Queen of Nothing
By Holly Black
He will be the destruction of the crown and the ruination of the throne
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...
I was so excited to read this I decided to get it immediately from the library instead of waiting until 2020 when it would have qualified as a "Author with Flora or Fauna in the their Name" category. Anyway, before I get to the review, I have to say something. I will sometimes spend a little time thinking about my review before I actually sit down to type it, and I think it took me less then ten minutes to start wondering about fairy dicks. Okay, bear with me: they (the fairies, not the dicks) have tails and wings and are like, random different sizes, but they all have human compatible dicks? Shouldn't this, AT THE MOST, be like a donkey-horse → mule situation? (Also, sidebar, I totally forgot what the name of the hybrid animal was just now, I remembered that JENNY is a female donkey, but not what a mule is, le sigh). I say this not as a critique against Queen of Nothing, which certainly didn't invent human-elf fucking, but you know, I spent a lot more time thinking about the actual compatibility of penises than I thought I would going in.
Anyway, that's it! That's the review!
Haha, just kidding, I will put the dicks to bed and talk about the rest of the book. Like, 98% of it is not about dicks. Maybe 97%, because Taryn gets knocked up, which also involved dicks, but offscreen. Who else (raise your hands) thought that Taryn's pregnancy was going to be relevant at some point? Because I definitely did. I thought that was a big old Chekhov's Baby, ready to go off at any moment. But it went nowhere! Again, not really a critique, just pointin' out.
This did feel like a really short book though - much shorter than books 1 or 2; and some of that may be because the story is even more straightforward now (no huge betrayals or double crosses that I can remember, although I cannot be relied on to be accurate in this regard), and we have just a few action scenes seems like, before we get to the denouement. Honestly, that is my biggest complaint - feels too short, ends too soon, want more drama, more angst, more reunion scenes with Cardan, more everything! This is one where I kinda hope she ends up writing maybe another series set in this world, or some short stories about Jude et al, because I enjoyed my time with her. Except her name, which I don't love and always makes me start singing the Beatles song, and it's distracting and annoying. AND IT'S DOING IT AGAIN. What a sapfest that song is. Anyway. I enjoyed this book, the series, and the resolution. Two thumbs up. And one dick.
