I read this for the 2020 Hugos, and delayed commenting because of that.

While there was a good underlying story, I felt the writing could have been better - and was disappointed in the cliff-hanger ending.

Thank you for providing this book as part of the 2020 Hugo Awards Voter’s Packet (Lodestar finalist).

I listened to the audiobook when this was nominated for the Lodestar award in 2020. I hadn't read the first book in the series but I didn't feel that was an issue as I felt the author made sure I knew what I needed to know to be able to follow the plot/invest in her characters.

It was really engaging and I got sucked in fast! In terms of the ending, I haven't been so shocked since reading the last page of Steinbeck's the Grapes of Wrath, and that's saying something! I'm not complaining though. It's refreshing. I'll be looking out for more books by Holly Black.

Haha, what the hell, NetGalley only sent me the first three quarters of this novel for review? Good thing I looked up the next book in the series and realized from the blurb that I had no idea how the events described there led from this one, and so discovered that I was missing an entire section of The Wicked King! I was all ready to excuse TWK's abrupt ending with a diagnosis of middle-book syndrome (no thanks to whomever posted this version on NG) but am now pleased to report that Holly Black's gangbusters The Cruel Prince does, indeed, get the excellent continuation it deserves. With thanks to my local library for having the novel on hand so I could speed read my way through the actual ending!

Jude Duarte is now the power behind King Cardan's throne, but one of the many things she's learned from her adoptive father, Grand General Madoc, is that power is much easier to obtain than to keep. Uncovering a plot against the king whom she both hates and desires, she works overtime with her own Court Of Shadows, a team of spies and subversives, to protect Cardan and, by so doing, protect her beloved little brother Oak, who's also in the line of succession. But an almost off-hand remark from a nemesis causes her to worry. "Someone you trust has already betrayed you," Undersea Princess Nicasia tells her. Since the fae are incapable of lying, Jude knows it must be true. But who could it be, and what kind of betrayal, and how deeply will this latest one hurt?

Jude's life is one of pressure and paranoia as she strives to safeguard Cardan and Oak, often without their cooperation, while figuring out a way to extend her hold on Cardan and repair her relationship with her twin sister Taryn. Events come to a head around Taryn's wedding, when disaster strikes despite Jude's best laid plans. Can our arch-schemer think her way out of this latest bind, or will love blind her to the machinations of others?

So this book won't make a lick of sense to anyone who hasn't read the brilliant TCP, which is frankly one of the best novels of courtly intrigue I've ever read. TWK feels somewhat slighter in comparison, if only because Jude is at a distinct disadvantage in not being the usurper, as it were, but the defender of power. Enemies amass at every front, and no matter what she does, she can't fight them all off. But some enemies are less serious than others, at least for now, and some problems come less from power struggles than from how difficult it is to learn how to trust and open up. There are definite communication problems in this book but, unlike in other YA novels I've had to struggle through, these communication issues aren't stupid. Jude understandably has a hard time trusting Cardan because they've always been at odds. She has an even more understandably hard time trusting Taryn or Madoc after what happened in TCP.

But the most nuanced exploration of communication issues comes from Jude's clashing with Vivi, her beloved older sister, over bringing Vivi's mortal girlfriend Heather to Faerieland. Despite this being a relatively small part of this book, I felt so keenly for Jude as she wondered how much she herself was to blame for Vivi seeming not to take Heather's safety and distress seriously. Jude had spent so much of her own childhood putting on a brave front and pretending that her treatment as a mortal at the hands of the cruel fae was something easily shrugged off instead of deeply traumatizing. While I'm unsurprised by what Heather (correctly) chose to do in the end, I am rooting for all these kids to make it work and find their Happily Ever Afters. Yes, even Cardan! (Maybe not Taryn tho, she still sucks.)

Any relative slightnesses in TWK's narrative are completely made up for by two things: a) that ending! and b) all the (good) kissing, teeheehee -- you'll know what I mean when you read those scenes. I'm not sure why Cardan does what he does at the end but I think it's pretty clear that he has very strong romantic feelings for Jude, and that he's definitely thought through his plans. Frankly, I love to see Cardan grow from being the purposefully thoughtless prince to a political force to be reckoned with. That's how he becomes worthy of poor Jude, who desperately needs a nap, good food and to be taken care of for a change.

I really, really want to get my hands on the last book in the series but I have no time! Hopefully, it won't take me another year to read the conclusion of this so-far superlative trilogy.

The Wicked King (The Folk Of The Air #2) by Holly Black was published January 8 2019 by Little, Brown Books For Young Readers and is available from all good booksellers, including <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/15382/9780316310321">Bookshop!</a>

I received this as part of the Hugo's 2020 voter packet.

I suppose I enjoyed this one? The story and pacing felt pretty propulsive, I sped through the book pretty quickly. I do think it is one of the stronger second books in a series that I've read, and didn't really suffer from "middle book syndrome," so that was good. The political intrigue felt strong, if not altogether comprehensive. That twist ending was evil, but I absolutely understand why Black did it.

On the other hand, I didn't find the worldbuilding or character development compelling or, in many cases, present at all. I'm a sucker for faerie-related stories, but I can think of at least a couple of other series that have been more expansive or introduced new facets of fae society that have kept me interested. I'm not a big fan of infodumps, but it's almost like we got the opposite here, with no sort of historical info at all. Meanwhile, we spend 98% of our time with Jude, who plays at puppet master, likes to think she has everything under control, but then ignores glaring betrayals, AND we don't see any sort of development of any other characters. They're all there to serve Jude as a character, without any growth or depth of their own. So that was disappointing.

Overall, a solid read, and I'll likely read the final book in the series because I sped through this in a couple of hours, but it wouldn't have been at the top of my list during Hugo voting if I'd gotten a chance to read it then.

**Apologies I did not see the 'I will not be giving feedback on this book' option. I wish that I had!

An amazing follow-up to The Cruel Prince. Jude is a deliciously stabby heroine and everything I loved about the first book there is more of in this one. Can’t waot to read book 3!

Holly Black, the bestselling author of The Spiderwick Chronicles, has penned a new trilogy about human twins, Jude and Taryn, raised among the Fair Folk. Jude gets thrown into the deep end of Faerie politics and has to protect her younger half-brother, Oak. The Wicked King is the second book in the series, and as it starts, Jude has engineered a bargain with Faerie’s new king, Cardan, wherein he must obey her for a year and a day. Of course, being the power behind the throne only works if she can keep him on that throne, and there are any number of rivals who’d love to throw him off it, preferably with a dagger in his back.

The Wicked King is one of this year’s finalists for the Lodestar Award, and that’s the context in which I read it. Not having read the first book, I was worried that I’d be lost, but Black does a great job of summarizing the previous action in a way that gets readers up to speed without slowing down the plot. I also enjoyed her portrayal of Faerie. The many types (species?) of Folk, the palace built into the side of a hill, the horses made of reeds, and a host of other details serve to give Elfhame an otherworldly atmosphere. As one would expect from a book about Faerie politics, there are plenty of schemes and plots and complex relationships between factions and characters bubbling away in the background until they finally came to a head.

My one complaint is with the pacing of the ending. The events surrounding Taryn’s wedding and the queen of the Undersea’s plot happen in the last couple chapters of the book, at a breakneck pace. It felt rushed, and the book ends right in the middle of the action, so the reader doesn’t really have any time to process all that’s happened. I recognize that this is the second book in a trilogy, and there’s a need to set up plot threads for the final installment, but that could have been done with a denouement that resolved the action while hinting at more to come. As it is, it feels more like Black ended the book at some arbitrary page count rather than a natural pause point in the plot.

This is a book I am accessing via Netgalley for the Hugo nomination packet. Due to this, I will not be reviewing this book via Netgalley at this time.

I enjoyed this book much more than I expected to. None of the characters are very likeable, but that doesn't really matter when the political intrigue is interesting enough. Throw in some backstabbing and I'm sold. The author didn't really need to backstab me by ending on a cliffhanger though...

Thank you so much for providing this book as part of the Hugo voting packet. When I have read this book my review will be posted to my blog, Goodreads and retail websites.

The Wicked King is the second book in Holly Black's YA Fae Fantasy trilogy, "The Folks of the Air", following "The Cruel Prince". I've come to really enjoy much of the Fae Fantasy genre (i.e. Seanan McGuire's October Daye series, Mishell Baker's the Arcadia Project, etc.) and really did enjoy The Cruel Prince as a dark oft-surprising YA take on the genre. That book ended with its heroine, a human girl taken into Faerie by her dangerous stepfather, temporarily on top due to her scheming, but with everything very likely to collapse at a moment's notice if she's not careful. It was a pretty satisfying way to end the book in a way that also made me desperately want the next installment.

The Wicked King IS that next installment, and it does follow up The Cruel Prince well, with its excellent characters continuing through a naturally shifty and surprising plot up till a satisfying yet again tantalizing ending which has me waiting for the conclusion. At the same time, while the particulars of the story were well done and hardly predictable, the very format of the story in terms of flow was the same as in the first book, and the book doesn't really expand this world at all. The result is that the book didn't really have much momentum for the first act until it's very end, making this book a slight step down in quality from its predecessor.

-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------

Jude has surprised all of Faerie - manipulating the situation to defeat the plans of her own stepfather - the dangerous General Madoc - and to place upon the High Crown of the Land of Faerie none other than Cardan, the young prince known for being a reprobate...and for torturing Jude. Now she serves as his Seneschal publicly - to the bewilderment of all - but secretly, known only to Cardan and her fellow spies of the Court of Shadows, she has bound him by an Oath to obey her commands for a year and a day.



But Jude needs Cardan to hold the throne for seven years so that her stepbrother Oak can grow up and take the throne himself, and Cardan is taking pleasure in making decisions - reckless and wild decisions that could get him and her killed - against her will...and certainly shows no sign of wanting to keep being under her thumb after the year and a day is up. And so Jude begins to realize her stepfather was right when he once taught her that obtaining power was easy....compared to the struggle to keep it.



And forces certainly aren't happy to watch Jude try to reign Cardan in. The powerful Undersea is reaching out to try and take power over the Land, and Jude and Cardan stand in their way. Madoc certainly hasn't forgiven Jude's betrayal and hasn't given up his schemes to obtain power. And her twin sister Taryn - now betrothed to Locke, the Fae who tricked Jude into love previously - seems to want some connection that Jude can't quite accept.



And then there's the feelings that Jude has been having for Cardan, and he for her, which she can't quite admit, because they have the potential to destroy everything altogether....

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Like its predecessor, The Wicked King is written entirely from the first person perspective of Jude, and she remains an excellent and really well written character. As before she's a guile heroine, trying to find her way using her smarts, her ability to scheme and manipulate, and occasionally her skill with a sword (but not usually due to the weaker physical abilities of a human) to try and maintain control for the purpose she tells herself she wants, to put Oak eventually on the throne. But to do that, she has to deal with forces that outright hate her, forces that scheme possibly as well as her, and forces that she has feelings for despite knowing those feelings could get her killed. It's an impossible predicament, and as you might expect in a second book, Jude doesn't always quite come out on top, but her scheming and ability to pull off what she does remains excellent to read. And Black makes Jude's feelings and very being so real that as a reader I cared so much about her, that I was tense when she was, and really was riding on whether Jude would be able to succeed.

The other characters aren't quite as strong, but Madoc and Cardan are excellent secondary characters - Madoc as Jude's opposite and clear real rival and Cardan as the potential antagonist/potential love-interest that's done really damn well. Readers who aren't new to the genre will have expected a Jude/Cardan romance to blossom eventually, and we get the steps of that here, but Black makes the relationship work really damn well despite how it began and takes it in some crazy surprising directions. Really the plot as a whole surprises for the most part, but always in a good way, with every twist being clearly setup before hand in retrospect -with the exception perhaps of the one in the ending, but that's done so damn well I expect to find that surprise justified by the third book whenver it comes out.

My main issue with The Wicked King was the book followed very closely the structure of its predecessor - a roughly 20 chapter first act followed by a 10 chapter second act after a major event occurs changing the status quo. The book is significantly shorter than The Cruel Prince but doesn't feature practically any new worldbuilding, we're back to playing in the same world as the first book with the same characters and agendas in play, with only a few new characters, and they don't really change much. The result is that the first 10-15 chapters felt kind of slow and hard to get into for me as events were clearly destined to occur and change everything but just weren't happening yet. Once those events happen, the book speeds up tremendously and becomes practically impossible to put down, culminating with a surprising but satisfying ending that again made me really want the next book, but I expect a second book to do a bit more at first now that the world was originally set up by the prior book, and that's why I think this isn't quite as good as the predecessor, which felt a bit more fresh.

So yeah, this series remains an excellent Fae Fantasy, for both young adult readers and older readers, and I definitely recommend it, even if this book is a minor step down.