I love when a trilogy is a banger from start to finish.
Exiled at the end of the last book, Jude is out for either self-pitying or revenge, mostly self-pitying. Running errands for a local Fae in Maine, riding a dinky bike squatting in the spare room of her older half-sister’s ex-girlfriend’s apartment is not the way she thought her reign would go.
I feel like a constellation of wounds, held together with string and stubbornness.
Of course that changes when Taryn shows up because she needs Jude’s help (sure, betray your twin to your father, and still expect her to clean up your messes; this is why I’m glad I’m an only child). See, she’s finally figured out that Locke is a crumb (girl, we all figured that out back in The Cruel Prince), and has gone a little Cell Block Tango on him.
So can Jude get her off the murder inquiry? And maybe while in Elfhame, Jude will have the interest in: stopping her father from staging a coup against Cardan’s her throne, get said throne back, locate a missing Ghost, find out if being Queen of Elfhame has any perks to it, and give the bloodthirsty Redcap she’s picked up in Maine something to do so she stops eating the local populace. Oh, and maybe either kill her husband or get around to actually trying a marriage with him. What could go wrong?
(Jude throughout half the book.)
I love when authors write characters a certain way and they actually stay that way throughout all the books. No strange personality changes to fit the plot; just growth fitting in the guidelines the characters were in to begin with. Jude started this series an occasionally emotionally unhealthy individual with trust issues, murder problems and a desire to be loved, and that’s where she ended the series. Cardan started a foppish snark with trust issues, a mild drinking problem and a desire to be loved, and that’s where he ended. Taryn…okay, I can see who Taryn actually is now; she’s Oriana. The decisions she makes with Locke, talking to Jude, the underlying thing with the man in the Obelisk (not spoiling that one!), she’s learned Oriana’s lessons well. She’s Sansa to Oriana’s Catelyn Stark while Jude is the Arya to Madoc’s Ned. I guess it goes to show that in the end Taryn is Oriana’s daughter, Jude is Madoc’s, Oak is his own parade, and Viv just thinks the entire family needs therapy. Not that I dislike any of them; they’re a seriously dysfunctional family, but they all appeal to me in their own sick, strange little ways.
And Jude and Cardan’s romance is going right along the path that you knew it would. “I Like Your Style” from Barnum was written with these two in mind, I think. When these two are firing on all cylinders working together, they are on fire, Elfhame’s power couple on the throne.
I think of his riddle. How do people like us take off our armor?
One piece at a time.It’s you I love,” he says. “I spent much of my life guarding my heart. I guarded it so well that I could behave as though I didn’t have one at all. Even now, it is a shabby, worm-eaten, and scabrous thing. But it is yours.” He walks to the door to the royal chambers, as though to end the conversation. “You probably guessed as much,” he says. “But just in case you didn’t.
And I want more Grima Mog; she is a brilliant addition to the cast. Murderous, vindictive and commonsensical; I’m surprised that Jude didn’t ask Grima to adopt her.
I know that there’s a standalone book and a duology that follows this (How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories, The Stolen Heir and the The Prisoner’s Throne) and I’ve read it, but I want more. Holly Black has said that she’s not finished in this world, and I for one am quite glad to hear it.
But for now, I guess I’ll just keep pulling this book and the other two in the trilogy off the shelf and re-reading my favorite bits again and again.