The Queen of Nothing

What has Jude, in all three books, been fighting for?…She began with the goal to prove others she has what it takes to survive the fae worldbut as each book unfolded, we could see Judes heart: justice for the oppressed, to keep evil at bay, to eventually put a fair ruler on the throne/or be a fair ruler, etc. Shes merciful, often giving characters second chances, forgiving those who are remorseful, who would normally be cut down in cold blood for their past sins. Though she fights well, its never for the sake of cruelty itself, but for some better end, to fight off the darkest, bloodiest forces scrambling for power, to do what is best for all. This is Jude. This is what we know of her: justice, fairness and kindness toward the oppressed beings in the fae world (human slaves, and other fae servants), forgiveness for those who mess up and are sorry for it, all good things….she fits the savior mold quite well, doesnt she?

And yet it took one measly sentenceone brutal, horrific, flippant, foolish sentence the author slipped in for the sake of supporting political events in our world, I supposeto make Jude and the glory of her championing cause come crashing down around me like a felled china cabinet during an earthquake, and those shiny precious teacups it once held protectively now lay in sharp, ugly shards at my feet.

The three sisters and their little brother are reclining after a major confrontation near the end of the book. Vivi confronts one of them, who is pregnant, You dont have to have this baby….I know in Faerie, children are rare and precious, and all that, but in the mortal world, theres such as thing as an abortion. To which Jude chimes in her support.

To fae, their babies are rare and precious….and all that. Wow. And all that…as though its nonsense to consider a child as precious….

Of coursenot for humans, we discard ours like warts, like tumors.

Thank you, Author, for reminding me of the brutal, murderous, cruel race I belong to. Thank you for reminding me that the savior role Jude so quaintly fit into was just that…a role, and she and her sisters are in fact just human after all.

Every day we rip apart hundreds of thousands of innocent, helpless humans limb from limb, crush their brains with medical tools, burn them alive with saline injections. All while knowing they feel the pain. All while knowing their little hearts were beating just moments before. And this is how it was treated in this book…so coldly, so cruelly. RIGHT after the heroine and her family stopped the villains of the story from causing war and needless bloodshedthis is what the novel boils down to? Support for the slaughter of an innocent baby?? And how oddly merciful Jude was hours later, doling out sentences on the villains, so lenient in her judgement of those who killed and did cruel things for the sake of power.

Do you not see how backwards this all is? Are we so blind?! Yes. Yes we are. And I am tired of it. And I will not cower and pretend I didnt see it.

I wish I could have my money and time back.

Whelp. About to make me some enemies here as I espouse some negative views on a most beloved series. Im not even sure this review is for the readers here or more for myself as a therapy session but here we go.

Spoilers ahead.

I could cry. Seriously. I have long awaited this final installment. I have thought about this book almost every day for an entire year! Never have I EVER been so excited to read something. I even bought special editions and signed copies of these books.

First off, let me state. I knew that Jude and Cardans relationship was pretty toxic in the past and though they ended up together in these books, I just didnt see a relationship that I could root for by the end. They were both flawed and I hoped that once the story concluded, that they could mend those broken pieces within each other, but I was ultimately disappointed. We see a moment where Cardan essentially confesses to enjoying making Jude fear him (even though hes ashamed to admit it). It should never be anyones desire in a relationship to make the other person uncomfortable or fearful. This was disgusting to me. We see in that same scene, Jude strike Cardan across the face in a moment of anger. I HATE when people who claim to love each other in books strike one another. If it had been Cardan striking Jude, thered be hell to pay. Jude is forced later on in the story to make a choice about whether to control Cardan again like she did in book two or to set him free. She truly wrestled with this decision even up until the final moments before she decided to do the right thing. She KNEW that Cardan would hate her if he was enslaved again as a mindless being under her control. He trusted her to make the right decision and she had gall to deliberate on what was the right choice. Judes flaw has always been to be drawn to the enticement of power and we can see that most clearly in this moment where she deliberates when even love hangs in the balance.

The book also felt like it was ramping up towards this conflict with Madoc but the final climax seemed to fall flat to me. Most of the book I felt bored with the pacing and there didnt seem to be as many twists in this story as the books previous. I really missed the exciting What just happened?? moments from before.

Finally, Im exhausted with authors pedaling political stances in fictional books, especially ones that are super divisive and in this case, horrifying. There is a moment where the sisters are talking about Taryn being pregnant and they try to persuade her that if she wanted to end her pregnancy, shed be fine to do so; that babies are often unwanted, often aborted, as if that somehow justified such a wicked act. They told her if she wanted to end her babys life through abortion shed be more than justified, praised even. Jude makes a comment that shed cut off anyones hands whod disagree. In that moment, Jude became the villain and I couldnt look at her the same. She was worse than Madoc or Balekin who killed their wife and killed their siblings. She encouraged a mother to kill her own child. This is obviously a hot button issue in our country and I dont need a book preaching to me about how I should feel about any issue, but especially this one.

Finally, all I can say is that I can only feel ashamed for the time and money I spent investing in this series.

…Dramatic title, but here’s my two cents anyway. No spoilers!

I was a huge (YUGE) fan of TCP and TWK. So naturally, come 9 pm when this baby hit my Kindle, I dropped everything and and gobbled it up in about 6 hours, and that’s with some distractions thrown in.

I won’t get into detail but this book has some serious pacing issues, especially towards the end. There’s also some major characterization problems. We’re given a plot twist in the beginning that’s never really elaborated on, a MAJOR plot twist that is rushed and fizzles out anticlimatically, and the romance between our beloved Jurdan here leaves a lot to be desired (minor spoiler: The ending for me was very out of character).

While I was appreciative the author got this book out a couple months early, I think I’d rather have waited longer, especially if it meant getting a better written book out of it.

Eu amei tanto esse livro, meu deus! No tem nem como descrever direito! Sei bem de alguns pequenos defeitos que ele tem, mas li de uma s vez, numa euforia sem ar e sem cabimento que, afinal, tudo que importa! Sentia muita falta de ler um livro assim e foi uma escolha perfeita para o final do ano! No existe sensao melhor do que a que eu senti durante a segunda metade inteira do livro! Por isso, ele entrou para os meus favoritos e claro que eu dei cinco estrelas.

Tem outra razo para eu no ter diminudo a nota, afinal. No considero seus defeitos fatais, nem os considero srios o suficiente para tirar a qualidade do livro. Um deles, alis, um defeito da trilogia toda: as coisas acontecem um pouco rpido demais. Isso uma coisa boa na maior parte do tempo, j que tudo muda bastante e no tem nem uma pgina de histria parada. Ao mesmo tempo, talvez seria bacana se a autora tivesse descoberto um jeito de no deixar to rpido assim. No precisava demorar realmente em nada, mas pelo menos diminuir um pouco essa velocidade.

Minha segunda crtica para como o verdadeiro clmax do livro foi ‘solucionado’. Tem muita reviravolta, mas, quando ele aparece, no h dvidas de que o clmax. Eu amei muito o jeito que a autora o encarou, amei a atitude da Jude, achei tudo super lgico e incrvel. Mas a soluo foi rpida demais, fcil demais. Sei que nem tinha como a histria se demorar logo depois do maior problema ser resolvido, isso no faria sentido, mas senti falta de umas pginas a mais com uma conversa ou uma cena mais intensa entre a Jude e o Cardan para fazer valer o final.

Mas o fato que eu amei todo o resto de um tanto, que isso mal importa! Quero reler agora desde o comeo, do primeiro livro. Vi vrias pessoas reclamando da histria desse, mas acho que s mais uma vez o fenmeno do fim atacando. Ou seja, sempre que o ltimo, o final, a grande maioria das pessoas detestam, independente do que seja (srie, filme, livro) e da qualidade real. Eu, em compensao, costumo gostar mais dos ltimos, dos finais. Pode ser s problema em aceitar que coisas acabam e nem sempre exatamente como voc imaginou. No tenho esse problema!

O fato que este livro me fez sentir coisas incrveis e eu vou am-lo para sempre por isso.

The Queen of Nothing has been one of my most anticipated releases of the year ever since its publication date was moved from January 2020 to November 2019, and Im pleased to say it didnt disappoint!

Now exiled from the land of Faerie, despite being its High Queen, Jude is attempting to live her life in the mortal world with her older sister, Vivi, and their little brother Oak, taking on some odd jobs for other fae who dwell in the mortal world. When her sister Taryn turns up on their doorstep with some surprising news requesting Judes help, she cant help but be pulled back towards Faerie and the place she considers home.

Naturally, because its Jude, chaos ensues.

It was so satisfying to see Taryn finally come into her own in this book, and for Jude, Taryn and Vivi to be a supportive little coven of sisters. I did spend a lot of the novel, much like Jude, nervous that Taryn might betray her again, but Taryn has finally found her own voice in this third and final book and no longer needs Locke and Madoc to make her decisions for her by using her. Seeing the three sisters finally working together was one of my favourite things about this book.

But I cant deny that I also loved all the scenes that Jude and Cardan shared. I dont know what it is about this series that works for me because Cardan should be the kind of YA love interest I hate, but he and Jude are like two sides of the same coin and they just work. Cardan is a lot softer in this book than hes been in the previous books, but given the glimpse into his past were given right at the beginning of this novel I think that makes sense and, to be honest, Cardan is the softer character out of him and Jude.

Thats probably hard to believe in The Cruel Prince, when he and his friends are so darn mean, but Jude straight-up murders people throughout this series (and its awesome) whereas a lot of Cardans behaviour is a kind of armour hes had to build up because of the world and family hes been born into. I find him really interesting he reminds me a little of Baz from Carry On, whos also a secret soft mess under his layers of venom and I enjoyed all of his scenes a lot.

That doesnt mean this book isnt without its problems and I have a feeling its going to be a fairly polarising finale not because of its ending or anything, but because of the way we get to that ending. Like the other books in this trilogy, The Queen of Nothing moves along at quite a fast pace and there are plenty of moments that could have been drawn out or questions that could have been answered.

For example, I thought we might learn a bit more about Judes parents, particularly her mother, and Im surprised Cardans mother didnt play a bigger part in the book. Then again, their stories have never really been the point of this trilogy. We can dive into the kinds of mothers they were all we like, but what really matters is how their parenting has left Jude and Cardan the way they are. Not only that but, in Judes case, the parent whos had the most impact on her is Madoc; its Madoc who, for better or worse, has turned Jude into the scheming Slytherin queen she is.

In a way I quite liked that Cardans mother teased Jude with the stories she could tell Jude about her own mothers behaviour, but Jude never rises to that bait. Maybe one day shell learn more about her mother in her own time but, ultimately, Jude has got to where she is through her own blood, sweat and tears, and she doesnt need stories about anyone whos come before her to validate her. I kind of love that.

I could see where the plot was going from fairly early on and I could guess the solution to the novels major problem straight away, but, honestly, I didnt care. This series is just so much fun to read; these books are like popcorn, sweet and salty and moreish, and Ive read this whole trilogy this year purely and simply to be swept away somewhere else and entertained. This final book continued to do that for me, and I really enjoyed it!

I cant even say Im sad this series has now come to an end because a story arc has come to a close and it felt like a fitting ending, even if we did get to that ending a lot more easily than I expected, but I would love to see Holly Black write more books set in the world of Faerie because her world-building in this trilogy is one of my favourite things about it.

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