The Cruel Prince

This series has been on my shelf for years, and only now have I gotten around to it. A friend of mine, a bookish little devil themselves, chose to cosplay Cardan, and I just could not resist a book with a cute elven prince.

I expected a very different book.

What I found amidst these 300 or so pages was not something I disliked; on the contrary, I had a lot of fun with the latter third of the book. I even enjoyed some of the beginning. It's that middle section that feels wasted and could have been utilized better.

The Folk of the Air isn't fantasy in the sense that we understand today. Its first paragraph mentions a taxi and a car. This is that kind of book. You know the kind. The ‘hidden world' with super special people who live unseen by the stupid worthless humans. I will forever damn her books for making this trope so much more prominent.

Sadly, this setting plays no significant role at all. There is no reason whatsoever for the human world to be ours, to be modern. It could have been about a kingdom of humans and the land of faeries, but for some reason, we need mentions of Target and the United States.

Jude, as the protagonist, is weak. She's also extremely wince-worthy.

And before you say anything else, I was good at it.

I've learned from Madoc and...

fairies cannot lie