The Cruel Prince | The Wicked King | The Queen of Nothing

The Folk of Air follows Jude Duarte’s journey to survive the cruelty, deceit and lure of magic threatening her in the land of the Fae. Jude is one of few mortals living in the Fae realm, after being taken from her home by the male who murdered her parents. This happens at the start of the first novel, The Cruel Prince. It is quite the introduction to a great series. 

Madoc is a war general for the High King of the Fae, whose mortal wife left him while he was away on the war front. He returned to a staged death and the body of whom he assumed was his wife. Several years later, he discovered that his wife was very much alive and living with her new husband and 3 children (the oldest of which was sired by Madoc). Madoc hunted his wife and tracked her to the mortal realm. Knocking on the door, he uprooted Jude and her two sisters from their home and changed the course of their lives forever.

Jude was young when she was taken from the mortal realm, so all she knows is the land of the Fae. Their power, magic and lure pulls to Jude in a manner she cannot ignore.

“If I cannot be better than them, I will be so much worse”, Jude committed during The Cruel Prince. And that she did. She played to her strengths, used her own style of manipulation and bargaining and eventually found her place in the palace.

The Folk of Air series was a fairly light read. I enjoyed it and it filled the time while I was waiting for Sarah J. Maas’ new release, The House of Flame and Shadow. Holly Black created a different kind of Fae realm than Maas depicts in her multitude of series. The Folk of Air’s realm is cruel, with bargains that bind mortals and Fae that cannot lie, although spinning truths can become a form of art. 

I saw Jude as the main protagonist, but she is not without her faults. I found her difficult to like and could not truly root for her success for the entirety of the novel. I kind of felt like she should have been glad for the exile to the mortal realm and recreated a new life for herself in her old world. Free of magic and death and murder. 

I enjoyed Madoc’s character, despite his cruelty. He was a warrior, through and through. A war general at its finest. I enjoyed his personality and the complexity he offered to the novel series. He truly drove the novel forward and his role was fitting for his character. 

The intertwining of characters was intriguing and many of the secondary sets of characters added a nice spark to the series. The Ghost, Roach and The Bomb were my favorite subsect. 

When The Ghost defected from the spies, it was honestly not a surprise. The surprise was the spies who immediately switched their loyalty from Dain to Jude, without question. I was even more shocked by the true reason The Ghost defected, which was a very surprising twist. 

The Folk of Air checked the majority of boxes for me to serve as a satisfying ‘Romantisy’ novel. They just aren’t checked off as dramatically as some of my more loved Romantasy and Fantasy series. Well done novel, though. I would rate the entire series a 3.2/5 stars!