Too late I understand what's terrifying about his charm. He seems entirely open when he is unknowable. Every smile is painted on, a mask.
The Stolen Heir
By Holly Black
Genre: YA Fantasy
About: Wren has made a home for herself in the woods. She shadows the human world and sabotages Fae deals when she can, but mostly she works to survive. But when a storm hag and a prince of Elfhame enter her woods, she's forced to leave the safety of aloneness and embark on a quest she's not sure either of them want her to survive.
The Good
As always with this series, the world is absolutely fantastic. I love all the different types of Fae we meet, the bargains they make, and how creatures who can't lie are still so brilliant at deception. I also think that this story follows on really well to the Folk of the Air trilogy. Suren/Wren was a character I was interested in from The Queen of Nothing, and many of the events from that book's climax are mentioned. A lot of the questions I had at the end of the trilogy are answered in this book, such as how will Madoc deal with his punishment, and would Oak come to regret giving up his crown. The timeline and the characters this story focuses on was a very clever decision that adds to the series overall.
The Bad
I felt a little underwhelmed with the plot and character journeys. Although I liked Wren's character, I think it would have been more interesting to have been in Oak's POV. Simply because Wren's character development is very similar to Jude's. Like Jude, Wren is cruelly separated from her mortal life by her Fae family. Like Jude, she's desperate to save mortal and mistrustful of any Fae she encountered. She also falls for a prince but knows that he will betray her, so she defeats him and puts him under her control because she's too afraid to trust her feelings. Of course there are differences too, but I just felt like I'd read this dynamic in Jude's POV. Oak's internal conflict was more interesting to me - he has the power to make people like him, so can he ever trust the feelings people have for him are genuine? His insecurity was fascinating and played out in very extreme ways with him sacrificing himself over and over again to save the lives of the ones he loves. Although the troupes of his character fall quite closely to Cardan, there were enough differences to have made a book in his POV feel fresher to the series overall.
I was also expecting this to read as a standalone to the Folk of the Air series with character we know but a plot that new readers to the world could enjoy. This isn't that as you certainly can't read this without having read the other books.
The Somewhat Iffy
There are a lot of fireside stories told that - while fun - blurred a lot of the time and became confusing with what was fact and what was fiction. Since all of the stories that were told had some importance to the plot (though the stone giants far less so) I understand the inclusion. However it doesn't change that they were all just character background dumps.
Wren and Oak's was sweet, but their history was very random to me. They don't seem to have spent a lot of time together as children and all of the time they did see each other was through random events - mostly of Oak just deciding to show up and chat with her. Yet they form a very strong bond from these tiny moments.
Overall
I enjoyed this story and loved being back in the Fae world Holly Black has created. However, it didn't bring enough newness to the series for it to fully feel like a separate story in its own right, more of a repeat of the same story.
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