Cardan had grown up in the balance, a wild thing to be cosseted by courtiers and scowled at by the High King. No one much liked him, and he told himself he cared little for anyone else. And if he sometimes thought about how he might do something to win his father's favour, something to make the Court respect him and love him, he kept that to himself. He certainly asked no one to tell him stories, and yet he found it was nice to be told one. He kept that to himself, too.
If there was one thing I craved more than anything else at the end of the Folk of Air trilogy, it was simply that: more.
More ethereal, bloodied adventures.
More loving, spiteful time with Jude and Cardan.
More fairy intrigue.
More barbed words and honeyed deals.
More of Elfhame itself.
But especially, especially, more Cardan.
For most of the three books, the story's told from Jude's perspective: we see how she sees, how she feels, what happens to her; which is all bloody tremendous because she's a kickass heroine and I love her surly face, but all those other moments, those unseen incidences which ultimately bring her to the conclusion of her story are hidden or relayed to her from potentially untrustworthy sources.
Elfhame is after all home to the Fae, and what do Mab's children love more than anything else?
Unbridled chaos.
Tricks, and deals, and diabolical schemes.
It's what they know best, it's their greatest love beyond themselves.
And who's better acquainted with this brand of chaos than Cardan smirking shit-biscuit Greenbriar?
But alas, his perspective of things is something we're not privy to until the final book, and now in this collection of tales.
He cuts his gaze toward his unpredictable, mortal High Queen, whose wild brown hair is blowing around her face, whose amber eyes are alight when she looks at him.
They are two people who ought to have, by all rights, remained enemies forever,
He can't believe his good fortune, can't trace the path that got him here.
And it does in fact read like a book of classic fairy tales, full of riddles and allegories and challenges, but with one central character, the aforementioned motherfucker, instead of many.
Which is such a clever way to show the readers how Cardan came to be the eponymous Cruel Prince and then our beloved Wicked King.
Under Balekin's tutelage, Cardan remade himself. He learned to drink a vast variety and quantity of wines, learned how to take powders that made him laugh and fall down and feel nothing at all. He visited the weavers and tailors with his brother, choosing garments with cuffs of feathers and exquisite embroidery, with collars as sharp as the points of his ears, and fabrics as soft as the tuft of his tail―a tail he tucked away, for it showed too much of what he schooled his face to hide. A poisonous flower displays its bright colors, a cobra flares its hood; predators ought not to shrink from extravagance. And that was what he was being polished into being.
And when he returned to the palace dressed magnificently, behaving with perfect deference toward Eldred, shown off by his brother as though he were a tamed hawk, everyone pretended he was no longer in disgrace.
Instead of an epilogue to feed my fellow hungry shipping beasts who've been patiently salivating for any glimpse of how our thorny couple are doing, Holly Black showed us intrinsic moments in Cardan's history:
🪲 His first lesson in cruelty
🪲 Discovering mortal literature
🪲 Truly noticing Jude for the first time
🪲 First betrayal
🪲 The origins of the cruel mask he wears
🪲 His jealousy of Jude's family
🪲 An act of kindness
But also moments from his present:
🪲 Visiting the mortal realm with Jude
🪲 Righting an injustice
🪲 Spending time with a true family, fae and mortal
All those moments that make up the fabric of Cardan that we wouldn't have seen without Holly Black gifting them to us in this collection.
I've thought near a thousand times about what would be running through Cardan's mind in certain situations in the trilogy:
🦋 Jude's knife at his throat
🦋 The river
🦋 Banishing Jude
🦋 "Have I told you how hideous you look tonight?"
🦋 The Queen of Mirth
🦋 The serpent
Basically every second with Jude, if I'm being entirely honest - I'm nothing if not total trash for my OTP.
We all knew what he meant when he declared his hatred for Jude: I love you, I love you, I love you.
It was clear as day.
She ought to be nothing. She ought to be insignificant. She ought not to matter.
He had to make her not matter.
But every night, Jude haunted him. The coils of her hair. The calluses on her fingers. An absent bite of her lip. It was too much, the way he thought about her. He knew it was too much, but he couldn't stop.
...
But it's one thing to know, to imagine, to speculate and attach our own feelings and desires to those moments (fanfiction and fanart exist for a reason, thank fuck), but another to be outright shown by the author themselves.
I know for many that isn't necessary but I'm a simple goblin creature who needs show and tell to survive my goblin existence.
"You're probably missing your fancy palace right about now," she whispers to him in the dark.
He traces the edge of her lip, runs his finger over the soft human hair of her cheek, pausing on a freckle, and comes to rest on a tiny scar, a line of pale skin drawn there by some blade.
He considers explaining how much he despised the palace as a child, how he dreamed of escaping Elfhame. She knows most of that already. Then he considers reminding her that the fancy palace is now as much hers as his. "Not in the least," he says instead, and feels her smile against his skin.
But once he starts recalling his desire to leave Elfhame, he can't help but also recall how desperately she wanted to stay. And how difficult that had been, how hard she had fought, how hard she was still fighting, even now that she didn't have to.
"Why didn't you hate everyone?" he asks. "Everyone, all the time."
"I hated you," Jude reassures him, bring her mouth to his.
Not all of the moments I craved Cardan-clarity for were shown but some definitely were - the river scene was a particularly nice surprise - and some new revelations to add to list.
🐞 The complexity of his, Locke and Nicasia's relationship
But also Cardan grown up and how he behaves in the mortal realm with Jude, and all those odd little moments of a fae King experiencing human food, visiting a 7-Eleven, indoor plumbing!
Even simply what our normally gilded princeling would wear!
I'm fully convinced it'd be something like this:
I revelled in all these moments, more so than the ones in Elfhame because it's something truly unseen from the previous books.
Plus, I just like seeing him out of his element.
The night before they are set to meet with the solitary fey in the mortal world, Vivi and Heather take them out for bubble tea. There are no actual bubbles. Instead, he is served toothsome balls soaked in a sweet, milky tea. Vivi orders grass jelly, and Heather gets a lavender drink that is the color of the flowers and just as fragrant.
Cardan is fascinated and insists on having a sip of each. Then he eats a bite of the half-dozen types of dumplings they order―mushroom, cabbage and pork, cilantro and beef, hot-oil chicken dumplings that numb his tongue, then creamy custard to cool it, along with sweet red bean that sticks to his teeth.
Heather glares at Cardan as though he bit the head off a sprite in the middle of a banquet.
"You can't eat some of a dumpling and put it back," Oak insists. "That's revolting."
Cardan considers that villainy takes many forms, and he is good at all of them.
Jude stabs the remained of the bean bun with a singly chopstick, popping it into her mouth and chewing with obvious satisfaction. "Good," she gets out when she notices the others looking at her.
Vivi laughs and orders more dumplings.
It's delightful.
This whole collection was delightful, made more so with Rovina Cai's illustrations strewn throughout.
But it has left me itchy for that elusive morewe began with.
And it wasn't the book's fault, I could absolutely see its beauty, almost too clearly, but my heart just couldn't connect to it.
My heart's an idiot sometimes.
But perhaps the idiot organ simply needed to see it in motion.
Actually, not perhaps, it absolutely did, because I essentially osmosed into the show.
Every frame was a painting, every conversation a sonnet, even the bleakest parts felt oddly like a memory.
I've avoided pretty much every viral pandemic-based media for the past couple of years, with a few exceptions, because it's been too bloody close to home, but I'm glad I let this one past my defences because it's... it's simply, really fucking beautiful.
Adapted from a V.E. Schwab short which I actually haven't read yet but... it's V.E. Schwab and sapphic vampires that Schwab herself describes as "Killing Eve meets Buffy".
...
Plus, look at this badass fanart Jenifer Prince was commissioned to make for the release:
If there's a minute to spare, my face will be planted firmly inside a story.
It's more than a want, it's unequivocal need.
Life support.
Addiction.
My one true love.
But ask me the plot to my favourite series, even if I've just read the damn thing, and I will look at you owlishly and question if my brain is a functioning piece of muscle or a lump of spongy cake left behind when humans were being designed.
I just don't have it.
I can tell you how I felt, though.
(Even if that's simply my weakling fist banging down on the kitchen table because the author broke my fucking heart and I'm not o-fucking-kay - still not over it, Mishell Baker, still not bloody over it)
My favourite characters and mostly why.
Whether the story was sensory, atmospheric, balls-to-the-wall mental, melancholic, etc.
The tone of the writing.
If it made me laugh.
But details?
Cue the lump of spongy cake.
I don't know why I'm like this, and honestly, I thought I was pretty much alone in only holding onto the feeling of the literature I love.
But yet again, the internet showed me otherwise.
When it's not being an absolutely dumpster fire, the web really is one my favourite places to be.
Does anyone else feel like they're a lot less mentally sharp since the pandemic started? I don't mean in a Long Covid kind of way. I have more word-finding problems, and sometimes I don't remember what I talked about with someone mere minutes ago.
— Rita Chang-Eppig (she/her) (@rche_types) May 22, 2022
I found this sincerely comforting, because for the a while now, I've been twisting my words together while I talk.
I'll be trying to say one word and somehow mesh it together with the following or previous word.
Like my brain and mouth are constantly stepping on each other's heels/toes/faces.
And honestly? It's been freaking me the fuck out!
I joke all the time about my brain slowly falling away like wet cake, but I never really meant it 'til this shit started happening.
It never occurred to me that it could be trauma.
Over two years of fucking trauma, and stress, and chronic pain.
It was glacially slow, to the point of it being almost too slow, the dialogue was stilted and unbearably monosyllabic, and the characters are pretty unlovable.
But there wassomething.
Maybe it's an effect of the direction, cinematography and score/soundtrack - the combination just does something to me.
And even though the story is eye-wateringly dull, it does pull you in.
I conversely looked forward to watching it each night, even though I knew I'd be bored.
...
I know that doesn't make sense.
And that's because this show doesn't really make sense.
But it does bring up some valid aspects of polyamory, monogamy, adultery, heteronormative and heterosexual relationships.
Grief, depression, solace.
And for me, what really struck me in the chest was the way the show dealt with Endometriosis.
I've never seen a show handle it before, which is insane considering the sheer number of people who suffer with this chronically painful and destructive condition, which has no cure, and is mostly dismissed by medical professionals as "a really bad period."
So, even though the show was clunkily slow, and is a mere shadow of Normal People, I'll hold it in high regard for showing what no one else has the backbone to show:
It still bothers me how straightforward and heteronormative this show's take on relationships and what a happy ending should look like is (marriage and babies), but I enjoy seeing William Jackson Harper out of his Chidi-suit and how fucking bizarre and delightful that is.
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