Warning: This review contains spoilers for the previous books!
‘What a story. I was not ready.’
Summary
Jude is back in the mortal world, licking her wounds from her last interaction with Cardan. With the High Queen of Elfhame in exile, chaos should rule. But no one even knows that there is a mortal Queen of Elfhame. So Jude moves in with Vivi and Oak, taking up a job and working to pay the rent. Jude’s heart is broken so she does what she’d always do: make a plan. But this plan gets thrown out of the window when her twin sister Taryn shows up. Desperately. Begging Jude to come back to Elfhame. And even though Jude is in exile, and even though she said she’d never return, Jude didn’t think twice about helping her sister. And so she returns, back to the land of the lying, deceiving and beautiful Faerie. Back to the land where Cardan rules.
Review
You guys. The last book. I was not ready. All the built-up feels from the other two books, they returned and slapped me in the face. I tried to read this book as slowly as possible, trying to stretch every second of joy. That’s how this book made me feel. So yeah, it took me two weeks to read it. And I’m not even sorry.
Holly Black did it again. I do have to say, I think I liked The Wicked King better than this book. But still, I really enjoyed reading this. As Holly Black always does, the book is filled with these sentences that keep popping up in the text – or in Jude’s mind for that matter. But like, really frequently. On the one hand, it takes you back to the moment where the words were first spoken, giving the situation an extra depth. But on the other hand, the words slowly lost their strength the more they were quotes, which was a pity, to be honest.
Still, I like this series a lot. I heard different opinions from several readers, all stating that the characters were not relatable or annoying et cetera. But I genuinely didn’t feel like that. I don’t know if that has anything to do with the fact that I read this in a foreign language, but that doesn’t seem to be true. I really like Jude’s badass character and I like that she’s some kind of superwoman. It makes me want to be like her and that is not a bad thing, I suppose.
Conclusion
I don’t want to spoil the ending for anyone, so you’re gonna have to form your own opinion about that. I liked the book, loved the series. It is going to be on the list of all-time favourites, so that’s that. If anyone is still doubting out there, wondering if they should stop at book two, I’d say, just read it. A lot of things are solved in this book, making this the necessary conclusion to an amazing story.
| Product information |
| Written by: Holly Black |
| Pages: 320 |
| Publisher: Little Brown Books for Young Readers |
| ISBN: 0316310425 |
| Interested? Buy it here |