The Cruel Prince

The Cruel Prince is the first novel of Holly Black's Folk of the Air trilogy, published in 2018 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. It is set in the High Court of Faerie, where mortals are tolerated as servants at best and toys at worst, where the fae who hold titles have had centuries to learn how to be cruel with them, and where a mortal's best defence is knowing more about the court than the court realises.

Jude's parents were murdered when she was seven, and she and her two sisters were carried off to live in Faerie. Ten years later she wants to belong there, despite being mortal in a court that would rather she did not exist at all. Prince Cardan, the youngest and least pleasant of the High King's sons, takes every opportunity to make that clear, and his friends treat her as entertainment while the court watches to see whether she will break.

To win a place at court Jude has to defy him, and in doing so she finds out how much of Faerie's scheming she is naturally good at. The court runs on bargains, favours and knives, and Jude turns out to have a talent for all three, which is more dangerous for her than being disliked. Black writes her as a mortal who decides that the way to survive a court of predators is to become one, and the book spends its length showing how far she is prepared to take that.

The trilogy continues in The Wicked King and The Queen of Nothing, and the first book establishes Jude, Cardan, the High Court and the bargain that carries the story forward. It is written for a young adult readership, and it is the first of three novels about the same pair of leads.