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. He pretends to have a heart of stone and is bewildered by attachment, but needs someone to love him anyway.

Illustrator Rovina Ca did such an amazing job of capturing his likeness and personality in her work. There are a very very few authors out there who could make a character like Cardan, who could build that amazing character arc, who could make us fall in love with the disaster that is the High King of Elfhame and Holly Black is one of them. It was a wonderfully smart way to draw the collection together and I honestly do feel as if I could have read a dozen different takes on that particular tale. How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories is a breath of fresh air—the fairy tale atmosphere, the razor-sharp wit, the allure of the fey. I was already in love with her and her art because of her work with The Wayward Children series, but this entire book feels like am immersive work of art.Black's writing is both contemporary and classic; her world is, at this point, intensely well-realized, so that some plot twists seem almost inevitable. Unfortunately, we don’t see much of Jude in this installment, though I expected that since the book is about Cardan and focuses mostly on his past. Plus there’s his romantic relationship with Nicasia and how he tries to convince himself that he could rule with her in the Undersea. Cardan is my favorite character in The Cruel Prince series (or any of Holly’s books, I think) and this truly was such a magical, wonderous, unforgettable addition to this world. We also get to see so much of Cardan’s perspective during The Cruel Prince, much like we did with Tarryn in The Lost Sisters, and it was everything.

And they weren’t even the whole thing, just little snippets that added to the story of this novella. There short story's that add some great info to the folk of air trilogy, especially on cardans side as it’s all about him. Readers familiar with Cardan and Jude’s tumultuous and sometimes troubling love will recognize notes within this repeated tale, but each telling also stands alone as a complete tale, one that feels both inevitable and fresh.But I'm hoping this is Holly's secret way of telling us that there will be more Cardan short stories (WITH JUDE) in the future. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: This book wouldn't have been possible without Balekin, Locke and Nicasia's stupidness. How Cardan begins to notice Jude more and more, developing feelings for her without being able to identify what they are. Black continues to build an ever expanding mythos with her Faerie stories, and while this volume requires prior knowledge of The Folk of the Air trilogy, it offers new delights along with familiar moments retold. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

Não tem nada de super surpreendente, é verdade, mas eu gostei bastante de ver o Cardan quando era criança, de ver o lado dele em algumas cenas dos outros livros. Jude, who struggles with a world she both loves and hates and would rather be powerful and safe than good, is a compelling narrator. As of now, I've read four books by Holly Black and every single time I'm left amazed, not by the plot twists (although we all know that she excels at them), I'm left amazed by her writing. Getting to the end of this book feels like completing a journey with Cardan and I think it is a journey all fans of The Cruel Prince should embark on. And then all throughout his life, she tells his alternate versions of this same story, each version with a new meaning for a new version of Cardan himself.

Registered office address: Unit 34 Vulcan House Business Centre, Vulcan Road, Leicester, Leicestershire, LE5 3EF. Additionally I also highly recommend purchasing a hardback edition of this book as it’s truly exquisite and the illustrations deserve to be seen in print. It all begins when a troll named Aslog tells young Cardan a story, which they revisit multiple times over the course of his life and the novella. New York Times bestselling author, Holly Black reveals a deeper look into the dramatic life of Elfhame's enigmatic high king, Cardan. charmingly told and stunningly illustrated, this is a wonderful collection of short stories narrating select moments in cardans life before, during, and after the events of the ‘folk of the air’ series.