The Cruel Prince | DISCUSSION

hey guys it's Sam and this is my spoiler a discussion of the cruel Prince by Holly black as I said this video will have spoilers in it so if you have not read this book go ahead and check out my spoiler free review which will end on the screen now this is neither a gush nor a gripe because I didn't feel like either one really represented my feelings on this I don't have overwhelmingly positive or overwhelmingly negative things to say about this book I'm very happy to discuss this book because I know it's like all the rage right now people really want to talk about it but I couldn't categorize it as one thing or the other because I gave it a fairly even middle-of-the-road rating so like I mentioned in my review I liked this world that we were presented with this world of fairy and I felt like it was this kind of dark whimsy but not as dark as some other things that I've read as many of you know I've gotten more into more Eastern European fairy tale folklore things that I feel like that has a darker take on like fairy tales and magic and stuff than this does this feels more classic dark if that makes any sense I describe it as feeling like an animated movie and in my review because that's kind of how I feel like all of those little like beings and hobgoblins and all those things like all together feels just like more eccentric eclectic like like a magical circus almost like it has a different feeling a lot of these other more like darker fairy tale feels and I mentioned this in my review as well but I am seeing so many people being like oh this is so different because if they are mean and I'm like the fair always like this like the Veii are known for being mischievous and to like pull tricks and pranks and be like mean and twist your words against you and twist like your promises against you and your wishes and stuff like this is a fade rope so this them being cruel is nothing new actually they being nice is a fairly new revelation and a new idea like especially even all the books that are really popular right now about some of these face stores are coming out like a guitar and chairman of Ravens and all those those fey maybe not the ones that you're like right in connection with that the main characters in connection was that all the surrounding Fae are depicted as bad I mean like this is not this is not new so this whole like oh it's so revolutionizing no this is just if they are so one thing I really liked about this book is the discussion of like parental relationships so when you have mattock at the very beginning killing Jews family you know and then he becomes his father figure I really liked this like dynamic and how she keeps saying that like he raised her and he taught her to be kind of like a strategist which I didn't really get in the beginning like I didn't feel that in the beginning it gets brought up a lot in the like end especially but in the beginning it's like you didn't really I didn't really get that and that was what I talked about in my review as far as like pacing and consistencies and stuff I felt like this book was fairly inconsistent with some of its stuff but I still liked this like theme of these parental figures that aren't really her parents and she loves mattock but she doesn't want to because he killed her family but that's kind of just what he does and so she loves him and she loves ferry but she shouldn't because she's human and vivvy doesn't love ferry but she should because she's Fae and all of that and even the things that we get revealed about like Orianna and how there's like more to her than you originally think and then how she kind of more raised teryn which again isn't mentioned until later and I mentioned in one sentence and I'm like what's like so Taran's more of her student but like okay but even more things about her personality could reveal and you know that she's been like a part of the core before so like her behavior that makes more sense so that was cool but I just liked this like family dynamic thing and being really torn because you loved something but you shouldn't because you don't really belong here but you feel like you do and all of that like that throughout the story was really strong in my opinion so like I touched on already like the inconsistencies were weird for me and just like always kind of threw me a little bit off-kilter so I mentioned my review that I feel like the pacing of this book is off and that the book feels fast they differ at the very beginning that doesn't the very animals we're gonna be like that's how books are supposed to be I know I read a lot so what I'm saying and it's that in a bad way so it felt like these characters changed too quickly or things were revealed without foreshadowing a lot for characters and for plot which I just know like you can do this better by force reading a little bit I'm gonna really like it but with this I just didn't have that so in particular I felt like Terran and Jews relationship was so different for the beginning versus the end and that just felt like wrong to me that felt off like Terrans personality felt off because at the beginning they feel like so bonded and not much time has passed or anything it's not like they've something's happened to like unlink them you know and then at the end it's like terror is betraying her she's with Locke and she's been with him the whole time and she's betraying her sister for this guy and it's just like that doesn't feel like the character who've been introduced to and since it hasn't really been foreshadow to like really it doesn't feel right like there's this disconnect there in my head speaking of Locke I knew something was kind of off with him from the beginning so reveals about him didn't feel like very interesting at first when I first thought was that he was actually gonna be the Prince and that Cardon was a like look-alike stand-in kind of like he was raised as the prince to throw people off the scent and that Locke was the real Prince and so like all of that was what I thought was gonna happen and then it's just kind of like oh it's just he's mean via like manipulation and I'm like drama he likes he just like the drama yeah and that was something that I wasn't really expecting out of the book like I said my review I get that it's a cruel prince but I was expecting a much more like detached cold cruel and not so much was like a targeted aggressive behavior from like them the clan of bullies like that was just I don't like reading bully stories so when they're like forcing her to eat fairy fruit and then like run around naked and like just making her almost drown and all of this stuff is just like it's so over the top and I just don't like reading like about Mean Girls and like mean boys I just don't like that and on top of that at the very like towards the beginning when you see that Cardon is being beat by his brother and like that's this will reveal I really didn't like that I feel like it's a bad point in the story you can kind of start to like explain away his behavior and I'm like although I get that that's a reason that he's the way that he is in some ways because they're all cruel and everyone's cruel to another and were so cruel it just was like oh I don't want anyone to like excuse this Bay because like Oh his brother beats him you know like and he doesn't he doesn't fight back and all this stuff like so I think that was just like a poor placement of that event and then in that same like scenario when she's sneaking around I feel like in that middle chunk when she's supposed to really be having her like spy training and being a spy and stuff we didn't get like a training montage and I feel like we needed one for this book because you have a lot of times that the beginning with the bullying and all the emphasis on that and then you have all this stuff at the end and the middle is just like the absence of the bullying and just like nothing quite happening but being like oh she's turning into this super cool spy and it's like I would have liked to see the mission she was going on and some camaraderie building with like the group because at the end you have some of that like banter like she has a little bit of like training with ghosts but you don't really get to see a ton of it I feel like we needed that to really like see how badass she's getting and see her change instead of a feeling like this like really quick turnaround progression for her that's why the personality felt like a little off and also the whole thing when she steals the human servant nowhere and it was so dumb because it's like okay she supposed to be this big strategist and whatever and then she takes a servant when she knows that she's doing it that like this is gonna give me cause this is gonna be internal blah blah so it's like this whole thing where you're like oh Maddox taught me to be such a good strategist is like well obviously not there was no foreshadowing about her like even caring about together mortals like she doesn't really mention it before this happens like we had this whole stuff with like vivvy caring about mortals and hating fairy and all this stuff you don't have Jude having that she doesn't hate fairy she kind of looks the moral she's like oh that sucks but like she doesn't really like she's not really thinking about it's not tearing her up so when she just suddenly is like take this girl it's like what this doesn't really go through personality why why would you do that you're you know turning us all into weapon you're being the spy you know that like you know these people are cruel and the royalty is bad and all the stuff but you're like still do it it doesn't make any sense it's just just a waste so this consistent lack of foreshadowing with a lot of these character personality reveals was just a little much and made it feel a little messy between that and the like numerous threads and stuff that I feel like we're thrown in there which I think are probably like thrown in for the future of the story and for the foundation building so like valerian cursing her and stuff like that like that's all gonna be a thing but it's just like there was so much time spent on some of these things when I was like I want more time spent on the stuff at the end like that is what I want more ties then I want more time spent any like spy stuff like and we spend all this time in these other places I just didn't feel like we needed to all this time so it would lock when you're like you know that she's not gonna end up with him that there's something like wrong with him and also like these this weird like why is he bringing her around all his friends that are horrible to her and no one's he's not changing their behavior like why does any of this relationship make sense so you're just sitting there like what are we gonna get to the point where he's like what traitor or something because we know that's gonna happen so that just felt like a little BS and so we're spending all this time on stuff that I just felt like wasn't really as necessary as some other parts that were spent like with very little time so a lot of people said that they felt like the book got better about halfway through an early started liking it I think it was like more like 60 to 70% of the way through that's when I started really liking we're like 70 70 75 and that's when it started like to really pick up for me but even so we get to the like the big Carden reveal because again you have him a lot in the beginning and then you have this whole wall and then you have him a lot at the end and it's like for a book titled the cool prints like my expectations even though I didn't know enough about the synopsis or anything before I went into this I didn't watch any reviews I didn't do anything maximal tation of this was more those gonna be focused around him and most of it it's not really this was like what I was even expecting more like hate to love banter all this stuff and you just really didn't get that and I know that was my own expectations but it's like from the way I'm almost talking about it was like oh it's so good there's my book hangovers and blah blah I was like there's gonna be more stuff with him and there really like wasn't so that was an interesting side note but anyway when you get the reveal that he's been mean to her all this time because he's one jealous of her which is just like kind of weird not of nowhere and because he likes her no no no I feel like that's I know like and that just feels very juvenile to me like he was picking out her because he liked her no no no and that's why I think that the whole targeted bullying thing was done wrong I think that it would have been baffled even that explanation would have been far better if it would have been he was Cole indifferent ignore her because he was above her suck his nose up at her and was like you're below me you know but wasn't aggressively targeting her like his friends are trying to kill her all this stuff that makes it much more of a problem for me because it's like you are being you're seeking her out and being aggressive and mean to her because you like her and because you hate that you like her no I think this whole like indifference I don't want to be around you that would be better and it's like well I stuck I turned away from you because I couldn't handle my emotions towards you and I didn't like that I was drawn to you so I kept you far away from me that feels better to me that feels more believable to me that feels like it's not making excuses for like cruelty of like an aggressive sort and it just feels more mature and complex and fleshed out because some people gonna be like don't you love you to live romances yes but I love hate to love vermin system are more like you start out not even really knowing each other and just being kind of indifferent then you're forced together and you butt heads and you have like banter and that kind of like hate and then you start seeing more in one another I like those types and this doesn't really do that it's like I bullied you and my friends all bullied you and then now that I'm separate from them we're sort of a team again this will kind of evolved whatever it's just it's not a path for hate to love that I really like it's a path I think has more problems with it so I think the other way of like indifference looking down on her and like not much interaction and action to the cruelty would have been far better for this like I was mean to you because I had a crush on you then be like outright bullying so I started to like like the banter and stuff and this like teamwork I just didn't feel like the payoff was this good so like the kiss didn't feel like a payoff for me because again we have this whole lull where he's really not in it that much and they don't really have a ton of that so I am excited though for the future of the series I think this series is going to get better I don't feel like this is a groundbreaking first book I feel like this is a foundational book I don't feel like it's doing anything different with a PHA or even with this like hate to love relationship I mean this is just like a bully thing this is this is not new that it mean girls me being told that guys are like them because they're mean to them forever not new so I don't think this is groundbreaking I was not in a book hangover because of this I believe the plenty of people were I just wasn't and I expected more out of it based and everyone's like overwhelming hype of it I don't necessarily get the hype completely got to me but I just was I had different expectations because of it and I think there's things that could have been changed drowned that have made me like absolutely love it but I am looking forward to the rest of the series I like now that because I thought like there's no way the Oaks gonna get away and that whole thing's gonna happen he has to so that I'm being like stuck as teammates with him on the throne and her being like dubbed the Queen by the likes five people and all that like that's gonna make for really good series material really good good and just juicy good political intrigue stuff I think that's gonna be really good as far as this first book I gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars didn't blow me away the ending was better than the rest of it but it had some flaws for me but I think the rest of the series is just gonna go up from here for me so comment below let me know what you thought of the cruel prince thank you all for watching and I'll see y'all soon [Music] [Music]

Channel: Thoughts on Tomes

Views: 34,452

Rating: 4.8663239 out of 5

Keywords: booktube, readables, bookables, book, review, goodreads, book haul, thoughts on tomes, thoughtsontomes, the cruel prince, holly black, discussion, gush, gripe

Id: LRsZqypUFkc

Length: 14min 42sec (882 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 19 2018