The sequel to the lush, savagely beautiful and marvelous The Cruel Prince we’ve all been craving so desperately to hold in our hands. Once more Holly Black steals our breaths away, enchants us with the intoxicating world of faeries while she breaks our hearts and leaves us nothing but lusting after the next instalment. The Wicked King certainly doesn’t disappoint.
"I want to tell you so many lies."
Title: The Wicked King
Series: The Folk of the Air (#2)
Genre: YA Fantasy
Author: Holly Black
Publish Date: 8th January 2019
Pages: 332
Personal Rating: 9/10
“Kiss me until I am sick of it.”
My heart. My heart! mY hEArt!
“This is an absolutely terrible idea.”
Holly Black officially went down in history as the woman who toyed with one of my organs. She made my heart bleed, made it race, weighed down a mountain on it and ripped it apart with anguishing slowness, ensuring that it really hurt like a *beeeep* *beep* *beeeeeeeeeep*! Hell, yes, was this book lush, unique and once again savagely intriguing.
Summary
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 opens five months after the ending of the first instalment, The Cruel Prince, and Holly Black throws her readers straight into the going-ons. From there on, once again, she takes us into the intriguing world of the Folk with its alluring customs and venues and the fast-paced plot full of twists, heart-racings and suspense. Honestly, that woman is a freaking genius and I don’t know how a mortal just managed to create something as stunning and magnificent as Holly Black. I mean, simply damn!
“You believe I planned your humiliation?” He laughs. “Me? That sounds like work.”
3 Reasons Why You Should Read It
Actually I don’t need to start reasoning why you should read this book because you obviously have to read it, still, here are my three reasons why.
Fast-paced, intriguing plot
Jurdan
Holly Black’s brilliancy of writing sass, dialogues, romance, action and world-building
Content
Folks, you just have to deign to read it. It’s the finest art of writing. I am still stunned and intrigued.
Without getting too much into details which results in spoilers, I can guarantee to any fans of black-haired, twisted and handsome dudes that they will get hell of a satisfaction in reading The Wicked King. It’s genuinely never boring, unforeseeable and not ordinary but witty, hot as fuck (I’m sorry but I just had to state that because it’s a freaking fact!) and addicting. I found myself looking desperately for more pages at the end of the book. But there were none! WTF. Especially, after that ending.
I can’t stop clapping for Black’s masterpiece. The world-building is just too perfect and the descriptions were simply not that noticeable because they were so perfectly and in a genius way woven into the dialogues and the lines. Simply fantastic! (Damn, what a rave review this has become…)
Only under the water can I admit that I almost died and that I was terrified and that I wish there was someone whom I could tell all that. I hold my breath until there’s no more breath to hold.
My last words: I don’t know how I am going to bypass the next year till the release of The Queen of Nothing. Cardan better gets his shit together.
Kill him before he makes you love him.
Give me a reason to cry in the next instalment or something that really freaking moves my core and then I’ll rate it with ten out of ten, I promise.
Below the divider the review goes on for all the one who don’t care about spoilers.
The Wicked King aka The Well-dressed King
We should have called truce long before this.
After reading the ending of The Wicked King in which basically all the shit happened at once (frankly, shit which I spoilt myself with in advance – I didn’t even start reading and already knew how it would
end –yes, clap for me, please) I don’t know what to do with my life. Send help.
Mortal girls do not become queens of Faerieland.
So, instead of sulking around – like kick-ass Jude probably does atm – I’ll use this opportunity to discuss some parts of this book. Here’s what to expect:
The Ending
My Theories
Taryn and Locke
Jurdan appreciation posts
A drunk dork appreciation posts
Playlist
The Ending
Of course. There is no way we could ever forget. First our wildest dreams get true in chapter 29 and Holly Black makes us really believe that Cardan and Jude are hell of an endgame (they still are by the way, nothing has changed not even through Cardan’s tiny lapse *cough* sentence *cough*) and then she rips everything from our hands just as we were getting started to get lost in it. Which leaves me with the desire to slap Cardan, then kiss him, throttle him, and strip him down from his lush and hot robes. He’s just awesome, nevertheless I just could shake my head at exiling Jude from Elfhame.
What now? Why did he do it? What purpose did it serve to exile his beloved, sweet villain and darling god? What went just wrong in his brain? Was it the freaking alcohol? At one point it just had to get to his head!
Let’s blame it on the alcohol (he’s moody but, please, be indulgent to him).
Which leads me right to the following topic.
My Theories
I’ve read multiple theories since I finished The Wicked King. Here are my three theories my beautiful brain came up with:
Why Cardan exiled Jude Duarte from Elfhame
How Jude Duarte is coming back to Elfam in The Queen of Nothing Pt. 1
How Jude Duarte is coming back to Elfam in The Queen of Nothing Pt. 2
Why Cardan exiled Jude Duarte from Elfhame
He really cares and worries about her. At first, this might sound completely stupid and unreasonable but on second thought it makes absolutely sense that Cardan exiled Jude. He fears that she’d only get herself hurt, taken hostage or tortured again if she stayed for the big fight in Elfhame with Madoc who sees her as a real equal opponent now, Queen Orlagh and Nicasia who aren’t her biggest fans and last but not least the humiliation Jude has to deal with all the time for being human.
Here some lines that Cardan really cares about her and doesn’t want her in the middle of it. And because he knows that Jude would do absolutely anything to keep her power, he had to stop her. (At this point I squeak “How cuuuuute!”)
“No,” says Cardan. “She goes with you.” (…) He ignores me and takes her hand. “Liliver, as your king, I command you,” he says with great dignity for someone sitting on the floor beside a bucket he’s retched in. “Go with Jude.”
Take one of us. Take a cloud of sprites or a drunken spriggan. Just take someone. But it’s just me alone.
“But when you were gone – truly gone beneath the waves – I hated myself as I never have before. “
Or he just had too much wine and had a lapse. He just needed a little kick. Whatever it is, he had a reason and it better be a good one.
How Jude Duarte is coming back to Elfam in The Queen of Nothing Pt. 1
Want to know my guess? No one but Cardan and Jude herself know that she is the Queen of Faerie. Thus being the Queen of Faerie makes her part of the crown, right? And when Cardan exiled her he knew exactly that she could come back but he did it in order to deceive Orlagh. So, she can pardon herself and come back? – That doesn’t sound even remotely realistic.
How Jude Duarte is coming back to Elfam in The Queen of Nothing Pt. 2
Another one; Jude can only be pardoned by the crown. So, what would happen if Jude actually got a crown by Grimsen? Then she would have a Blood Crown for herself and needs no pardon, instead she can set foot into Faerie how she pleases.
My guess for her come-back is either a crown forged for her by Grimsen, a loophole in the sentence for her exile (of course there is one) and I think Jude will ally with the Court of Termites because she killed Balekin for them. That had to serve a further purpose.
However, I am sure in The Queen of Nothing, Jude will come up with a plan and be back in the game soon enough. There won’t be much stopping her. She’ll find her way back, get back at Locke for good, bitchslap Taryn for good, show Madoc who holds the reins for good and throttle Cardan till he comes to his senses – also for good.
Taryn and Locke
I don’t even know why that cunt is still hopping around and the blind, treacherous sister hasn’t stopped her pretending by now. It’s getting worrisome and ridiculous. At least there is a match. Shitty and shittier combined and married. Surely, Taryn has fallen head over heels with Locke and is blind as fuck but she doesn’t deserve anything else but Locke’s jerky behavior. I will riot if in The Queen of Nothing they will still run across green fields and swing while they’re holding hands. They’re a couple of shitbags.
Jurdan Appreciation Posts
Who doesn’t love and ship them so hard the ground might start to quake? Sleeping in each other’s beds is just the beginning of the cutest things between them. Above all, the “I hate you” instead of “I love you” is the best thing ever.
“For a moment,” he says, “I wondered if it wasn’t you shooting bolts at me.” I make a face at him. “And what made you decide it wasn’t?” He grins up at me. “They missed.”
“Tell me that you hate me.” “I hate you,” I say the words coming out like a caress. I say it again over and over. A litany. An enchantment. A ward against what I really feel. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”
“I want to tell you so many lies,” he says.
“This is an absolutely terrible idea,” he says with a kind of amazement in his voice.
Jude, he’d said, running a hand up my calf, are you afraid of me?
A shiver goes through his body, and his hand goes to my waist, but instead of pushing me away, he pulls me into the bed with him, rolling my body across him onto the heavily embroidered coverlets.
“But when you were gone – truly gone beneath the waves – I hated myself as I never have before.”
And then he exiles her. Uh-huh. Sure. Whatever.
A Drunk Dork Appreciation Posts
I know we have all rights to be upset with Cardan for exiling Jude and being an asshole but we can’t deny that we love him – and his drinking issues. As an honor some appreciation posts/ quotes for the boy, the King of Elfhame who drinks like a champ and is a lazy, moody moron. But we all love him.
“You believe I planned your humiliation?” He laughs. “Me? That sounds like work.”
“Well,” says Cardan, closing his eyes as though he is going to nap right here. “No need for me to do a thing, then.”
He sprawls across the floor in all his fantastic robes of state, then begins to laugh. He laughs and laughs as though this is the most amazing trick he’s ever performed. He’s obviously drunk. Very, very drunk.
“Yes, my sweet villain, my darling god. I will be as sober as a stone carving, just as soon as I can.”
Playlist
My playlist doesn’t have as many songs as others might but the songs are worth gold. Hayley Kiyoko is the queen.
Hayley Kiyoko – Mercy/ Gatekeeper
Hayley Kiyoko – Under the Blue/ Take Me
Hayley Kiyoko – Wanna Be Missed
Hayley Kiyoko – Feelings
NOTD - So Close
“Kiss me again,” he says, drunk and foolish. “Kiss me until I am sick of it.”
The sequel and third and last instalment of The Folk of the Air Trilogy, The Queen of Nothing, will be released in 2020. There is not yet announced a publishing date (sadly) and I am anticipating that book so badly I don’t know how to cope with the long waiting.
Read my 5-star review of The Wicked King by Holly Black on Goodreads and follow me there to check out the books I've read and are on my to-do list.
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