How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories

 How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories

By Holly Black

An illustrated short book with snippets from Cardan's life, before, during, and after the Folk of the Air series. 

I've reviewed the Folk of the Air series on here already, and stated my enjoyment of it publicly, so you know I was bound to get to this at some point. It's a lovely edition, full-colour illustrations and short, story-like chapters, I think I finished the whole thing in about an hour (although I fell asleep halfway through, because I am an old person). 

I would say that this was an enjoyable, but not essential, addition to the main series.  It didn't really focus much on any of the events during the original storyline, but it did add background to the relationship between Cardan and Nicasia, and also made me realise that Cardan needs therapy, badly.  And it does have a little plot, of a sort. 

It's interesting, because this is kind of a modern take on fairy tales and things like that, but it really brings home how poorly people are treated in those stories, and honestly, most fairy tales kind of end with "happily ever after" without considering whether or not Hansel and Gretel will have nightmares and lifelong trauma from that time their father abandoned them and they were imprisoned and almost murdered in the woods.  

In How the King, etc. etc, we're presented not only with Cardan's early childhood and youthful development but also with his and Jude's seemingly perfect marriage, and honestly, it's hard to square the two.  I mean, this is someone who sleeps in a barn when he's like, six, and pretends it's because he's so well "hidden" that no one can find him (instead of that no one is looking for him) and is beaten regularly by one of his brother's, mmm, puppets after he's ejected from his other brother's residence after being falsely accused of murder, and after all that, we're expected to believe that he's holding it together this well in his marriage?  Even regular marriage isn't that smooth, and this one started with attempted murder and slavery.  I dunno, I would think that might require some serious relationship sit-downs before things are copacetic, but I guess all that happens off screen. 

I'm not sure what it is about these books that makes me bring up these prosaic issues -  maybe it's the way Black mixes the magical and mundane.  It doesn't lessen my enjoyment but it does make me curious about how this world really works - let's have some couples therapy! And artificial insemination! And tax laws!  

Also, and this is directed mostly at the publisher, but WHY do publishers get through a great series (or even partway through a series) and then decide that the next books are going to be styled completely differently - in this case, it's a size larger than the rest of the books.  I'm not going to claim this is a non-petty concern, but it drives me crazy when you get all these books lined up so nice on a shelf and then BAM! You switch spines all of a sudden.  That's why I was so pleased with my Murderbot boxed set that I ordered - it matched the novel exactly.  This is why I do this, folks.