The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air Book 1)
4.3 | 68,718 ratings
Price: 11.99
Last update: 03-20-2026
Product details
- ASIN : B06Y5HPRLC
- Publisher : Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
- Accessibility :
- Publication date : January 2, 2018
- Language : English
- File size : 25.3 MB
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Not Enabled
- Print length : 383 pages
- ISBN-13 : 978-0316310284
- Page Flip : Enabled
- Grade level : 7 and up
- Book 1 of 3 : The Folk of the Air
- Reading age : 15+ years, from customers
- Best Sellers Rank:#375 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Teen & Young Adult Fiction on Bullying (Kindle Store)
- Teen & Young Adult Fiction on Bullying (Books)
- Teen & Young Adult Myths & Legends
- Customer Reviews:4.34.3 out of 5 stars(68,593)
Top reviews from the United States
- Pam WilsonThe Cruel Prince (Folk of the Air Volume 1) by Holly BlackThis book is UNPUTDOWNABLE! The story is addictive and the world building and character development is just as good. The plot twists are devastating and beautiful and the characters' inner turmoil is gorgeous as well. On a side note, I'd just like to warn you that a lot of people go into this books being told that it is a romance and come out of it disappointed. It is NOT a romance! It is a political fantasy and deeper into the next books there is romance.
- Stacey FossFast pacedSo as I am on my fantasy journey this was one that kept coming up on my for you page. So I dived in and was soon hooked. The story is captivating right from the start. You have action packed goodness from the beginning. In the mortal world Jude and her sisters lives are blown upside down when Viv's father Madoc comes crashing in and takes the lives of their mother and father. He then moves them back to Faerie. Judes life is forever changed. Mortals are not well liked there and jude and her sister are bullied from the start. Cardan dishes out the hate more than anyone. This book is fast paced and full of twists and action. Jude is a character you can't help but love she is strong willed, sassy and doesn't let things or people hold her back. She is very much like her adopted father Madoc. Determined to become a knight she takes her own path. Her twin sister Taryn is a different story. she is one person you don't trust from the start and Locke who you just can't help but think is up to something at all times. While this is a YA book it does pull you in and keep you reading. I decoured the story and moved on to the next book very quickly.
- JacyJude is the blueprint for a great protagonistThe Folk of the Air is one of my favorite fantasy romance series and a must-read for the genre. Jude and Cardan have easily become two of my all-time favorite leads.
Holly Black’s prose is masterful, giving both characters very distinct voices, from Jude’s pragmatism to Cardan’s coy playfulness. The banter between them is top-tier, and their electric chemistry makes for an incredible emotional payoff after so much pining.
Be forewarned that this begins as a bully romance; if that trope is a dealbreaker for you, this might not be the best fit. However, for me, it was incredibly satisfying to watch them transition from mutual loathing to a complex, hard-won alliance.
While I occasionally found myself wishing the series had more of a New Adult edge in its romantic execution, the story itself is so compelling that it remains a favorite.
1: The Cruel Prince ⭐ 4
1.5 The Lost Sisters ⭐ 2.5
2: The Wicked King ⭐ 4.5
3: The Queen of Nothing ⭐ 4.75
3.5: How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories ⭐ 3.75 - Cheeky MonkeyNot for meMost of my positivity to this book comes from an appreciation of its technical aspects: I think the writer did a decent, though not exceptional, job of crafting her prose. She especially has a knack for describing clothing, and her research into archaic vocabulary helped add flavor to the story. Some of this was especially nice as it related to the food the characters ate, with some very interesting dishes pulled from both imagination and history. I felt she fell short with her descriptions, however. They were dashed off so thinly that I didn't acquire a very lush mental picture of what was going on. As a reviewer pointed out, it wasn't unusual for her to simply say, for example, that "a troll" was in a scene without even bothering to describe what a troll in this world looks like.
In terms of story structure, I thought that she came up with some original ideas. But one place where the story failed, and failed hard for me, was with the characters. They were very well fleshed out as far as their personalities; unfortunately, I found them so dull and uncompelling that it was an absolute struggle to make it through this book. The main character was, for me, immensely uninteresting -- an incredibly flat character who has a couple of moments in the book when she wonders at how broken emotionally she is but does nothing about it. In other words, there is no character arc in this book--and I really rely on that to draw me into a story. Perhaps the protagonist has gone from someone who seeks personal power for hazy selfish reasons (so she can be safe? so she can one-up her enemies and "show them"? because she doesn't want to be controlled? it's never very clear, nor are her motivations very likeable) to someone who seeks personal power for new hazy reasons (so she can protect people from the danger that a new king might possibly, though not for certain, turn out to be a bad ruler? or is it all still mainly so she can protect herself? again, not very clear), but she's still power-hungry, and it doesn't feel like much of an arc. Nor does it feel very consistent that she would suddenly care about anything larger than herself. It doesn't help that her tiny arc doesn't start until the last 50 pages of the book or so. So it means that for most of the book, it's a real slog to follow a main character who has a taste for power and sadism, an inexplicable desire to remain in a brutal Faerie world that never really makes sense when she could just leave and easily survive in the human world, a desire to remain with a foster father who killed her parents for no good reason, who wants to be like a fae while also despising them ... it is just very, very weird.
I would really have preferred if the book focused on the one likeable character in it instead: her sister, Vivi. Vivi had the sense to hate her murderous foster father and to want to leave Faerie. She even had a great character goal -- finding love with a human -- and impediments to that goal that added drama (having to reveal her fae nature, her family's disapproval, etc.). It's too bad we had to read about Vivi's unpleasant sister for the whole book instead. Vivi would have made a much more enjoyable protagonist.