You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
amongthewild 's review for:
The Prisoner's Throne
by Holly Black
3? 3.5?
I hate to rate this so low. I LOVE the Cruel Prince trilogy, it is one of my all time favorite trilogies and each book is just incredible - but what I loved about that series, and The Stolen Heir, was the intense, fraught emotions between characters (especially the father-daughter relationship with Jude and Madoc) and the tension between what Jude wished she was and who she really was and The Prisoner's Throne has none of that intrigue. Oak is a boring protagonist and I'm honestly shocked that he was chosen to be the POV character for this book.
The story overall focused too much on the romance instead of the politics (which is what I loved so much about the first series). The Stolen Heir relied less on politics, but Wren was such an interesting and tortured main character that she drove the book and that cliffhanger ending was so delicious I couldn't wait to pick this up. But then everything fell apart. I feel like Black saw how much everyone was loving romantasy, and how so many people were only focusing on the romance aspects of her Cruel Prince series and decided to turn this book into a romantasy. It just feels like a different genre from The Stolen Heir and from the Cruel Prince series. All of the politics and the backstabbing and the tense, angsty familial relationships were missing from this. Black tried to recreate them but it all fell flat with Oak as the driving force. Instead, Oak spends most of his time on page thinking about Wren and how much he loves her, wanting to win her affection and not caring what happens to the world in the meantime. All of the political machinations took a backseat to Oak only caring about Wren and that was just so frustrating.
It also suffered from trying to make Oak interesting by talking about how many people he'd killed and all of the conspiracies he stopped - but Black never actually showed us anything about these schemes or elaborates on what he did to stop them. It's mentioned every once in a while, sprinkled in to make Oak seem interesting and more fleshed out, and it tied in with the climax to this story - but I never actually felt like we learned about what Oak had done, why he did it, or why he considered himself such a bad person. It just fell so flat for me.
As always, the world building in this series is incredible and I did love seeing the returning characters. I won't ever get tired of this world, which is why I gave this book 3 stars. I couldn't rate it lower because of my love for this series, but honestly it might deserve lower.
Also, that cover is awful. Holly Black is a mega frontlist author and this is all they can come up with? Come on.
I hate to rate this so low. I LOVE the Cruel Prince trilogy, it is one of my all time favorite trilogies and each book is just incredible - but what I loved about that series, and The Stolen Heir, was the intense, fraught emotions between characters (especially the father-daughter relationship with Jude and Madoc) and the tension between what Jude wished she was and who she really was and The Prisoner's Throne has none of that intrigue. Oak is a boring protagonist and I'm honestly shocked that he was chosen to be the POV character for this book.
The story overall focused too much on the romance instead of the politics (which is what I loved so much about the first series). The Stolen Heir relied less on politics, but Wren was such an interesting and tortured main character that she drove the book and that cliffhanger ending was so delicious I couldn't wait to pick this up. But then everything fell apart. I feel like Black saw how much everyone was loving romantasy, and how so many people were only focusing on the romance aspects of her Cruel Prince series and decided to turn this book into a romantasy. It just feels like a different genre from The Stolen Heir and from the Cruel Prince series. All of the politics and the backstabbing and the tense, angsty familial relationships were missing from this. Black tried to recreate them but it all fell flat with Oak as the driving force. Instead, Oak spends most of his time on page thinking about Wren and how much he loves her, wanting to win her affection and not caring what happens to the world in the meantime. All of the political machinations took a backseat to Oak only caring about Wren and that was just so frustrating.
It also suffered from trying to make Oak interesting by talking about how many people he'd killed and all of the conspiracies he stopped - but Black never actually showed us anything about these schemes or elaborates on what he did to stop them. It's mentioned every once in a while, sprinkled in to make Oak seem interesting and more fleshed out, and it tied in with the climax to this story - but I never actually felt like we learned about what Oak had done, why he did it, or why he considered himself such a bad person. It just fell so flat for me.
As always, the world building in this series is incredible and I did love seeing the returning characters. I won't ever get tired of this world, which is why I gave this book 3 stars. I couldn't rate it lower because of my love for this series, but honestly it might deserve lower.
Also, that cover is awful. Holly Black is a mega frontlist author and this is all they can come up with? Come on.