Children born of fairy stock (The Cruel Prince by Holly Black sync read post)

[hamsterwoman]

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.

Comments

through chapter 10 / 25%

[hamsterwoman]

- Yay Holly Black fairies! I mean, she tends to write them more grotesquely and with more overt violence than the fey I truly love, but it was my first experience of Holly Black, and it always feels nice to dip back in the same world.

- Speaking of, I do like how her faerie stories all take place in the same universe but the different cycles are stand-alone -- there's the brief mention of "King Roiben" (Tithe and sequels) and the magic swords from The Darkest Part of the Forest, but if you haven't read those books, they just feel like random worldbuilding you're not expected to care about

Re: through chapter 10 / 25% -- continued

[hamsterwoman]

- End of chapter 10, with Jude choosing to commit herself to Dain, is a nice stopping point for my morning commute. This definitely seems like it will end well! (And I do find it interesting that a) the book is called The Cruel Prince and there are several princes, of course, and when Jude assumes the servant's "prince" refers to Carden, she ends up being wrong and it's actually Dain (hm....), and b) Dain tells her (truthfully, of course) "I will never be cruel to you for the sake of delighting in it" -- which is fair enough, but also VERY different from never being cruel to her at all, or being cruel in general

through chapter 17 / ~50%

[hamsterwoman]

- OK, so! I was kind of squinting and frowning while Jude was going about rescuing Sophie, because it felt haphazard and ill-advised, but I clearly should've trusted Holly Black more, because I do really like the way that turned out -- that Jude's motivations are suspect (she wants to save someone, probably as a substitute for not being able to save her mother -- "I hadn't been listening. I hadn't wanted to hear her; I'd just wanted to save her."), and what she succeeds in is... not futile exactly (she gives Sohpie back her ability to choose; the fact that she chooses to end her life is, well, still more choice than she had under glamour), but definitely doesn't feel very successful, to Jude or to the reader (and I did find the twist genuinely shocking, having overlooked the significance of the stones as Jude had). And I can accept that Jude was being sloppy and amateur because, well, she is a kid learning "spycraft" for the first time

through chapter 27 / ~90%

[hamsterwoman]

OK, almost none of that ended up going the way I was expecting (and the things that I was expecting to happen which did still happened in a very different way), which is... kind of a mixed thing

Re: through chapter 27 / ~90%

[ikel89]

- 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 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?:')))

Re: through chapter 27 / ~90%

[hamsterwoman]

OK, yeah, this is a fair point. XD

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.

Re: through chapter 27 / ~90%

[ikel89]

Still not convinced. He presumably never reappears in fairy land after the double murder and no one followed up? Beyond shit forensics they have shit brains :D

through to the end

[hamsterwoman]

OK, whut

Re: through to the end

[ikel89]

as many plot twists as possible because fickle fairies and also humans can lie", and then just had the characters make the least expected choices, regardless of whether those choices made any sense,ARBITRARYYYY. everything is very arbitrary and there for some aesthetic reason, like keeping prince evil cardamom on the throne bc we just can't him go offscreen for the sequels (or off the court and discovering Accessorize and Starbucks). So even while there were technically many plot twists, nothing really surprised me beyond realization that Dain's death didn't deprive her of geas; the events were strung together for some wobbly ~narrative aesthetic~ instead of actual narrative: twins for triangle and ~divergence~, dead mothers all over the place, blood-colored courtiers chopping off heads, reverse crowning for ensured dubcon etc etc

Re: through to the end

[ikel89]

Why not kill Balekin? Are they keeping him in reserve in case Cardan refuses to crown Oak?
No reason to keep him alive,unless they are now suddenly allergic to regicide. But I predict it's for Balekin seducing his abused brother into helping him out in the sequels by bombastically saying he tried to save him once (in numbers: 1 time) with his own hot bod.

- Jude/Cardan continues to be unusually fucked up in ever new dimensions -- "I am horrified by my own impulse to bend my knee to him, my own desire to let him touch my head with a ringed hand."
They seriously need that trip to the human world, and access to literature & supplies on dubcon. Learn safewords, idk, join a local клуб по интересам etc.
(Sarcasm aside, I don't mind their power balance being fucked up. I do, however, dislike the instant woobiefication of Cardigan, even though he is more likable when weak. Spinning Silver did the depraved princes so much better, and the father-daughter thing too, and a number of other things *long sigh*)

Random quibble: How would faerie-

Re: through to the end

[hamsterwoman]

So even while there were technically many plot twists, nothing really surprised me

There were a number of "plot twists" that surprised me in a "...but that's dumb" sort of way (or else, "...but what's the point then?", in the case of Locke) -- I think probably because I was reading almost until the end while giving the book the greatest possible benefit of the doubt. The only one that genuinely surprised me and that I thought was worth it was Sophie the glamoured mortal girl killing herself, because that one actually had some thematic resonance. (Did you see that one coming, btw?)

Oh btw, I thought "whelp I didn't realize Valentin, who always wanted to murder you and has a track record for gratuitous violence, was capable of murder" as a particularly stupid way to woobiefy Prince Cardin.LOL! Yeah, although I was also surprised that Valerian was dumb enough to piss off a redcap / general who's got an in with the next king by going to this extent. I mean, not super surprised, because everyone acts dumb, but there's slights one can

notes on 100% of the book

[ikel89]

ALRIGHT THEN *cracks knuckles, blows the dust off the Times New Roman 11pt, no weird margins

Re: notes on 100% of the book

[ikel89]

5. jude herself was fucking annoying, and her sister was even more annoying, and that's saying something IN A BOOK FULL OF ANNOYING FAERIES. none of the relashionships she had felt remotely meaningful bc there was so much dramatics going on, and ~welcome to my twisted mind~ nonsense, and clashing bits of "oh yeah i speak like an arizona highschooler drunk on third beer and feeling on top of the world" and "being a mortal is so emo, this is so sad alexa play greensleeves". i seriously can't with kids who are just deterrimed to be so horribly all over the place for such uncompelling reason as "u hate faeries and i want to be them" /eyeroll. Vivi's like the best of the lot and she blissfully just wants out of this dumb narrative. YOu go girl

Re: notes on 100% of the book

[hamsterwoman]

I basically don't disagree with almost anything you say except that I do really enjoy the Faerie aesthetic. The way Holly Black does it is not 100% to my taste -- there's too much thorns and ripping off of wings, while my favorite Faeries are not actively cruel for the lulz but just sort of self-centeredly cruel in a way where mortals and what happens to them are not even a consideration beyond amusement -- they're not real, just passing entertainment, like NPCs in a video game or something. Anyway, so the aesthetic is definitely no barrier for me, but this book still didn't actually work for me.

It's the whole thing with cameos of previously established characters that I dislike: no matter what's the intent behind bringing them bacOK, I do disagree with this part, though obviously it's a matter of taste, and also of degree in how this is done. As in, the Jace thing in all the subsequent FPH shit is frankly embarrassing, but I do enjoy seeing my favorites pop up -- although I do prefer it when it's through someone's unimpressed

Re: notes on 100% of the book

[ikel89]

while my favorite Faeries are not actively cruel for the lulz but just sort of self-centeredly cruel in a way where mortals and what happens to them are not even a consideration beyond amusement good examples? and them as not villains. i was thinking about other examples I know and don't dislike and almost all of it is villainous :'D