My Rating ~ Three stars

RELEASE DATE: 19 November 2019

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Format: Paperback

Pages: 308

Blurb

He will be destruction of the crown and the ruination of the throne.

Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold onto. Jude learned this lesson when she released her control over the wicked king, Cardan, in exchange for immeasurable power.

Now as the exiled mortal Queen of Faerie, Jude is powerless and left reeling from Cardan’s betrayal. She bides her time determined to reclaim everything he took from her. Opportunity arrives in the form of her deceptive twin sister, Taryn, whose mortal life is in peril.

Jude must risk venturing back into the treacherous Faerie Court, and confront her lingering feelings for Cardan, if she wishes to save her sister. But Elfhame is not as she left it. War is brewing. As Jude slips deep within enemy lines she becomes ensnared in the conflict’s bloody politics.

And, when a dormant yet powerful curse is unleashed, panic spreads throughout the land, forcing her to choose between her ambition and her humanity…

Review

Thank you so much to Allen & Unwin for providing me with a copy of The Queen of Nothing, in exchange for an honest review.

Queen of Nothing is the third book in the Folk of the Air series, and therefore my review may contain spoilers for the first two books.

It’s always difficult when you find yourself scratching your head over the hype of popular books. I always try to work out why I didn’t ‘get it’ or enjoy it like everyone else. Was the writing just not for me? Did I miss the point? Sometimes I guess we just have to accept that not all books are for all people. 🤷‍♀️ This was one of those series that I felt indifferent to the first book, didn’t particularly enjoy the second book, but hoped maybe my mind would be changed (in line with the hype) in the third book. It wasn’t. I’ve rounded up to 3 stars from 2, because the ending was quite interesting (even though the entire lead up to it was completely bizarre, and made very little sense to me) and clearly there was SOMETHING drawing me into the books since I felt compelled to finish the series. I was never bored reading these books (boredom is the one thing that ensures I don’t continue a series), and to be honest, I may have enjoyed them slightly more if they hadn’t been so hyped from the beginning. Expectations and all that.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I can’t stand any of the characters in these books (with the exception of a couple of the side characters). I found Cardan to be an all round horrible person in books one and two, but he very slightly redeemed himself in this book. Jude however, did not. I really can’t deal with daft people, and Jude is about as daft as you can get. Did it really take her almost the entire book to work out what had happened at the end of book 2, and how she could have solved it? Good grief. She just straight up makes me feel rage whenever I think about her. That was the point I wanted to throw the book across the room (but, look, I really just needed to know how it was going to end, and we don’t throw books, ok? 😂 ) Seriously, we’re told on several occasions that Faeries can’t lie, so WHY does she continue to get betrayed every five seconds? Just start asking the right questions, mate.

The entire relationship between Cardan and Jude also just made zero sense. I mean, the first two books had this whole ‘love-hate’ thing going on, and although I didn’t like it, Cardan’s cruelty and indifference was the main part of his personality, so how did Cardan change into a COMPLETELY different person from the end of book 2 to immediately at the beginning of book 3? It just didn’t flow.

Like I said, the very end (like the last 10 pages) were quite good. They definitely didn’t redeem the rest of the book for me, I still think the plot was rushed and a very strange way to end the series, but I guess it was inevitable I wouldn’t be a huge fan of the last book when I already wasn’t a huge fan of the series to begin with.