Review: The Wicked King by Holly Black

The enchanting and bloodthirsty sequel to the New York Times bestselling novel The Cruel Prince.
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 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.

I really enjoyed The Wicked King by Holly Black, and The Folk of the Air series is turning out to be a great binge, where as soon as I finish one, there’s no consideration on what to read next, I just have to dive straight in to the next book.

You know those enemies to lovers stories, where you get to the stage where you just want to slap the characters into seeing what is so obvious to the reader? You can see they will end up together because they are just , but they are still in denial and determined to hate each other? Yeah, that’s this. I just so wanted to shake both Jude and Cardan when they were hating each other.

Jude has found herself in quite a powerful position in this book, and where she worked in the shadows in book one, in this book, she is much more visible, and therefor, has more scrutiny and is more of a target, serving as the main advisor to Cardan. And as Madoc taught her, power is much easier to get than it is to hold on to. Of course, her position is the result of her getting Cardan agree to obey anything she says for one year and one day. Now, we know she didn’t do this out of malice, but as a means to protect her little brother, who they plan to put on the throne once he is older. This situation also creates an uneasiness between her and Cardan, because how can you ever fully trust someone that has so much power over you. You can tell Cardan resents this bargain at times, and really, can anyone truly blame him for that?

We do start to understand Cardan a bit more. While it doesn’t change how cruel he can be, and especially, how cruel he has been, we start to see him in a different light and understand him a bit more. I found myself begin hoping for his turn around to becoming a good person and a good king without someone else pulling his strings.

Overall, this was a great read. The ending is a bit of a shocking cliffhanger, so I definitely recommend reading this when you know you can dive straight in to the final book of the trilogy.