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A review by al3x
The Wicked King by Holly Black
dark
tense
fast-paced
I’m not sure if I want to finish this series.
This second book was a chore and I kept hoping something more significant would happen, but it did not.
The plot has run away from Jude it seems.
I had complained that character motivations in the first book were flimsy, and they do not get any better here.
Cardan likes Jude and I cannot understand why. I kept thinking I was missing something, and I may very well be. In trying to understand why I felt that they don’t work as a couple I concluded that it is because they don’t spend time together.
Yes, there is a romance scene, barely a romance scene at that. It comes out of nowhere and to me it reads more lustful than romantic. Cardan and Jude don’t have a strong connection, they don’t talk, and they barely interact. It is an enemies-to-lover story, yes, but if I were to compare the original trendsetter “Pride and Prejudice” in Darcy and Lizzie, Jude and Cardan pale in comparison.
Where Darcy and Lizzie had ample opportunities to interact and jibe at each other, keeping the banter flowing and romantic tension sprung, Jude and Cardan keep quiet in public scenes, and only have 2 significant moments alone where some kind of romance and care happens. It was quite frankly disappointing.
There is more focus placed on the court scheming and intrigue, and I would have excused the lacklustre romance if that plot was worthwhile.
Jude is just so trusting of people in this treacherous fairyland.
She trusts her twin sister, even after Taryn has impersonated Jude to get access to Jude’s private room.
She trusts Locke won’t seek retaliation after she threatens him at sword point.
She trusts her fellow spy companions, even though she has known them barely a year.
She trusts Cardan will not manipulate her into a bad bargain.
All this backfires badly. Of course, we need conflict in a story but this just seems too obvious, and it strips Jude of any self-reliance or opportunity to show her intelligence. Every decision she makes is not intelligent, she just does not think it through and blindly trusts people, which is not in her character to do.
At the start of the book, it really felt like nothing happened. As if the setup was being set up for hundreds of pages.
When something does happen though we are corralled so fast that we don’t get to process it, and are already in front of a different plot point.
Jude gets injured right before Taryn's wedding, and instead of us having a moment with her sister, or Cardan, or her brother Oak, or hell even a more significant moment with her father Madoc, we are just moved to the kidnapping plot.
It felt like a wasted opportunity. The kidnapping could have still happened, of course, I just felt it happened too fast.
My last grievance goes to the worldbuilding which is itself sparse, but I ignored it for the most part until it came to the merfolk.
We are told over and over again how humans can protect against glamouring with various methods, and salt is one of these methods. So I was very confused about why glamouring would work in the ocean, which has saltwater everywhere around, and why the merfolk would feed the glamoured prisoner saltwater. Yes, salt water is dangerous to ingest but it would have also broken the glamour, so I ask why? It is very evidently a world-building plot hole.
This is ignoring the fact that Jude had broken a glamour by pricking her finger and licking the salt in the blood. So if human have salt with them always in their blood why would glamouring work at all? This little aspect bothered me in the first book but it made it worse with the saltwater.
At this point, with how this second book ended, I feel conflicted about reading further. I’m a sucker for romance and even though I don’t read strictly romance-focused books, this one left me thoroughly unsatisfied (pun intended).
This second book was a chore and I kept hoping something more significant would happen, but it did not.
The plot has run away from Jude it seems.
I had complained that character motivations in the first book were flimsy, and they do not get any better here.
Cardan likes Jude and I cannot understand why. I kept thinking I was missing something, and I may very well be. In trying to understand why I felt that they don’t work as a couple I concluded that it is because they don’t spend time together.
Yes, there is a romance scene, barely a romance scene at that. It comes out of nowhere and to me it reads more lustful than romantic. Cardan and Jude don’t have a strong connection, they don’t talk, and they barely interact. It is an enemies-to-lover story, yes, but if I were to compare the original trendsetter “Pride and Prejudice” in Darcy and Lizzie, Jude and Cardan pale in comparison.
Where Darcy and Lizzie had ample opportunities to interact and jibe at each other, keeping the banter flowing and romantic tension sprung, Jude and Cardan keep quiet in public scenes, and only have 2 significant moments alone where some kind of romance and care happens. It was quite frankly disappointing.
There is more focus placed on the court scheming and intrigue, and I would have excused the lacklustre romance if that plot was worthwhile.
Jude is just so trusting of people in this treacherous fairyland.
She trusts her twin sister, even after Taryn has impersonated Jude to get access to Jude’s private room.
She trusts Locke won’t seek retaliation after she threatens him at sword point.
She trusts her fellow spy companions, even though she has known them barely a year.
She trusts Cardan will not manipulate her into a bad bargain.
All this backfires badly. Of course, we need conflict in a story but this just seems too obvious, and it strips Jude of any self-reliance or opportunity to show her intelligence. Every decision she makes is not intelligent, she just does not think it through and blindly trusts people, which is not in her character to do.
At the start of the book, it really felt like nothing happened. As if the setup was being set up for hundreds of pages.
When something does happen though we are corralled so fast that we don’t get to process it, and are already in front of a different plot point.
Jude gets injured right before Taryn's wedding, and instead of us having a moment with her sister, or Cardan, or her brother Oak, or hell even a more significant moment with her father Madoc, we are just moved to the kidnapping plot.
It felt like a wasted opportunity. The kidnapping could have still happened, of course, I just felt it happened too fast.
My last grievance goes to the worldbuilding which is itself sparse, but I ignored it for the most part until it came to the merfolk.
We are told over and over again how humans can protect against glamouring with various methods, and salt is one of these methods. So I was very confused about why glamouring would work in the ocean, which has saltwater everywhere around, and why the merfolk would feed the glamoured prisoner saltwater. Yes, salt water is dangerous to ingest but it would have also broken the glamour, so I ask why? It is very evidently a world-building plot hole.
This is ignoring the fact that Jude had broken a glamour by pricking her finger and licking the salt in the blood. So if human have salt with them always in their blood why would glamouring work at all? This little aspect bothered me in the first book but it made it worse with the saltwater.
At this point, with how this second book ended, I feel conflicted about reading further. I’m a sucker for romance and even though I don’t read strictly romance-focused books, this one left me thoroughly unsatisfied (pun intended).