* minor spoiler *
Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy this book that much. Which is a shame because I was intrigued by the plot and think that the idea behind it is really cool.
But maybe my expectations were a bit too high (even though I tried to go into it with an open mind), since sooo many people seem to like this book.
The main reason for the low rating is the characters that I didn’t connect with.
I LOVE grey characters and ones that are hard to read but somehow the story surrounding the ones in The Cruel Prince couldn’t grab my interest.
I liked that I didn’t particularly like Jude and that I kept my wariness around Locke, yet none of the characters really piqued my interest – maybe Cardan a bit but I’d have loved to find out more about him in this first book. Now he’s just the ‘tragically’ misunderstood prince who we know has more depth to him than initially portrayed but that realisation comes a bit too late and with too little further information for my taste.
At the end of the day, I’m a reader who likes to be invested in characters. If that’s not the case I have trouble getting into a story.
The pacing probably hasn’t helped my verdict either, as it felt off. The story somehow read too fast and choppy at the same time. I feel like the plot would have benefited from some more information.
Maybe the fact that the style of writing wasn’t something that caught my eye made me more picky about the rest too.
I will say, however, that the plottwist at the end packed a punch – even though (similar to ‘Siege and Storm’) it would have been even more surprising to me if the book was written in third person singular. But as someone who writes herself, I know how difficult the decision about the POV can be.
Ultimately, I can see why people might like this story, and I’m almost certain that I would have enjoyed it more if I’d read it 10 years earlier.
