Reading Life: The Queen of Nothing

"I honed my instincts in battle...Sometimes those instincts are still there when there is no more war."

~Madoc

You know who I didn't expect to end up loving in this series? Madoc. 

*ducks while you throw rotten tomatoes at me*

He's terrible, truly, but I can't deny that I did care about him, right up until the end - and I suppose Jude did, too, and that was the point, and you're very sneaky, Ms. Black, yes indeed.

The first book in Holly Black's Folk of the Air trilogy opens in dramatic fashion. And in those first few moments, I expected to spend the rest of the trilogy hating and fearing Jude's adoptive father, but that isn't what happened at all. Because despite the very inhuman world of Faerie, and all its unapologetically whimsical inhabitants, there's something incredibly human about the messy dynamics of the family at the heart of the series. I love that Jude can never hate Madoc, because in his own way, he does love her. And because, as she asks herself in this book, she can't decide if he made her what she is, or if she was only herself all along, and he nurtured her natural tendencies, rather than foisting his own ideals onto her. Jude is always one for self-reflection, and I love that about her. 

I don't want to offer any spoilers for The Queen of Nothing, but the quick rundown of the trilogy is: human Jude Duarte and her two sisters are taken to live in the realm of Faerie after their parents are murdered. They go to school with fairy children, and are expected to live out their lives in Faerie, though some precautions against magic must be taken, given that they're mortal. Of the three sisters, our protagonist Jude is the fighter; she longs to become a knight in the Faerie king's court, and she's not afraid to use all manner of violence, wiles, and court machinations to get what she wants. The Folk are pretty awful, and Jude is determined to become, in her own words, even worse. 

This is most definitely not a tale of heroes, and that's one of things I enjoyed most about this trilogy. It's not a tale of the good girl going bad, or the bad boy becoming better. Jude and Cardan are both clever, cutting, ruthless, and wearing layers upon layers of armor. Over the course of the trilogy, they reveal themselves to one another - usually not by choice - and by the end we the readers feel like we know them, and we love them, without either of them having sacrificed the sharp edges that piqued our interest at the first. 

2019 has not been a year for well-thought out, satisfying fictional endings, so I went in with a proper level of nerves. Unnecessary nerves. Deserved consequences are served, loves are confessed, and there's even some leniency shown. Hands-down a perfect conclusion.