Hello! Today’s book review is on the last novel in the Folk of the Air trilogy. This review might contain spoilers for people interested in reading the first two novels in this trilogy. You can see my reviews on other novels in this series here. Enjoy!
The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black
Synopsis:
Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold onto. Jude learned this lesson when she released her control over the wicked king, Cardan, in exchange for immeasurable power.
Now as the exiled mortal Queen of Faerie, Jude is powerless and left reeling from Cardan’s betrayal. She bides her time determined to reclaim everything he took from her. Opportunity arrives in the form of her deceptive twin sister, Taryn, whose mortal life is in peril.
Jude must risk venturing back into the treacherous Faerie Court, and confront her lingering feelings for Cardan, if she wishes to save her sister. But Elfhame is not as she left it. War is brewing. As Jude slips deep within enemy lines she becomes ensnared in the conflict’s bloody politics.
And, when a dormant yet powerful curse is unleashed, panic spreads throughout the land, forcing her to choose between her ambition and her humanity
Review:
The Queen of Nothing was a good conclusion to The Folk of The Air trilogy that I did like a lot better than the novel The Wicked King (the second novel to this series). Once again, there was a whole other set of challenges that Jude had to face and she was thrown into a new environment. This novel really tied up loose ends in the other novels and provided a lot of closure to certain character’s stories. The storyline to this novel (outside of the main plot that connects the trilogy) was really creative. I was really engrossed by how Jude would play out her next move and how she would try to figure out Madoc’s next move. One thing that was a little disappointing was that there were not as many plot twists as there were in the previous books, but the story was still good.
At the beginning of this novel it was fun to see how Jude made her way through living in the mortal world again. It was cool to see how there was more for faeries than just living in faerieland, even if you didn’t get to read about it that much in this novel.
Characters:
I still don’t really like Taryn, but not as much as before. This novel cleared her case a little bit and made her seem less like the helpless kid who blindly follows and is really selfish, and more like someone who just wants to keep the people she loves safe (as well as a little selfish). She didn’t really mess things up or bag stab as much as she did in previous novels, which was good. Another character that now I really like is Grima Mog, who was newly introduced in this novel. She was a nice change to the normal snobby characters you see in Faerie. I basically feel the same about everyone else so I won’t write about them here.
Conclusion:
In the end, this was a good novel that concluded Jude’s story well. It introduced some new sides of characters and introduced some entirely new characters as well. Seeing Jude try and navigate new waters provided an amazing end to this main story. I would recommend this series to anyone who wants an easy fantasy read that involves many plot twists.
Cover Art:
This awesome cover art was created by Sean Freeman.
Let’s Talk:
- Have you read the Folk of the Air series?
- Do you enjoy enemies to lovers in books?
- Any book recommendations?
Paige’s Bookshelf 