Two thumbs up for The Cruel Prince, The Wicked King, The Queen of Nothing, and How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories by Holly Black. Young adult fantasy.
Whether you like these books are not will be wholly dependent on your feelings about Holly Black’s writing style (vivid and kind of slithery-feeling) and whether you enjoy violent, ambitious female leads who take absolutely no shit, even when rationality suggests they should chill. Personally, I like a heroine who can murder a guy and stuff his body under her bed. (He had it coming.) One entirely reasonable criticism – if you only read the first book – is that Jude’s romantic interest is an atrocious bully. That is true (and Jude knows it, too). However, that character has a believable redemption arc through the series and I was eventually very satisfied with how things developed. If you need Nice People in your books then do not read these, but I don’t, and I read them with absolute glee.
I bury Valerian near the stables, but outside the paddock, so that even the most carnivorous of Madoc’s sharp-toothed horses are unlikely to dig him up and gnaw on his bones.
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