Review: The Cruel Prince

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

My god this is dark.

It's like a mashup of all the darkest Grimm's Fairytales with a garnish of more darkness. Yikes.

It's a little hard to summarise the plot for this one because it rambles all over the place, but basically it involves mortal girl, Jude, wanting to be acknowledged by the jerk fae she lives amongst. She is skilled with a blade and wants to be recognised for it and serve at court. I think that was the idea, anyway.

However the fae are absolute monsters so they bully everyone for the heck of it. The way they treat others is despicable and some of the bullying from Cardan and his gang of cronies had me feeling sick. This is not a happy fairytale. Disney wouldn't touch this with a ten-foot pole. I wasn't even sure I wanted to finish it myself.

It was both good and bad that I never really knew what the heck was going on. I mean this story is all over the place and it feels scattered and clunky. But that also made it unpredictable, so that was fun. At the same time, though, I feel like most of the big reveals were obvious a mile away. Here are the things I pegged early on: (view spoiler)[Dain was going to be a d*ck to work for, Locke was Taryn's secret lover, the kid lived, most of the royals would wind up dead, Jude was going to eventually ingest poison which would be inconsequential because of her building tolerance, Cardan was going to end up king ... (hide spoiler)] I mean none of that stuff came as a surprise to me.

It just felt like it went on a lot about insignificant stuff, and there wasn't really a point to the story for a good half of the book, except to detail how despicable the behaviour of the fae was. The bullying is really sickening and I hated reading it, and that made it problematic.

Here we come to it: my biggest issue with this book. Of course, it's kind of a spoiler.

(view spoiler)[So much of the first half of this book is about what a jerk Cardan is; how he threatens to kill Jude and her sister, throws dirt all over their food, making it inedible, allows Jude to be utterly humiliated, and even ripping the wing off some random kid just because he didn't bow to Cardan. He is an absolute D*CK. But then we find out he's been mistreated by his older brother so, oh, that explains why he's a jerk, and then by the end we're supposed to be okay with the flirting between Cardan and Jude? But even though they both like each other they are disgusted and ashamed of liking each other??! And Jude KISSES HIM TO HUMILIATE HIM?! I mean where do I even start with how messed up that is?? (hide spoiler)]

The non-spoiler version is basically this book suffers from what seems to be becoming a disturbing trend - it wants to make bullying sexy. Like, there are sexy bad boys but then there are just psycho bad boys who literally do evil things. Jude should be running for the hills but instead she's all gung-ho for plotting and violence so naturally she ends up in the middle of everything.

I gotta be honest - I don't think I liked Jude at all. Probably the only character I liked was Vivi. The rest are all dirtbags and Jude is the worst. She's hotheaded but also gullible and she causes all this trouble but then seems surprised when there are consequences? It tries to make her a tomboy, knight-saviour-wannabe, but instead she's meddlesome and arrogant? Why would I like that?!

I mean my feelings are all over the place because this story is all over the place.

There also seemed to be some inconsistencies in the plot, which bothered me a lot because it felt like a weakly disguised method of making Jude more powerful instead of actually necessary to the story. This is what I'm taking about: (view spoiler)[The geas. She was going to be immune to enchantments, but she couldn't talk about the spying or show anyone the hideouts etc etc. But then she falls under the apple enchantment with some weak reasoning about how it's a different kind of enchantment, and then the geas is still in effect after Dain's death which means Jude is still immune to enchantment, but now she can freely talk about spying, and lead Cardan back to the hideout, etc? I mean you can't pick and choose based on what is more convenient to Jude. (hide spoiler)] It was such a glaring oversight and it cheapened the whole story. Plus, (view spoiler)[ are we ever gonna be concerned about that 'curse' of Valerian's? (hide spoiler)]

Guh. Lemme do a list.

Things that were okay:
-Unpredictable plot
-The dark stuff
-Plots and intrigues
-Variety of fantastical creatures
-Addictive writing

Everything I hated:
-Messy plot
-Romanticising the dark stuff
-Jude seeming to be at the middle of everything for no plausible reason
-Variety of fantastical creatures with no explanation of what they are or what any of them look like
-Plot inconsistencies
-Pretty much all of the characters SUCK
-The bullying is ridiculous and never properly called out
-Nothing to really root for

Basically, everything that was okay got crapped all over, making me hate it.

I just felt very little attachment to the story, and while I am a fan of dark and twisted it felt gimmicky here. It's got some clever insights into slavery and racism but instead of making a powerful story about that it's more concerned with Jude's quest to stick her nose into everyone's business.

*sigh*

I don't even know how to rate this. It was an addictive read, sure, and I do feel like I need to see it through now, but I'm also kind of mad at it for making such a mess of things.

Addictiveness: 4 star
Everything else: 1 star

Conclusion: 2 stars for this disaster.

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