Image and blurb from Goodreads
Title: The Wicked King
(The Folk of the Air #2)
Author: Holly Black
Category/Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Publication Date: January 8th, 2018
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Adults
You must be strong enough to strike and strike and strike again without tiring.
The first lesson is to make yourself strong.
After the jaw-dropping revelation that Oak is the heir to Faerie, Jude must keep her younger brother safe. To do so, she has bound the wicked king, Cardan, to her, and made herself the power behind the throne. Navigating the constantly shifting political alliances of Faerie would be difficult enough if Cardan were easy to control. But he does everything in his power to humiliate and undermine her even as his fascination with her remains undiminished.
When it becomes all too clear that someone close to Jude means to betray her, threatening her own life and the lives of everyone she loves, Jude must uncover the traitor and fight her own complicated feelings for Cardan to maintain control as a mortal in a Faerie world.
The first lesson is to make yourself strong.
After the jaw-dropping revelation that Oak is the heir to Faerie, Jude must keep her younger brother safe. To do so, she has bound the wicked king, Cardan, to her, and made herself the power behind the throne. Navigating the constantly shifting political alliances of Faerie would be difficult enough if Cardan were easy to control. But he does everything in his power to humiliate and undermine her even as his fascination with her remains undiminished.
When it becomes all too clear that someone close to Jude means to betray her, threatening her own life and the lives of everyone she loves, Jude must uncover the traitor and fight her own complicated feelings for Cardan to maintain control as a mortal in a Faerie world.
4.5 “Scheming and Twists in the faerie world” Stars
These
first days of 2019 haven’t exactly been the best reading-wise. I’m not saying
that because of Wicked King (hello, I’m rating it 4.5 stars), but because Holly
Black’s sequel is the first book I’ve managed to finish since the year started.
On
one hand, that sucks, because I’ve DNF’d a lot of books already. On the other
hand, at least my first read of the year was a great one! For starters, Wicked
King is better than Cruel Prince, which was already a good book.
Again,
though, the romance (full of sexual tension and hate-me-love-me-can’t-have-me
angst) was still a little too on the background for me. I still love Jude and
how badass she is; Cardan and how you can never really tell what he’s hiding
behind his don’t-give-a-crap attitude; and all the other characters that scheme
and twist reality even though they can’t lie. But I wanted more Cardan and
Jude. A lot more than the amazing scenes we had between them. That’s my only
complaint, to be honest.
The
plot was once again full of twists and turns, though Jude seemed to be more on
the receiving end of those twists and turns than in Cruel Prince. Still, I love
being surprised, and the last part of the book did that to me time and time
again. I will say that Jude and Cardan’s choice near the end was a obvious one;
one she should’ve come up with before he did and a lot sooner in the book (or
so I kept trying to tell her), but I was still surprised by what Cardan did in
the last chapter.
Taryn
still annoyed me too much—I don’t know why Jude insists on protecting the
sister who clearly doesn’t care for her at all. Locke was still useless. Madoc
and Jude still reminded me of Olivia and Papa Pope’s troubled complex
relationship. So none of those things changed much since the first book.
In a
way, Wicked King kept the same elements I noticed in Cruel Prince (both the
ones I liked and disliked), but it still read somewhat better than the first
title in the series. Maybe it’s because I’m still thinking about that “Tell me
you hate me” scene.
*If you liked this review (or not), if you read the book (or not), come say hello and leave your comments bellow.
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