The Book Club picked up The Wicked King by Holly Black for their last book to read this school year. The book follows a mortal girl Jude Duart, as she realizes someone close to her is going to betray her and poses a threat to herself and her loved ones.

Something I did not realize before starting to read The Wicked King, however, is that it is the second book in The Folk of the Air series. The first book is the Cruel Prince, the book in between is The Lost Sisters.

It was very confusing at first, since it both felt like I was missing a bit part of the story when, in reality, I missed the whole beginning of it and a bit more. Although the story is something I have a hard time discussing at length since I do not know all of it, there are other things that I can review about the book.

In general with stories, I find that a first person narrator makes it a bit more difficult to imagine the story in my mind. It is not a bad way to write a story, not by a long shot, but I tend to prefer third person as I feel like I get a more in-depth view of the world and all of the characters. It adds a bit more creative freedom on my end rather than having to take everything and view everything from one person. Jude, for example, is very independent and confident but I get the sense that she leans towards being more arrogant than not. It made some parts of the book a little bit frustrating to me, but I did miss a whole book of character development and she is one of the very few mortals in the faerie world so maybe she deserves that trait.

Something else I tend to prefer is when authors get more descriptive with the environment and emotions of the characters. It may be that The Wicked King is a young adult book, but I found that reading through it was slightly boring. The characters were interesting, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like a more in depth look of where they were and the characters themselves would be very interesting. I’m just a sucker for a good long wall of text for the sake of character-building and in-depth looks at their psyche and the world around them.

However, the concept of the world they are in and having the basic understanding of what I could gather from jumping right into the middle of a story, I do quite enjoy. I like fantasy and in general fiction where it diverges from our ‘normal’. I find it more interesting and captivating. I like the small moments of magic in the book and although there are not a lot of descriptions of the world itself, I like the few moments where it describes the castle, dungeon, and other moments. It is confusing, but I know that if I were to read the story from the first book and not the second, I would understand it more and have a deeper appreciation for it.

Although reading the second book in the series and trying to understand what is happening was confusing, it is definitely a story that I would read in proper chronological order. Despite the writing style, I can see myself giving this series a try for myself. I also feel like I owe it to try from the beginning before dropping it because I wasn’t able to read the first book.