The Wicked King
Jude holds the throne through a bargain with a year on it, and spends the book trying to keep a king who resents her from noticing how little power she actually has. The best-plotted book in modern fae fantasy and the source of one of its most famous endings. On the House's scale it rates 1 for spice (a door, closed), 4 for how much of the book is the romance, and 5 for craft. Readers who want scheming and yearning rather than spice.
Last reviewed
How it rates
- Author
- Holly Black
- Series
- The Folk of the Air, book 2 of 3 · series complete
- Spice
- Spice 1 out of 5, A door, closed1/5 · A door, closed
- Romance
- 4/5
- Plot
- 5/5
- Worldbuilding
- 5/5
- Darkness
- 4/5
- Writing craft
- 5/5
- Burn
- Slow burn
- Point of view
- first person
- Ending
- Happy ever after · cliffhanger
- Setting
- Elfhame, from the throne room
- Audience
- Young adult
- Pages
- 332
On the spice rating One extended kiss and a great deal of suppressed everything else. How the scale works.
Content warnings violence, manipulation, drowning, betrayal.
Tropes in this book
What to read after The Wicked King
Chosen by hand rather than computed, and each one rated on the same scales.
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How we checked this
Ratings on this page are editorial judgement applied on a published scale, not aggregated reader scores. Factual details were checked against the sources below and last reviewed on .