The Folk of the Air Trilogy is Disapointing

So, I'm gonna summarize the books and give commentary as I go, then analyze the charcter indivudiley. Lastly, compare the duology to trilogy and give my overall thoughs

The Cruel Prince

This was the only book in this trilogy I actaully enjoyed. But in retrospect, a lot of my problems with this series start here

the starts with the murder of jude's parents and I already have problems. This first chapter is not about jude(the main character). The chapter opens up with madoc's introduction and later follows with him and Jude's mom's relationship. Jude is mostly a side character in this chapter, it introcudeses her mother's betraly to madoc before it introduces Jude properly. This wouldn't be a problem for me if Jude's mother actually matter to the plot of these books but she doesn't. Your first chapter, your first sentense should be the abstract of your story. This is where you set up the CORE elements of your story. I think tfota's first chapter fails at this, it "sets up" a side plot that amuonts to nothings, introduces a barely explored antagionist before it's main character and the tone it sets up doesn't reflect the rest of the series. I'm not saying starting the book with the murder of Jude's parents is the problem, but HOW it exsucutes this done badly

After their parents murder, Jude and her sisters start to live in Elfhame with Madoc becoming a ""Father figure"". The book follows with jude and her new family goes to the royal fae party tm and we meet Cardan, Locke and the other two mean girls. But before I talk about those guys, I want to talk about what I call "one paraghraf flahsbacks".

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This is a examples of "one paraghraf flahsbacks". These appear time to time during the book to tell us about Jude. The problem with these flashbacks is they give us information, just information. They came off more like funfacts than actaull flashbacks that should make the reader realte to her more. It TELLS us about Jude, doesn't SHOW. One of the first things you learn when you start to get into writing is "Show don't tell". The logic behing this rule is: Telling the reader about something is passive meanwhile showing the reader someting is active. When you show instead of telling your reader gets to exprience to story with the characters and makes them more invested. This book doesn't do that, instead of giving proper flashbacks where we folow jude as she goes trough "the horrors" the book just tells us she did and moves on. which doesn't make me realte jude more than I did and weakens some points of the story.

For example

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Madoc and Jude's realtionship is often descriebed as "Father-daughter" and... no... they don't have that... Madoc and Jude barely intract with eachother trough out the book and when they do we don't learn anything new about them. One scene that made think these two actually have a realtionship was the scene after the Jude's sa (will get to that) where he asks Jude what she needs

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Other than that, these come of more as coworkers than "Father-daughter". Along side minimal intraction I think another reason why they come of that way, Jude never shows affection towards madoc. SUre, she says she "loves" him

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But she never shows it, she is netural towards at most. She never even reffers to his as father. So when book pulls "dramatic" scenes where madoc betray her daugther... It doesn't have any emotional affect on me.

Anyways, back to Cardan and Locke

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Carndan's introduced with a "kick the dog" moment. When a villian is introduced sometimes they include a "kick the dog" moment to make them unlikeable and set them up as the villian. This doesn't always has to be a dog being kicked, some times it's a fairy getting their wings ripped off. This scene is followed by

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This is a "save the cat" moment. It's used to introduced the hero and make us root for them. This is how Locke is introduced. Locke is set up to be the kind hero and Cardan is set up to be the cruel villian. These set ups will be twisted later in the book, badly.

After the party Jude Trayn goes to school, yes there is fae school for some reason,and get bullied. This is one of the few times we see fae cruelty first hand and these scenes of jude and trayns torment is way more affective than giving us a laundry list of "bad things happened Jude"(*cough* Chapter 6 *cough*) We later learn that jude wants to go to a tournement to prove herself to fae but madoc doesn't let her go under his ranks(she wants become a knight and cant' become one if she doesn2t wear his ranks). Jude starts to fight back against Cardans mean girl squad and they throw them to a river, they visit Viviene's girl friend in human world(did I mention this was urban fantasy? more on that later). and some other unimportant stuff happens

When the tournement finally comes, The tournemant that Jude repedeatly tell us soooo important for her!, ends in like 3 pages

not joking, really

I mean sure, the book was shit at setting up the importance of this tournement but this was suposed to be important!

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Like thats literaly it!! Telling instead of showing...

Anyways after this tournement Dain takes intressed in jude and make her his spy. I like the whole spy jude plot, it's exciting and fun. I like learning new information and trying to put the piceies together and the plottwist of this book is actually good. Holly Black is good at setting up one thing and revealing a plottwist you don't except while still making sense. I wish thats how she ended the series.

We learn that balekins is planing something, Locke's mother was poisened and how these somehow relaeted to coronation.Then the coronation comes, Balekin kills all of the royal family(he was drunk somewhere else), we find out oak was Dain's son, jude captures Cardan and tricks him into becoming the king.

(Sorry for skimming over the plot, I can't and don't want to talk about every single detial)

Over all, this was the one book in this trilogy I actually enjoyed. I might be ranting my head over this review but I'm not a hard person to please.As long as you the at least one of these three elements, Worldbuilding, characters and story, I'll be staisfied. This for me achived the last one; a good story. Or... well, a "okay" story but a good "okay". The story wasn't mindblowing deep or super interesting but was intresting enough for me to enjoy

I enjoyed the plot twist set up, I enjoyed seeing jude get stronger. And I think this is the ""darkest"" one of the trilogy. The book starts with main characters parents being murder, more parents get murdered, the guy we thought was good tried to kill a pregnant woman, a guy get mutilated and we're told (told... unfertonetly) this is normal. The casual uncaring cruelty is fun, dare I say. Thats what interested me the most, the cruelty, the constant strugle and finally coming a top of it by being smart.

But, this formula gets old pretty quickly and you need to add new versions of it keep it interasting

The Wicked King

This book doesn't add new versions of it keep it interasting

In the first book, jude was getting constantly bulied for her mortalitly and in this books she's getting constantly bulied for her mortalitly in the excatc same way. She the high senectial but as for as the story concerns it just means she now talks to "politicains" sometimes. Her new status never affect how she treated and not in a "eventhought you are in a high possion because your mortal you'll always your benet us" way, it's as if the author didn't thought her being second in command to the super powefull high king would have a affect.

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And this time it's from Locke!You know, the guy who said he didn't like playing mortals that way!(More on that later)