Thursday, May 10, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Cruel Prince by Holly Black



  The Cruel Prince is a YA take on a fantasy sub-genre that has contained some of my favorite works over the past few years: Fae fantasy.  Fae fantasy tends to come in two tones in my experience - stories involving Fae characters interacting with each other and the mortal world, where Fae society is different (in classic ways) but not necessarily much crueler than human society....and stories where the Fae are indeed the cruel Fair Folk of legends, and who are likely to cause misery for humans they run across.  The Cruel Prince, if you couldn't tell from the title, is an example of the latter - the Fae here are very much not human, and are not nice in any way shape or form. 

   It's also an exceptionally good start to a new trilogy, with an excellent mix of interesting characters (particularly its protagonist Jude) and an oft unpredictable plot, filled with intrigue and dark drama.  Again,this is not a light story (the prologue opens with the protagonist's parents being murdered), but it does an excellent job at keeping the reader interested  from start to finish, with the final 12 chapters (the final 2 of part 1 and the entirety of part 2 of this book) being particularly explosive.

More after the jump:


----------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------
When Jude and her identical twin Taryn were seven, her parents were brutally murdered by a Fae redcap named Madoc, who had been their mother's ex-husband, and their older sister Vivi's true father.  Rather than being left behind however, Madoc took Jude and Taryn back with him into Faerie, raising the two of them as his children.

But to truly be a part of the Court of Faerie, there are only two paths open to a human: marriage to a Fae....or to be accepted into the service of one of the princes of their Fae kingdom.  Despite their human origins, Jude and her twin are desperate to join the Court.  While her sister Taryn has her hopes on marriage, Jude feels her only chance is to prove herself as a knight for one of the princes.

But a number of people and things stand in her way, aside from her own human weaknesses.  For one, her adoptive father may not be willing to give her his blessing to compete in the trials for knighthood.  For another, the youngest Fae prince, Prince Cardan and his gang seem to want nothing but to torture Jude and to force her to give up on her dreams.

But Jude has spent too much of her life in the Fae world to give in to anybody, and believes she is willing to do anything in order to get the position she deserves.  And with the Fae King about to step down and give the crown to one of his six children, the oncoming conflict in the Court will offer her the opportunity to do just that....but it will also test her resolve: is she really willing to lie, kill, and betray her friends and family in order to get what she wants?  Because in this world, it will take just that.
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In a way The Cruel Prince reminded me of Seth Dickinson's "The Traitor Baru Cormorant" (one of my perfect score books), in its protagonist, Jude.  Whereas her goals (and the book's goals) are less grand than Baru's, Jude is very similar in how she commits herself as things get more desperate: she will plot, scheme, and do worse in order to achieve her goals.  The book asks if Jude is truly willing to do what it takes, and more often than not, to her surprise and sometimes dismay, the answer is truly: yes.

This makes Jude a fascinating protagonist, a human who has truly taken the world of the Fae to heart.  Which is an excellent match for this fantastic world, which is incredibly well built and original even with the typical Fae touches.  The Fae world is a fascinating but dark world, which is absolutely terrifying for anyone without the proper stomach for living there - human or fae (Jude's stepmother is quite clearly one of the latter).  It's a world where everyone is acting on their own agendas - which, whether small or big, often have sinister implications for those caught up in them.  Moreover, it's a world where cruelty is commonplace and almost expected, but Black writes it such that it never feels grim solely for the sake of being grim.

The other characters in the story are mostly excellent as well.  Whether it be the cruel young Prince Cardan, Jude's fae half-sister Vivi, her step-parents with their own agendas, or most of the other more minor or spoiler-like characters I won't mention here, nearly everyone in this story has some depth and barely anyone feels like a one-note character.

The only two exceptions are Jude's twin sister Taryn, who the book can't really do much with other than contrast Jude, but whose true feelings are never explored, and the potential love interest Locke....who really is the only part of this book that didn't work for me.  Locke's storyline will be predictable to most readers I suspect from the start, and while it contributes to the rest of Jude's growth and development, the combination of it being predictable and it being more pedestrian compared to the rest of the story made it just not work.

The rest of the plot however, works incredibly well.  The book is excellently paced, and gains momentum more and more as the story goes on, as Jude finds herself deeper and deeper in the plots of the Court of Faerie.  The end of the book's Part 1 and the entirety of Part 2 practically never let up, and left me gasping repeatedly at things that stunned me despite being setup earlier in the novel.  And while the book ends on a cliffhanger that makes me want the next book as soon as possible, it still ends in a totally satisfying way that nicely wraps up this book.  It's an excellent start to a new trilogy and well recommended.
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