A sharp tongue is no match for a sharp tooth.
How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories
by Holly Black
Genre: YA Fantasy
About: Cardan, the most unlikely of Eldred's children, is King of Elfhame. He was supposed to be cursed. He was supposed to be hated. His story was not meant to amount to anything, and he certainly wasn't meant to marry Jude, a human who hated him perhaps most of all. This is an account of how his story shifted and why.
The Good
If you enjoyed the Folk of the Air series, as I did, then this is compulsive reading. A follow on as well as a prequel - we see Cardan in the past, going over his unusual childhood, and the present, showing how he and Jude are handling a joint rule. I liked the characters well enough to enjoy the short appearances and the world is as whimsical and full of charm as I remembered it. There are also some very nice illustrations to go with the story and the fairy tale that's included comes with several versions, all twisted in the devious way that only the Fae can manage.
The Bad
There isn't a lot of depth here. It's too short of a book to really explore anything new. Cardan was an interesting character in the Folk of the Air series so he's a good protagonist and still likeable, but I didn't come away feeling I gained any new knowledge of him. In fact it seemed to be a tale written to absolve him of any and all sins. He's a victim in this story. Even in the scenes he acknowledges he's being 'bad', it's excused because we're seeing into the psychology of why he's acting this way and told that he doesn't really want to act this way. I would have found it a lot more interesting to see him act out and learn later it was wrong instead of constantly being reminded how much of a good guy he is really. And the scenes that are not included were even more disappointing - I distinctly remember him shredding a fae's wings in The Cruel Prince, which for me was one of his worst acts for how unnecessarily callous it was, so I would have liked this scene to have been included in his POV. Instead all his actions looked very excuseable.
The Somewhat Iffy
Holly Black mentions in her acknowledgements that she was reminded by Leigh Bardugo (I think) to add in a plot. Jokingly, of course as I'm sure the original story had a plot just as this final version does. But the plot lacks tension. The troll makes for an interesting character and, I guess, antagonist, but the story is told in the blink of an eye. I can't really see a purpose for the book beyond fan service.
Overall
You have to have read The Folk of the Air trilogy in order to read this one, and you have to have enjoyed that series in order to enjoy this one. I can answer yes to both, but even so, I'm disappointed there wasn't more to the tale. Whimsical, definitely. Fresh, not so much.
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