The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black (The Folk of the Air Book 3)
Genre: Young Adult, Fiction, Fantasy, Romance
Summary: Following Jude’s exile from Faerie at the hands of the High King, she resolves to find a way back, until the way back makes itself clear to her.
Link to Trigger and Content Warnings
Warning: Slight spoilers for The Cruel Prince (2018) and The Wicked King (2019)
Well, I finished the series and you know what, I actually really liked this one. I know that people are pretty torn on this last book, but I have a proclivity to like endings that are well done. And for the most part, this ending was well done.
One of my disappointments with the previous book is that it felt like all of the bubbling feelings exploded and came to nothing. It was this sense of, I understand you guys like each other…but why? Well, I pushed that to the background of my mind for this book and just accepted it and you know what? The book became so much more enjoyable. Once we come to acknowledge that this is where they are, regardless of how it got there, the characters became more fun.
Individually, the protagonists are okay (I guess). But it’s when they’re together that they become really, really fun. Jude and Cardan are, by far, the best parts of the book. The way that they balance each other out and understand the other in a way that only they can understand is so great to read, and I was a big fan of how well their relationship was handled. Yes, they’re twisted and a little toxic, but there was something real in the way they were written.
For the other characters, I liked their endings. I think it made sense for who they were and how their arcs had been set up throughout the series. I appreciated the way that the author brought back supporting characters from previous novels to wrap everything up. Side note, I enjoyed that a good number of characters are, in essence, redeemed (considering how terrible they were in other books), but others are left to their terribleness. Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
The plot was also pretty well-constructed. Everything was engaging and enthralling and what you’d expect from a high-stakes YA fantasy novel (in a good way). However, it’s here that I have my biggest problem with the book.
Essentially, the core conflict in the novel, which has pretty dire stakes, is introduced…in this novel. There’s no notice of this in the preceding books, which is a little vexing mainly because this is something that definitely could’ve been included or foreshadowed. I sincerely wonder if this was a choice on the author’s end not to muddle the previous books, or if she didn’t know what the last book should be about, so she thought of something, and bam! There was the conflict. Even though the conflict made sense in the context of the book, I wish that it was something that had been alluded to before.
But at the end of the day, I really enjoyed this book. It was fun, yes, and filled with a pretty addicting plot. For the first time in the series, I saw the heart of the characters, and they felt like people with feelings and ambition and emotion, more than just plot devices. And call me human, but I like that person-to-person understanding.
Come for the faerie finale, stay for the unexpected heart.
phoebe needs a life 