The Cruel Prince

What's inside (9 sections)

1. A Murder at Age Seven
2. Mortal School Days in Elfhame
3. Wanting In and Hating Cardan
4. Spying for Prince Dain
5. Coronation, Blood, and a Hidden Oath
6. Why the ending earns it
7. What Lands and What Drags
8. Key takeaways
9. FAQ

I finally picked up The Cruel Prince after hearing friends talk about Jude and Cardan for years, half curious and half tired of Faerie books that all sound the same. This one hooked me fast. It is the first book in The Folk of the Air #1, published in 2018 by Little Brown, and it follows a mortal girl raised in Elfhame who decides she will earn power in a place that tells her she can never belong.

Jude Duarte is seventeen for most of the book, angry and driven and fun to follow even when she messes up. She trains with a sword before school, hates Prince Cardan Greenbriar, and ends up spying for a prince and crashing a coronation. I went in for the enemies dynamic and stayed for the spy plot.

A Murder at Age Seven

Jude is seven years old, age 7, when Madoc comes through the door. She lives in the human world with her mother and father, her twin sister Taryn, and her older half sister Vivienne, who has pointed ears and a wary look that Jude does not understand yet. Then Madoc, a tall Faerie general with a red cap, kills Jude and Taryn's parents in front of them.

He does it because Jude's mother ran. Years before, she was married to Madoc in Faerie and had Vivi with him, then she fled to the human world, married a mortal man, and had the twins. Madoc says he has come for his daughter. He takes all three girls back to Elfhame and raises them in his house as if that settles the debt.

That opening never quite leaves the book. Madoc gives them tutors and dresses and feasts, and Jude grows up calling him Father while knowing he murdered her first father and mother. It is an impossible bond. Madoc is proud and cold and oddly tender in flashes. He respects strength, and Jude wants his respect so badly it aches, even as she remembers what his hands did.

Vivienne never forgives him. Vivi is Madoc's blood daughter, half Faerie, and she remembers enough to stay angry. She pulls away toward the human world as she gets older, where she has a mortal boyfriend and a life Madoc cannot control. Taryn, Jude's twin, goes the other way. She tries to be sweet and proper and liked by Faerie society, to smooth things over. Jude chooses fighting.

Madoc's house also holds Oriana, his Faerie wife, who is polite and distant and clearly uneasy with two mortal girls under her roof, and her young son Oak, a small boy with big eyes and a hidden importance that becomes clearer near the end. Servants with cat eyes and bark skin drift through halls. Promises carry weight because Faeries cannot lie outright, though they can mislead with perfect grammar. Jude learns early to listen for what is not said.

Mortal School Days in Elfhame

Mortals are rare where Jude grows up. Most fairies treat them like pets or jokes, short lived and easy to enchant. Jude and Taryn wear rowan berry charms to block glamour and still get mocked at lessons. They study letters and music beside children who will outlive them by hundreds of years and who like to remind them of it.

School is where Cardan Greenbriar finds them. He is the youngest son of High King Eldred, beautiful and bored and mean, with a circle that follows him everywhere. Nicasia, daughter of the Undersea queen, proud and sharp tongued about her blood. Locke, charming and playful and always suggesting a game. Valerian, quieter and crueler, who seems to like hurting people just to watch. They pick on Jude because she reacts, and they pick on Taryn because she is with Jude.

The bullying is low and constant. Dumped trays. Trips on stairs. Enchanted apples that make Jude weep or dance in front of everyone. Notes and whispers. Taryn begs Jude to laugh it off and keep her head down. Jude cannot do it. Each insult makes her want rank more, not less. She thinks if she becomes a knight, if Eldred's court has to recognize her, Cardan will have to stop.

Madoc lets her train, which surprised me. He has his sword captain wake her before dawn and drill her in footwork and blades, even though Oriana thinks it is unseemly and even though most of Faerie thinks a mortal knight is a joke. Jude wakes sore. She bleeds through practice wraps. She learns she will never match a Faerie knight for strength, so she has to be quicker and dirtier and more stubborn. Those cold morning lessons shape her more than any lecture about power.

Taryn and Jude start to split here in ways that hurt. Taryn likes Locke's attention. Jude thinks Taryn is trading herself away for approval. Taryn thinks Jude's pride will get them both ruined. They are both scared, and neither says it plainly.

Wanting In and Hating Cardan

At seventeen Jude is tired in her bones but more determined than ever. She plans to compete in a knighthood quest, a tournament that can earn commoners a place in the royal guard. She wants it so badly she can taste it. And Cardan keeps standing in her way, telling her mortals are mud, that she should go home to a world she barely remembers, that Elfhame will never love her.

I understood Jude's hate because Black ties it to envy and shame, not just anger. Jude does not only want Cardan to leave her alone. She wants to outrank him. It is petty and human and I liked that the book lets her be petty.

Locke makes everything messier. He invites the twins to a woodland revel, all wine and music and lights that move when you are not looking. For one night Jude feels included. Then she wakes with leaves in her hair and a sour feeling that she agreed to something she cannot recall. Locke tells everyone what they want to hear.

Nicasia mocks Jude for reaching above herself, especially when Jude shows skill with a blade. Valerian escalates from words to bruises, holding her under water once and shoving faerie fruit at her that would enchant her if she ate it. Cardan watches most of it with a bored smile that slips sometimes into something raw, especially when his older brother is near.

That brother is Balekin, and he matters. Balekin is one of Eldred's elder sons, clever and violent, and Cardan lives in his house and takes his beatings. When Balekin snaps, Cardan flinches. It does not excuse what Cardan does to Jude, but it explains the chain.

Spying for Prince Dain

While Jude trains for the tournament, court talk turns to succession. High King Eldred is old and ready to step down, and he must name an heir before a coming coronation. The favorites are Prince Dain, steady and honored and loved by many lords, and Prince Balekin, who has friends among those who want harder rule and less peace with humans. Eldred's other sons orbit, but those two pull the most weight.

Dain notices Jude. He knows she trains, that Cardan torments her, that she is desperate for a formal place, and that as a mortal she can lie. That last part is key. Faeries cannot speak a direct lie. They can twist words and leave gaps, but they cannot say what is false. Jude can. That makes her a perfect spy.

He brings her into the Court of Shadows, his hidden spy network. It is run by the Roach, who hears everything through palace walls, the Ghost, a quiet watcher, and the Bomb, a cheerful poison maker with a sharp mind. They live in secret rooms behind the palace, with maps and stolen letters and bottles that could kill a table of lords.

Her early jobs are small and scary. Follow a lord after dinner. Copy a letter and put it back before dawn. Listen at a door and remember who laughed. She is good at it because people overlook mortal girls, and because she can lie to a guard without blinking. Dain promises that if she serves him through the succession, he will knight her and give her standing no bully can strip away. For Jude, that promise is everything.

The work shows her a dirtier Elfhame. Dain is kind to her face but orders thefts and threats to secure votes. Balekin hosts loud parties where lords drink and complain about Eldred's soft peace and about mortals living high. Madoc claims loyalty to Dain in public while keeping his army sharp and his counsel close. Even Oriana warns Jude in her cool way that princes spend people like coin.

Jude hides it all from Taryn, telling herself it is protection. In part it is pride. Madoc figures out pieces anyway. He tells her Dain will use her up, and he is both proud of her craft and angry she did not bring that craft to him.

I kept thinking that Jude liked spying not just for the promise of knighthood but because it let her watch the people who had always watched her, and turn their own rules back on them for a night.

Coronation, Blood, and a Hidden Oath

As coronation nears, Elfhame fills with visitors. Lords from forests and hills and seas arrive with retinues. Vivi comes home, braided and restless, worried about her sisters. Taryn is wrapped up in Locke, who talks of love and a future. Jude is wrapped up in keeping Dain alive, because rumors say Balekin will not accept being passed over.

Then Dain is murdered. Poison does it, quiet and Faerie made, and the careful future Jude built collapses in an hour. Eldred, weary and strange and more ready to leave than to fight, does not hold the line. At the coronation feast, Balekin moves. Doors shut. Blades come out. Allies shout his name. He means to take the crown by blood if it is not given.

Jude is in the hall with a knife and no patron. Balekin drags Cardan forward, beaten and drunk, to show he controls even Eldred's youngest son. He plans to crown himself with Cardan as proof that the Greenbriar line bends to him. It is loud and fast and terrifying, wine spilled and crowns knocked and guards choosing sides in real time.

Jude sees a narrow path because she has learned how Faerie oaths work. Words bind. A promise freely given cannot be wriggled out of. The crown answers to vows and blood. She gets Cardan alone for a minute in the chaos, taunts him into agreeing to serve her, and lays a geas on him for a year and a day. He laughs until he feels it settle. Then she uses the upheaval after Balekin's attack to put Cardan on the throne as High King.

It is a wild move, and it works because no one is watching the mortal girl. Then she faces Balekin herself. Their fight is ugly and close, no shining duel but cuts and panting and slipping on wet stone. With help and luck and all that dawn training, Balekin falls.

The cost lands at once. Madoc stares at her like a general reassessing a soldier. Vivi and Taryn see her soaked and shaking and understand she kept huge secrets. Cardan looks at her with fury and disbelief, a new High King who must obey a mortal spy. Jude has stopped a worse king and seized power, but she is alone in the middle of it. I liked that Black does not let it feel like triumph. It feels like survival with a high price.

Why the ending earns it

Looking back, the signs were there without flashing. Dain's honor always had a hard edge. Balekin's care for Cardan was control. Madoc loved Jude but loved strength more. Cardan's cruelty covered fear of Balekin and fear of being nothing after Eldred left. Jude's answer uses rules taught from page one, that Faeries cannot lie, that spoken bargains hold, that crowns follow oaths. It fits, and it flips the schoolyard war into rule of a kingdom in one night.

What Lands and What Drags

Jude's voice carries the book. She is dry and observant about food and clothes and manners, honest with readers about wanting status even when she fools herself about why. I believed her as a girl who drilled with swords since childhood, who reads rooms fast because she had to, who grabs bad bargains because any bargain beats being powerless. Her clashes with Cardan spark because both are always performing and both keep slipping.

Faerie feels old here, not just pretty. Fruit that sickens mortals. Parties where time slides. Oaths that matter more than laws. Black wrote Spiderwick and other Faerie tales before this, and it shows in small touches. A borrowed cloak. A name said carelessly. An apple refused.

The Court of Shadows gives the middle its pulse. The Roach and the Ghost and the Bomb have humor and scars and views on princes, and their hideout scenes play like a heist crew tucked inside a court drama. When they start to respect Jude, it means more than Locke's compliments because they have watched her work. That found crew kept me reading through the slower training chapters.

Fair notes, since no book is perfect. The Locke and Taryn and Jude tangle frustrated me. Locke stays blurry for a long stretch, kind and cruel by turns, and some fights run on misunderstanding rather than clear motive. Taryn can read as only the soft foil to Jude's hard edge until late, when we learn what she hid, and I wanted more of her inner life earlier. Valerian and Nicasia start as types too, though both gain sharper edges once succession pressure builds.

Training scenes drag a little in the middle. Jude drills, gets hurt, drills again while politics pause, and readers hungry for court moves may skim. I did not mind because the slow burn makes the coronation hit harder, but it is fair warning.

As the start of a trilogy, it does its job and more. The Folk of the Air goes on with The Wicked King and The Queen of Nothing, and this book leaves Jude in a sharp spot. She is bound to a High King who hates her, distant from Taryn and Vivi, hunted by Balekin's friends.

If you like sharp heroines, cruel princes with cracks in the armor, spy work inside fairy halls, and bargains where each word matters, try it. If you want gentle heroes or clear morals, look elsewhere. Jude lies and steals and kills and still asks for your loyalty. I gave it, with reservations, and I am still turning her choices over in my head.

FAQ

How does Jude end up in Faerie?

Jude is seven when Madoc kills her parents and takes her and her sisters to Elfhame. She grows up mortal in a court that despises humans.

Who is Cardan in The Cruel Prince?

Cardan is the youngest prince of the High King. He bullies Jude at school, then needs her help when the crown falls into dispute.

What does Jude want most?

Jude wants knighthood and power in a place built to deny her both. She trades obedience for secrets and ends the book holding real control.