And looming over all is the infuriating, arrogant and charismatic Prince Cardan. But the stairway to power is fraught with shadows and betrayal. As Jude grows older, she realises that she will need to take part in the dangerous deceptions of the fey to ever truly belong. The terrifying assassin abducts all three girls to the world of Faerie, where Jude is installed in the royal court but mocked and tormented by the Faerie royalty for being mortal. One terrible morning, Jude and her sisters see their parents murdered in front of them. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe. And Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest. They're beautiful as blades forged in some divine fire.

intoxicating' - Leigh Bardugo, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Six of Crows Of course I want to be like them. Winner of the silver INKY for best international YA book. Nominated for the CILIP CARNEGIE MEDAL 2019. The sequels - The Wicked King and The Queen of Nothing - are the winners of/won the Goodreads YA Best Fantasy in 20.

With curly dark brown hair, Jude and Taryn are never identified by race in human terms.Ī rare second volume that surpasses the first, with, happily, more intrigue and passion still to come.First in the bestselling Folk of the Air trilogy. Faerie is a strange place where immortal, multihued, multiformed denizens can’t lie but can twist everything Jude-who can lie-is an outlier, and her first-person, present-tense narration reveals more than she would choose. Black’s writing is both contemporary and classic her world is, at this point, intensely well-realized, so that some plot twists seem almost inevitable.

Much of the story revolves around plotting (the Queen of the Undersea wants the throne Jude’s Faerie father wants power Jude’s twin, Taryn, wants her Faerie betrothed by her side), but the underlying tension-sexual and political-between Jude and Cardan also takes some unexpected twists. Jude’s self-loathing and anger at the traumatic events of her childhood (her Faerie “dad” killed her parents, and Faerie is not a particularly easy place even for the best-adjusted human) drive her ambition, which is tempered by her desire to make the world she loves and hates a little fairer. A heady blend of courtly double-crossing, Faerie lore, and toxic attraction swirls together in the sequel to The Cruel Prince (2018).įive months after engineering a coup, human teen Jude is starting to feel the strain of secretly controlling King Cardan and running his Faerie kingdom.

The cruel prince series book 4