We stole you from your bed to fly through the skies on rushes and ragwort.
The Darkest Part of the Forest
by Holly Black
Genre: YA Fantasy
About: A boy with horns sleeps in a glass coffin in the middle of the forest, he has done for hundreds of years and it's one of the many things that sets Fairfold apart. Tourists flock to this small town to visit the sleeping boy and hope to catch a glimpse of others of his kind, known as the Fey. But Hazel has grown up on the edge of the forest and she knows the Fey are not the stuff of fairytales, but monsters to be hunted. And when the sleeping boy wakes, he might turn out to be the most dangerous yet...
The Good
The world is irresistible. There's magic, princes, riddles and adventure. It's a well-rounded story (if you squint) and some of the descriptions, especially of the world-building, are really, truly beautiful. Holly Black is a very talented, lyrically-minded writer.
The Bad
If you've read The Cruel Prince, there is absolutely no need to read this novel. Yes, it's set in the same world and it was written before her Folk of the Air trilogy, so it came first, but it's a second-rate version. Hazel is Jude, only her motivations are far weaker (and repeated over and over in literal lists for the reader). There are also 'twins', knights, siblings with secrets, acorns with hidden messages, princes with daddy issues... the story is basically a changeling version of her later works.
The Somewhat Iffy
Hazel fights the Fey with a magic sword but it's just not believable how she's so skilled, or why she was the one to find and wield the sword. Also the love interests - they really don't have a lot of depth to them. Hazel is that girl everyone loves for some reason, only she doesn't believe the guy she likes could possibly like her. And Ben's romance happens so fast you might get whiplash.
Overall
This felt like hard work to read. It has moments of beauty, but there's just so much about it that feels like an early draft of The Cruel Prince - as though the author is figuring out what she wants to write and it certainly wasn't this book. Skip this and read the Folk of the Air trilogy.
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