The Cruel Prince
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The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air, Book 1) by Holly Black
The best bad book of 2018. 👍
It’s fascinating how good The Cruel Prince is, especially considering how many things are wrong with it.
I mean... it's bad. Or... it should be. But... it's not. W-what? 🤔🙃
It embraces nearly every YA fantasy trope and fae cliché you can think of (seriously, just make a list, they’re all here). Yet instead of falling flat, it somehow works. Holly Black takes everything we usually roll our eyes at, mashes it together, and spins it into something undeniably entertaining. I could see how blatantly it was manipulating me, but it was doing such a good job that I didn’t care.
That said, there are three big flaws that would sink almost any other book:
Unoriginality to the point of borderline laziness.
Wildly inconsistent pacing.
A baffling hierarchy that makes zero sense if you think about it too long.
And yet… it’s still fun. Jude’s rise from outcast to a kind of pseudo-queen (again, the hierarchy is weird) actually builds into a Game of Thrones–style suspense: Who’s going to die? Who’s going to take the crown?
As tired as its tropes may be, they remain engaging here. The Cruel Prince has absolutely no right to be good, but somehow, it is.
