Hello everyone! I hope you are all having a lovely and sunny spring day. Over the last week I have jumped onto the hype train and read The Wicked King by Holly Black. Some background: I read The Cruel Prince as soon as it came out in January 2018. After finishing the book I was in a book hangover for a long time as I enjoyed it so much. I was craving the second book. Then, when The Wicked King finally came out in January 2019, I was so excited. However, I did not want to wait a whole year to find out what happens. The good news is that the follow up book, The Queen of Nothing is due out THIS YEAR in November 2019. Therefore I only have to wait 5 months to find out what happens. This ramble explains why I have left it until now to read The Wicked King.
PLOT
From now on there may be some spoilers, so if you have not read The Cruel Prince or The Wicked King, I would come back when you have.
The Wicked King follows on from the events of The Cruel Prince. Cardan is now High King of Faerie and Jude is his . Effectively, Jude is in control of Cardan, who has to do everything she says. Five months have passed. There is a plot from the Undersea and Queen Orlagh to take over the faerie land and get rid of Cardan (via murder) in favour of his older brother Balekin. What follows is the twists and turns as each kingdom try to assert their power.
THOUGHTS
I personally thoroughly enjoyed The Wicked King. The first 50% to me seemed a little bit on the slow side and covered life in the Kingdom under Cardan’s rule. There were a lot of new side characters introduced which was a nice edition. The book for me started to get very interesting and fast paced in the last quarter. At this point I could not put the book down. The ending left me shook, I am now in dire need of The Queen of Nothing.
I adore the world that Holly Black has created in this series. There are so many wonderful descriptions of the land which portrays it in a magical and mystical way. Another thing is that there is major character attitude. No one is as they say they are and you cannot trust anyone.
I would thorougly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys fantasy, mystical characters and morally grey situations.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments of this book if you have read it!
Ladybugbooks 