it’s like if Arya went from being a timid girl like she was like before Ned Stark died to being a badass assassin spy who baked her enemies into a pie like how she was in the later seasons in the matter of a quarter of an episode.  People don’t change that directly in that short of a time span unless something super traumatic happens to them, so seeing that happen in that little time made no sense. (I feel like I needed to either seen this transformation happen over the course of the whole series instead of one book or just had her start off as this fae spy girl from the very start and scrapped the first half completely.)   

Some of choices she made were rather odd and came out of nowhere. At one point, Jude randomly decides to save a human girl, despite being indifferent to humans in the fae realm beforehand. This sort of thing often happens throughout the book. 

--  This plays into the previous point, but I found Jude’s backstory just bizarre. Her parents were murdered by a fae noble, and she and her sisters were taken in by him. Initially, I thought the novel would be a Game of Thrones/Kill Bill style revenge story where Jude and her sisters would kill off those who wronged them and rip the fae realm apart for what they did to her parents and how they treat humanity. But, nope. Instead of any of that, she figures that she must try to love the man that murdered her mother. Despite being treated like dogshit, she loves the fae realm and wants to become a fae herself. She excuses it by saying that she was small child at the time and is just more used to that world, but according to the wiki page, she would’ve been seven or eight when that happened. Jude should’ve had some pretty vivid memories of the mortal world and PTSD of what happened that night. So why is she so indifferent to any of this?  How does that make any sense?! (Honestly, I think this whole backstory should’ve been scrapped and she was just a changeling or something. Again, that’s just me.) 

--  Cardan’s reasoning for how he treated Jude felt pretty weak. He says that the reason why he bullied her was because he had a crush on her. (Abridging that, obviously, but still...)   But that sounds like something that a small child would say about their first crush instead of someone in their late teens.   

--Parts of the world building were rather confusing to me. For instance, Jude and her sisters go to the mortal world a few times like it was in another place. Another time she talked about the fae realm as if it was alongside the mortal realm like in Harry Potter.  So I was like, “Okay, is this in another dimension? Our world behind a vale? Or what?” The novel never really explained any of that, or at least in a way that was very clear. 

Good 

-- Finally, some fae that stay true to folklore! But seriously, if you know me well, you know that I love mythology and fae folklore. I found that type of stuff fascinating since I was a kid. A lot of time, at least in the fiction I’ve read, they either come across as sexy humans with a layer of body glitter and a pair of butterfly wings that you would find in a Halloween store (looking at you ACOTAR) or innocent Tinkerbell sort. Both of these are far from the truth. Fae can come in all shapes and sizes. While there are some helpful and kind fae, some of them can be dark, ruthless and outright terrifying. There were even some more obscure ones like the Red Caps and Selkies that made an appearance, which was a welcome addition in my book.  

--The second half was an entertaining read. It felt more like I was reading a manuscript to a Game of Thrones episodes before that series dipped in the second half. I liked the betrayals and politics in The High Court. All the bloodshed, arguments, and the fight for the crown was pretty cool. 

--I enjoyed her depiction of the fae and their world - wicked, magical, and dangerous. 

--Her twin Taryn was great in a love to hate her sort of way. 

-- Liked Cardan. He reminded me of Gen from Dr Stone in terms of personality for some reason. I felt sorry for him due his past. 

--The complicated family dynamic that Jude has with her family was interesting, even if parts of it made no sense. 

--Vivi was a cool character. She was the most grounded and believable character in this book. Instead of being completely indifferent to what happened, she wants to get out of the fae realm and feels bad for what has happened. (To be honest, I wish that she was the protagonist instead of Jude.)   She’s also bisexual, and has a girlfriend, which is awesome. 

Over all

I was rather disappointed with this. The second half was great, but the first half, the bad pacing and poor writing decisions brought this down for me. I’ll probably read Wicked King and Queen of Nothing if I check them out from the library if I’m bored or something. Too much missed potential.