The Queen of Nothing

Holly Black, you are the QUEEN of fantasy! The Queen of Nothing is the last book in The Cruel Prince trilogy, aka The Folk Of The Air series, and I would argue it’s probably the best book out of the trilogy. It’s mysterious and intense, but so interesting that you practically fly through the pages. The way the main love interest, Cardan, was written is amazing! He’s truly a well thought out character, with a complex backstory and good character development. In all honesty, I could rave about Cardan for DAYSSS! And if we’re bringing up good characters, I have to do my girl Jude justice. Jude is the main character of the story and probably my favorite female main character EVER. She’s strong and interesting, such a smart character, and possibly one of the reasons I read this book. The way that the story is written in her perspective has me hooked all the time! The romantic dynamic that Jude and Cardan have is legendary, and so well written! A lot of people don’t like the Cruel Prince series because of the fact that they were TRUE enemies to lovers, with arguing and banter and fighting, but I feel like books lack the true enemies to lovers trope that Holly Black delivers so perfectly. Jude and Cardan’s relationship then leads to passion and yearning and some of the best book quotes EVER! Overall, if you’ve read The Cruel Prince book and are wondering if you should get the second and third book, you DEFINITELY should!! As the book series progresses, the story gets way better and their relationship truly comes to blossom.This book is my Roman Empire, and The Queen Of Nothing is truly so good and worth every bit of hype it gets AND MORE!!!

PART I: REVIEW3.75 Stars"Greetings, Your Majesty, you betraying toad." - JudeI don't know how to even ATTEMPT to write a spoiler-free review for this book but I tried. I don't want to say too much but I also want to tell you every little thing I'm thinking right now after finishing TQoN.Did I like it? Hell yeah, I did. Overall it was great. But 3.75 stars mean that there are still some things I'm not completely satisfied with.Just going to throw a few things out there.➤ Anticlimactic. And therefore a little disappointing.My expectations were probably too high. In comparison to TCP and TWK, you won't feel such a wide range of emotions anymore. Issues from the previous two books aren't real issues anymore. There were things that got solved too easily and quickly in my opinion and others that took too long. Many answers were also RIGHT THERE for us to grab and when they got resolved all I could think was "Wait, that's it? That easy?"➤ Enjoyable.The pacing was a thousand times better than in book two. I was immediately sucked into the story and I liked Jude quite a lot in this last installment. Cardan didn't have as many scenes as I would have liked but oddly enough I didn't mind. THAT MUCH. The few that he had were awesome, and I gobbled up everything I could whenever he made an appearance.Cardan puts up a hand. "No, no, enough. It's all too tedious to explain. I declare this meeting at an end." His fingers make a flicking gesture towards the door. "Leave us. I tire of the lot of you."I have a long way to go before I can manage that level of shameless arrogance.➤ You know how I felt after reading this book? Completely SPENT. So much has happened; you THINK you KNOW in which direction the events are taking you and then you realize you had absolutely no idea. My disappointment with certain things? It was nowhere to be found anymore after finishing. This long, long journey Holly Black took us on just made me feel entirely drained. I can't decide if everything that happened was genius or just plain messy.I know my review sounds very negative but keep in mind that I DID enjoy it. I think I'm even experiencing a book hangover. After finishing, I felt lost somehow. All I've done the first half an hour or so was to mindlessly scroll through social media while contemplating life at the same time haha. It was weird, lol but I was certain, I LIKED THE BOOK.PART II: BOOK TALK, BEST TO BE READ AFTER FINISHING THE BOOK (SPOILER!)***— Locke's death. ANTICLIMACTIC. I remember writing a friend, with whom I did a buddy read, that this could be a trick. That Locke's just playing one of his games again and wants to push Jude's story for his own entertainment. Sounds plausible, right? Well, turns out TARYN got the privilege of killing that annoying pest AND WE READERS WEREN'T EVEN THERE TO WITNESS IT AND BATHE IN ITS GLORY. Totally unsatisfying and LAME. It feels a little like we were robbed.— Taryn, another pesky thing/issue that got resolved too quickly. She stirred up so much trouble in TCP and TWK and now what? Everything's fine again? She did nothing to repentant for the things she did in the past. She's pregnant, gets Locke's estate and lives happily ever after? Possibly even with the Ghost? W T H? She was punished for absolutely NOTHING. How can that be?There are soo many bloodthirsty readers out there who wanted retribution. Some suffering, torture. Death? Guess we don't get anything.To be fair, I'm exaggerating right now. I'm not feeling as strongly about this anymore as I did in the beginning, because over the course of this book all my negative feelings towards Jude's enemies just vanished. Locke's and Taryn's bad deeds just faded into the background. All in all, this specific problem left me with very mixed feelings. Though I definitely didn't like it while reading, it feels like in the end, all these things didn't matter anymore.— Madoc. What the heck was that? I was so not impressed with his capitulation and his punishment.— The solutions were all written right there! 1. The cliffhanger from TWK. I felt a little dumb after getting the explanation because it was so easy 🤦‍♀‍ but then knowing THAT (how easy the answers could be) made the solution to Cardan's problem very obvious. Spill blood=kill Cardan, but that didn't mean that my heart didn't stop there for a few seconds when Jude really did take his head off lol.— Why did it take so long for Jude and Cardan to be reunited? I'm so sad. They spend so much time apart and when they finally DID meet again, it wasn't enough. I wanted moore! If Holly Black gave them a little bit more time together, where the focus was only on them, I would have been satisfied with my next point.— I'm not very happy with the turn of events near the end. It was unexpected, you know? I anticipated war or a fight between Madoc and Cardan/Jude. And what did I get? Cardan became a serpent and the whole plot suddenly centered around saving Cardan, and Jude's love for him.The word "desperate" is not a 100% fit but Jude was all about "I can't live without Cardan" and "the only way to have him by my side is to bind him to me, the rest (i.e. Madoc and his army) doesn't matter".After not getting any couple-time for what feels like ages, this sudden turn was... weird. It felt like Holly Black tried to squeeze everything (i.e. romance+enemy issue) into the last few chapters to then, conveniently, tie everything up in a nice little package.

The Queen of NothingBy Holly Black5 StarsHolly Black has woven another fantastic tale in the Land of Elfhame! If you liked the first two books in this series, then I have no doubt that you will like this one as well.Black adds some new characters to the mix as well as some new magic to the story. She doesn’t give you a chance to get bored with this action packed novel.I can’t wait to read the next Elfhame book!! This series has been so fun and adventurous