Children born of fairy stock (The Cruel Prince by Holly Black sync read post)
ikel89 and hopefully cyanshadow, and anyone else who wishes to join us, are embarking on a sync read of Holly Black's The Cruel Prince . Wicked fairies and larcenous teens (probably) and complicated family relationships (almost certainly) galore!
Come join, or if you've already read it, comment along as we progress through the book.
Come join, or if you've already read it, comment along as we progress through the book.
- The revelation that Oak is a secret child of the royal line occurred to me just a little ahead of Jude, though I'd been assuming there WAS a secret child of the royal line for a long time before that. For a while I thought that was Locke or Vivi, but, sure, Oak works too (and nice bit with the acorn there). But raising a secret royal child whom someone already tried to assassinate once so close to the royal court does seem like a really stupid idea. On the other hand, Faeries, not exactly known for logic and prudence, so... OK, I guess?
- But, like, really? Given how rare children in Faerie are, nobody thought it was weird that Oriana suddenly had a kid? Nobody suspected that, even if it was her kid, it might've been not Madoc's but Eldred's, given that she was Eldred's consort? I mean, it doesn't seem like Balekin is the sharpest knife in the drawer, but Dain seems smarter than that, and also paranoid enough? And he was always hanging out with Madoc?
- I do like the way Oriana, who started out being seen through Jude's eyes as a sort of wicked stepmother archetype is first revealed as someone who does care about Jude and Taryn and tries to help them and is then revealed to have more to her than meets the eye. (I was also guessing for a while that she was Liriope's friend / addressee of the acorn letter, but again, didn't make the connection to Oak not being her biological kid until quite a bit later.)
- Jude very quickly jumps to the conclusion that Madoc would raise Oak to be a brutal king, as his regent, and, OK, that's a fairly plausible conclusion, but she was very wrong about Madoc's plans/motivations twice in the last two days... And whatever else his flaws, he seems like he actually tries as a father, even with no ulterior benefits for him. Again, it's something I can buy Jude doing on limited evidence, because she's demonstrated she's the kind of person who'll jump both feet in because she needs to be committed to something... but it makes me like her less as a character that she keeps doing that.
- The whole Jude-Taryn triangle thing with Locke was so... pointless. Like, I even buy the faerie logic of him stirring up shit for the lulz, but it doesn't go anywhere or accomplish anything. Like, OK, Taryn chooses a faerie er sister, but I actually haven't been feeling the Jude-Taryn relationship particularly, so it has no emotional impact on me. Meh.
- Cardan's crush on Jude is the one thing I did absolutely foresee, but, man, I had not expected this take on it, where he's simultaneously turned on by her mortal-ness and repulsed by the fact that he is, and she is getting off on having power over him at least as much as on his fey beauty. I mean, this is a lot more interesting than what I was expecting! I'm just used to Holly Black's fey/human relationships being more... wholesome, unless they're mistakes (like Corny/sadistic faerie knight in whichever Tithe book that is). And that was a pretty dub-con-y first kiss, which I also wasn't really expecting.
Minor things:
- I like that even with Cardan, Jude sort of checks in with him before giving him a command he can't disobey.
- I also appreciate the way everyone is sort of casually presumed to be bi, which seems fitting for the faerie folk.
Quotes:
"That's what comes of hungering for something: You forget to check if it's rotten before you gobble it down."
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I would say it is beyond stupid, but literally no one in the book did anything to make this feat dumber than the rest. Maddock didn't think to inspect his wife's remains too closely, or look for her human lover anywhere (the recapped story of their demise never featured a third corpse, so supposedly they just didn't notice their guest blacksmith who was flirting with a married woman just disappeared?:')))
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Although, re: wife's remains, etc. I did get the sense that he was absent for quite a while, and the blacksmith came and went as he liked.
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I mean, you aren't wrong XP
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