Remember the end of The Cruel Prince? I don’t remember it verbatim, but I remember the feeling. It was so sinister. The image of Cardan sitting on the throne, offering it up to Jude and telling her how hard she worked for it. The promise of future darkness to come.

The end of that book is in stark contrast to the end of this one.

Now don’t get me wrong, the ending of the Folk of Air series isn’t bad. It’s satisfying and Holly Black keeps Cardan and Jude apart for just the right amount of time and the ending makes sense (as far as a story about faeries can) and follows the trajectory of the series as a whole, but I think that’s why I didn’t love it, because of the trajectory.

Throughout the books, Cardan and Jude drag themselves out their own worse parts and into the light. In the first book, Jude is angry and violent and, not a bad person, but not quite a good person. She does things because she wants power and a place in Faerie and if the good of Faerie happens to align with her interests, well that’s a plus. Cardan is cruel and dangerous, but fun and charming. But then, after everything, they end up just…good. Cardan is a good guy THE ENTIRE BOOK (and maybe even before as he apparently saved mortals, a detail I didn’t think needed to be added) and Jude doesn’t make half the morally questionable decisions she used too (remember when she killed that messenger just because she was told to). I miss the people they were before.

And not only is the complexity of characters paling a bit compared to the previous books but the complexity of Jude’s relationships, the complexity I adored, the complexity that got it on almost every fantasy agent’s MSWL, was missing almost entirely. Take Jude and Taryn’s relationship. After Taryn’s betrayal, Taryn gives a not-so-convincing explanation and Taryn and Jude pretty much make up immediately without much time being devoted to it. The relationship between Madoc and Jude, while touched on, takes a back seat in this book as well. And, maybe most disappointedly, Jude’s relationship with Faerie and, by proxy, Cardan is also simplified. Turns out Cardan’s betrayal at the end of the last book was just a misunderstanding and then Cardan and Jude are just in love, no self-hatred or power-plays in sight. And Jude doesn’t work that hard to make people accept a mortal queen of Faerie.

And it’s not as if there wasn’t space for this complexity.

What the Author Could’ve Done:

Cardan thought Jude was working with Madoc and he knows Jude killed his brother even though he asked her not to. And Jude thought Cardan had tricked and used her her entire exile, and no part of her doubted it so she clearly thought he was capable of it. Black could’ve played with that distrust much, much more, especially since Black does this kind of clever thing where Cardan’s biggest changes happen when Jude isn’t there (when she’s captured by the Undersea, when she’s banished). This keeps Cardan interesting and saves us the effort of tracking each step of his development, but it means Jude has to rise to meet Cardan’s level of affection and we don’t always see that work. I can maybe buy Cardan realizing how much he loves Jude in her absence, but Jude distrusts Cardan her entire exile, then Cardan gives an, again, not-so-convincing explanation and boom, Jude is in love. Also, we see a very small hint of Cardan’s previous anger when it’s directed at Randalin. It would’ve been nice to see that on display more. How would Jude feel if Cardan’s cruelty was directed for her instead of against her? Would she have encouraged it, used it?

Black could’ve also made the end a bit less rosy. No one dies (who else totally called that Cardan wasn’t going to die but rise from the snake) and everyone gets paired off (the one thing I genuinely disliked was Black making it painfully obvious that Ghost and Taryn were going to end up together. It’s not as if Taryn doesn’t have a happy ending already, that was just pushing it over the edge).

What I Would’ve Done: 

If I had written this series, I would’ve done the above and had Cardan bring Jude down a little bit instead of Jude’s love (not even really Jude herself who is no saint) bringing Cardan up and, in the end, they both take the throne as flawed rulers after doing some terrible things. And I kinda wish Cardan did something awful in the mortal world like Jude expected (which further shows that Jude does not yet know this new Cardan), something a faerie would do but a mortal would not, just to show that there’s more work to be done.

Conclusion:

The previous books, The Cruel Prince in particular, had a GoT first season air about it in that this fantasy land wasn’t good and bad, but kinda all bad. Where sinister meant smart (Madoc as Tywin) and there’s no good prince (Dain as Joffrey) but Black chose to play it safe and it devolved into a fairytale. This makes sense with the way the series was going but I miss the dark. So I guess it ended up like GoT season seven: I don’t mind where it ended up, but I wish it got there a little differently.