The Cruel Prince by Holly Black (review)

Ten years ago, a faerie brutally murdered Jude's parents and then whisked Jude and her sisters away to the High Court of Faerie where that same creature became the girls' guardian and raised them among faerie nobility. Now seventeen, Jude still hates the faeries but longs to be one of them; as she's constantly reminded by Prince Cardan and his sycophantic cronies, however, her mortality makes that impossible. When Cardan's brother asks her to be a court spy and offers her a permanent place on the High Court as incentive, Jude happily accepts, both to finally gain some respect in the faerie world and to stick it to Cardan. She's soon caught in a vast conspiracy and a violent battle, though, when it turns out that nearly every noble is aiming for the crown and has little care for the bloodshed that might come with it. While this setting has more glamor than the grittiness of Black's earlier, urban faerie worlds in Ironside (BCCB 9/07) and Tithe (BCCB 1/03), it retains all the sinister dangers, with Jude and her sister navigating the everyday challenges of tricky goblins and hags, while the fey nobles threaten their lives. Jude is an unabashedly ambitious girl who carefully and knowingly cedes her morality for power and is cunning in her ability to read people (and faeries) and influence them in her favor. Still, the major part of her plan is to save her fey younger foster brother, and readers will be intrigued as she moves between monstrous manipulator and vulnerable, loving sister. The palace backstabbing adds another layer of drama, and Black leaves no one innocent, instead offering readers a dark and twisting path to a sequel. KQG