1) The Cruel Prince - ★★★★★
2) The Wicked King - ★★★★.5
3) The Queen of Nothing - ★★★★★
3.5) How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories - ★★★★★


WARNING, THERE MAY BE SPOILERS, BECAUSE I PUT A LOT OF QUOTES. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED


This book was, the epitome of perfection. Was this book needed? Absolutely not. Did this book add anything to the original trilogy? No, not really. Was is it still one of the best books I’ve read this year? ABSOLUTELY.


I love this series with everything I am. This series is my escapism, it’s my pride and joy, it’s my everything. It’s helped me through so many hard times in my life, and I love these characters with my whole, blackened soul. Even though this book wasn’t needed, it was deeply appreciated by me.


First I want to talk about the art, on everything that this book holds. The cover, fucking beautiful, the in-pages, to die for, the naked cover, gives me life, but then we get into the art inside. The art inside this book cures my depression. Rowena Cal (the illustrator) has no right being such a good artist. This art has NO RIGHTS to make me cry over its perfection.


And then the writing. Holly Black’s writing is devastatingly beautiful. These quotes make me want to sob (I actually did shed a few tears during this, believe it or not). Holly Black, I swear I will read anything you write from now on, I’ll even read your middle grade series.


And even though we didn’t see the scene where Cardan wrote Jude’s name on paper a hundred times, or the scene in his perspective where he gets a knife to his throat, we get to see his repressed trauma, and his backstory. And it made me love one of my favorite characters even more than I already do.


Now it’s time for all the quotes i tabbed, because you guys need these quotes in your life.


”A prince of Faerie, nourished on cat milk and contempt, born into a family overburdened with heirs, with a nasty little prophecy hanging over his head—since the hour of Cardan’s birth, he has been alternately adored and despised. Perhaps it’s no surprise that he turned out the way he did; the only surprise is that he managed to become the High King of Elfhame anyway.
Some might think of him as a strong deauthorize, burning the back of one’s throat, but invigorating all the same.
You might beg to differ.
So long as you’re begging, he doesn’t mind a bit.”


pg. 1 “Thisis how you traveled? What if the enchantment ended while Vivi wasn’t with you?
I suppose I would have plummeted out of the air.”


pg. 17 ”Cardan had grown up in the palace, a wild thing to be cosseted by courtiers and scowled at by the High King. No one much liked him, and he told himself he cared little for anyone else. And if he sometimes thought about how he might do something to win his father’s favor, something to make the Court respect him and love him, he kept that to himself. He certainly asked no one to tell him stories, and yet he found it was nice to be told one. He kept that to himself, too.”


pg. 27 ”Cardan didn’t flinch, but for the first time, he understood that as terrible as things had been up to now, something worse might yet be ahead.”


pg. 37 ”You must be Prince Cardan.,” she said.
“And you’re the princess of fishes.” He sneered, making sure she knew he wasn’t impressed. “Over whom everyone is making an enormous fuss.”


pg. 40 ”Villains were wonderful. They got to be cruel and selfish, to preen in front of mirrors and poison apples, and trap girls on mountains of glass. They indulged all their worst impulses, revenged themselves for the least offense, and took every last thing they wanted.
And sure, they wound up in barrels studded with nails, or dancing in iron shoes heated by fire, not just dead, but disgraced and screaming.
But before they got what was coming to them, they got to be the fairest in the land.”


pg. 47 ”The sight of human servants unnerved him. Their empty eyes and chapped lips. Nothing like the twins from the palace school.
He thought of one of those girls frowning over a book, pushing a lock of brown hair back over one oddly curved ear.
He thought of the way she looked at him, brows narrowed in suspicion.
Scornful, and alert. Awake. Alive.
He imagined her as a mindless servant and felt a rush of something he couldn’t quite untangle—horror, and also a sort of terrible relief. No ensorcelled human could look at him as she did.”


pg. 55 }The odd curve of her ear was what he had noticed first. A roundness echoed in her cheeks and her mouth. Then it was the way her body looked solid, as though meant to take up space and weight in the world. When she moved, she left behind footprints in the forest floor.”


pg. 57 “Jude, Cardan thought, hating even the shape of her name.Jude.”


pg. 124 ”And all through that night and for many nights after, he couldn’t rid his thoughts of her. Not the hatred in her eyes. That he understood. That he didn’t mind. It warmed him.
But the contempt made him feel as though she saw beneath all his sharp and polished edges. It reminded him of how his father and all of the Court had seen him, before he had learned how to shield himself with villainy.
And doomed as she was, he envied her whatever conviction made her stand there and defy him.
She ought to be nothing. She ought to be insignificant. She out not to matter.
He had to make her not matter.
But every night, Jude haunted him. The coils of her hair. The calluses of her fingers. And absent bite of her lip. It was too much, but he couldn’t stop.
It disgusted him that he couldn’t stop.”


pg. 125 “Choose a future,Balekin had commanded him when he’d first brought Cardan to Hollow Hall. But no one choose a future. You choose a path without being certain where it leads.
Choose one way and a monster rends your flesh.
Choose another and your heart turns to stone, or fire, or glass.”


pg. 146 & 147 ”Your pardon, might you have some means by which I can navigate your land?”


pg. 166 ”And you think it was sunrise I was waiting for and not my Queen. Do you not hear her footfalls? She has never quite managed the trick of hiding them as well as one of the Folk. Surely you’ve heard of her, Jude Duarte, who defeated the redcap Grima Mog, who brought the Court of Teeth to their knees? She’s forever getting me out of scrapes. Truly, I don’t know what I would do without her.”