Summary:
This story follows the life of Jude Duarte, an individual whose life took a very drastic turn of
events, very quickly. One minute she was living happily with her parents, twin sister, and elder
sister, the next, a strange man comes into their lives, kills her parents, and takes her and her
sisters away to a strange land, in which magic exists. Jude and her sister Taryn are humans, they
have little to do with this new land of Faerie apart from keep themselves safe from it, but
Vivienne, their eldest sister, is half faerie and half human. She is the true daughter of Maddoc,
the strange man who took them from their home, while Jude and Taryn are his step daughters.
However, despite her ‘inferiority’ as a human to the fey, Jude aspires to become a knight. Despite
the constant discrimination she receives from the children of the royal family--especially their
youngest son Cardan--she stays confident about her ambition, and she wishes to prove herself to
the faerie world that even a human can become a knight.
Opinion:
When I read The Cruel Prince by Holly Black, I was absolutely obsessed with it. The book is the
first of a trilogy but the first book focuses the most on Jude’s journey while the next two spend
time on all of the other characters. A lot of people go into the first book immediately thinking it
will be an enemies-to-lovers novel between Jude and Cardan, but that is simply not the case.
Cardan’s main role in the first book is to be an obstacle in Jude’s path to power and a prime
example of how the fey frequently discriminate against Jude and her sister. I love this book
because of the thrill that it instills in the readers. Despite the fact that all of the odds are against
her since she doesn’t have the ability to utilize magic, Jude remains confident and does some
crazy things in her journey to become a knight. So, if you’re a sucker for books that have fantasy,
books in which the underdog pulls through, or even books in which girl power is prominent, The
Cruel Prince by Holly Black is the book for you.