“If I cannot be better than them, I will become so much worse.”
There are books I read and hate, books I read and like, books I read and enjoy, and books that I read and become so obsessed with they take up far too much space in my head; this is one that fits in the last category.
Jude Duarte lived in the mortal world (probably somewhere in the New Jersey/New York area as that seems to be where Holly Black bases most of her books) with her parents and her sisters; her twin Taryn and their half-sister Vivienne. Until the day Madoc, her mother’s first husband and Vivienne’s father, killed the parents and ferried the three girls away to Elfhame, the world of the Fae Folk. Now a decade in, Jude spends her days learning how to fit into Fae society, all while dodging the torments of Cardan Greenbriar, youngest prince of the Greenbriar Royalty, and his friends Locke, Nicasia, and Valerian.
“I am going to keep on defying you. I am going to shame you with my defiance. You remind me that I am a mere mortal and you are a prince of Faerie. Well, let me remind you that means you have much to lose and I have nothing. You may win in the end, you may ensorcell me and hurt me and humiliate me, but I will make sure you lose everything I can take from you on the way down. I promise you this is the least of what I can do.”
The four of them bitterly resent that as Madoc is the King’s top general and they are considered his daughters, Taryn and Jude are treated as the Faes’ equals and have a place and right to be in their society. Taryn and Jude have gone about their assimilation two different ways; Taryn wishes to blend into the background and fit in, and Jude wants to make everyone pay for ever looking down on her, while Vivienne, the only one of the three with Fae blood, rages against being returned to Elfhame, and sneaks back to visit the human world. When Dain, Cardan’s brother and the heir to the throne, offers Jude the chance to have some real power for herself, Jude must decide how far she’ll go, and what place in her life Cardan is going to be allowed to have.
“What could I become if I stopped worrying about death, about pain, about anything? If I stopped trying to belong? Instead of being afraid, I could become something to fear.”
And that isn’t even one tenth of the plot; you just can’t really give a good synopsis without giving away a whole lot of spoilers. Jude and Cardan are both wonderfully flawed individuals; they’re both broken, scared people hiding behind being horrible, and I love that Holly Black makes Jude honestly the larger monster out of the two of them.
I lived for every time they were on the page together, because the snark was off the charts, and their enemies-to-maybe-enemies-with-benefits arc is well executed. Holly Black said in an interview once that her take on Jude was that where Cardan is concerned, her philosophy is “of course I can change him, I can make him so much worse”, and I feel that.
The other characters are varying degrees of enjoyable; though to be honest I spent most of the book hoping that Taryn and Locke would find a shallow puddle to drown in together. I found Taryn a bit of a little Miss “you ain’t supposed to do that” nervous Nelly, and Locke just oozed smarm from his first appearance. Also, wow Taryn, you really don’t want Jude to be the center of anyone’s attention, do you?
Complete honesty here: I first started reading Holly Black’s books because I read in an interview with Cassandra Clare that her Seelie Queen and Holly Black’s Seelie Queen were supposed to be the same character, and I wanted to see if that was true. So of course the first Holly Black book I read was The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, because of course when you want to read about the Fae, you start with a book about vampires. Then I got to reading this (I know, The Darkest Part of the Forest, Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside are all chronologically before this; I just got this book first), and now I’m more a Holly Black fan than a Cassandra Clare fan. Holly just writes far more realistic people in more realistic, albeit fantastic situations. She also writes for a more mature audience, which is odd saying that as they supposedly write for 11-17 year olds with The Folk of the Air and Shadowhunters.
Read if you like morally grey leads, political machinations, snark, sexual tension, blood, and a very modern take on the Fae.
“There you are,” Cardan says as I take my place beside him. “How has the night been going for you? Mine has been full of dull conversation about how my head is going to find itself on a spike.”
“Father, I am what you made me. I’ve become your daughter after all.”
“I have lied and I have betrayed and I have triumphed. If only there was someone to congratulate me.”
“Let’s have a toast. To the incompetence of our enemies.”
“There’s always something left to lose.”
“Before, I never knew how far I would go. Now I believe I have the answer. I will go as far as there is to go. I will go way too far.”
“I am tired of caring,” I say. “Why should I?”
“Because they could kill you!”
“They better,” I say to her. “Because anything less than that isn’t going to work.”