The Wicked King by Holly Black Review

 

 

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 Wicked King is the second installment in Holly Black’s The Folk of the Air trilogy and one of the most popular YA books released this year. It made nearly every must-read-YA list I saw and has been the focus of many people’s excitement before and since its release. I hadn’t planned on reading it directly after finishing The Cruel Prince, but after some wavering back and forth, I found myself unable to ignore the pull back to this series. The Cruel Prince (my review here) left off in such a precarious way that I was sure was going to lead to an incredible sequel. Mere hours between finishing The Cruel Prince and starting The Wicked King was too long to leave the world of Faerie. 

This book picks up months after the events of the first novel and wastes no time throwing readers into the fray with Jude pulling the strings of the puppet king, Cardan. Jude went from quietly scheming and playing spy to being the most powerful person in Faerie, privately at least. We don’t see the immediate transition, catching up five months after Jude had Cardan crowned, but see the weight of the sudden responsibilities of this new role, and playing seneschal, on Jude’s shoulders. I had no doubt going into this book that I would enjoy it—I know all about second book slumps in trilogies but I just adore this world and could only see the story getting better. And it did, in every way! This book had higher stakes and more riding on Jude’s success. I absolutely flew through this, never wanting to put it down. The schemes, the secrets and their reveals, the betrayals…everything I loved in the first book was even better in this book. The schemes became almost solely based on politics, with unseen players vying for the crown and plotting against the new, young king. Jude must keep the power she’s earned herself and Cardan while legitimizing it with supporters and managing the espionage of potential threats to their rule. There were side plots that added interest as well, including one focused on Jude’s relationship with her twin Taryn and Taryn’s new fiance, Locke, as well as explorations of her relationships with other family members. It was fast paced and intricate, a wild ride from start to finish. The story went places I didn’t expect and ended in a way that left me utterly flabbergasted. There was no connecting the dots, it just came out of nowhere. I’m still distraught. 

I continued to be surprised by Jude in this book. She’s ruthless and cunning, always thinking about how to hold onto her power while still being completely understandable and realistically worried about her family even though their relationships are anything but normal and happy. She’s such a well written morally grey character. She crosses lines but doesn’t lose herself in the chaos and become an over the top power hungry or unbelievable character in the process of gaining and maintaining that power. She was smart and calculating while also being caring. Not to mention her sense of humor and wit. Another thing I really appreciated about her was that she wasn’t in complete denial about Cardan the way so many YA protagonists are. It’s either all or nothing with many—feelings are ignored or the character is in denial about them but as soon as they’re acknowledged and acted on, characters are making wildly dramatic declarations of love. The fact that Jude knows she’s on a slippery slope with Cardan and really expresses her thoughts and apprehension in the narration was refreshing. 

I liked Cardan more in this book, as we got to know him a bit better and spent more time with him. He’s certainly an interesting character and I loved the fact that, while I was liking him more, he still wasn’t a great person. I love the situation he was in—the fact that he was bred for high Fey society with all the cockiness, laziness, and general condescension that comes with it but was never actually meant to take the throne. And now that he has it, he doesn’t even really have it. It created quite the problem for Jude and allowed Cardan the means for more extravagant revelry than ever before. Besides this, I enjoyed getting to know him better and think readers who are fans of the enemies-to-lovers trope will enjoy their story. 

The world of The Wicked King was a perfect continuation from The Cruel Prince. Readers see more of what made the first book so lush and atmospheric—beautiful lands with beautiful, cunning faeries—but this book delves deeper into the casual cruelness of the Fey. Humiliation goes further than schoolyard bullying and nobody seems safe from betrayal and deceit. We also got to see the Undersea and started meeting more characters from that part of the faerie world and I absolutely loved it. It was strange and beautifully crafted, just like the rest of this book. 

The writing was just as great as it was in The Cruel Prince and had many moments that made me laugh. This book was fantastic and full of the unexpected. I thoroughly enjoyed The Cruel Prince and there isn’t anything I would’ve changed about it—I gave it a rating of 4/5. With The Wicked King, I loved the way the political world expanded and raised the stakes, loved the development of characters, loved that I never knew who Jude could fully trust or what she would do, and couldn’t have been more taken aback by the ending. The Folk of the Air series only improved with this second book. I can’t wait for the release of The Queen of Nothing later this year. 

5/5

What did you think of The Wicked King? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading, 

Madison