If we were capable of putting mistrust aside,
we might be a formidable pair.
The Stolen Heir
Holly Black
Stolen Heir Duology, book one
Hardcover, 356 pages
Published January 3, 2023
ISBN 9780316592703
A runaway queen. A reluctant prince. And a quest that may destroy them both.
Eight years have passed since the Battle of the Serpent. But in the icy north, Lady Nore of the Court of Teeth has reclaimed the Ice Needle Citadel. There, she is using an ancient relic to create monsters of stick and snow who will do her bidding and exact her revenge.
Suren, child queen of the Court of Teeth, and the one person with power over her mother, fled to the human world. There, she lives feral in the woods. Lonely, and still haunted by the merciless torments she endured in the Court of Teeth, she bides her time by releasing mortals from foolish bargains. She believes herself forgotten until the storm hag, Bogdana chases her through the night streets. Suren is saved by none other than Prince Oak, heir to Elfhame, to whom she was once promised in marriage and who she has resented for years.
Now seventeen, Oak is charming, beautiful, and manipulative. He’s on a mission that will lead him into the north, and he wants Suren’s help. But if she agrees, it will mean guarding her heart against the boy she once knew and a prince she cannot trust, as well as confronting all the horrors she thought she left behind.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black returns to the opulent world of Elfhame in the first book in a thrilling new duology, following Jude's brother Oak, and the changeling queen, Suren.
This was an emotional read for me.
It got to me on a level that Folk of the Air did not touch.
Wren. Oh, my girl, Wren. The way I wanted to shield and console her like the daughter I never had.
We first met Wren, then called Suren, when her parents, Lord Jarel and Lady Nore, offered her in marriage to Oak when they were mere children. Oak freaked out then, but we learn here that Suren desperately wanted Jude to accept the bargan. She needed to be free of the bridle that chained her. Free of the kin that tortured her.
In the end, Jude did not make that deal. But, at Oak's beseeching, Jude did what she could to ensure Wren had a bit more power than she held otherwise. Jude forced Lady Nore to swear fealty to Wren thus giving Wren the power to command her.
But things took a turn and Wren fled. Back to the mortal world. Back to the realm of the family that had adopted and loved her in her early years. The family that had been eventually horrified by her.
And there she has lived for the past eight years. In the forest. Alone. Barely surviving at all.
Oak visited her a few times while escaping the pains of his own existence. He so badly wanted to be her friend.
But the lonely, broken thing that she was, Wren pushed him away. She knew the best place for Oak was with the family that loved him. Such was a place she no longer had and could not find her way back to.
Oak protected her when he could, in the only ways he knew how. As a child, and now as an adult. In the moment the arrows rained down and he hauled her atop his horse. In the moment Queen Annet and her ogres sought to claim her. In the journey that would lead her back to the beginning of her hellish life.
I kept waiting for the shoe to drop, because
Cardan...but it never did.
The author took the very best of Jude and Cardan and embodied it with Oak. His worst faults were his secrets and, for a fae, that's pretty damn good.
Wren though... and that ending.
The girl who spent years breaking curses to free those she could. The girl who risked her own safety to liberate those imprisoned. That girl was so terrified to face a reality in which she might be only a pawn to the boy that would again abandon her like everyone else...
That traumatized and
terrified girl wielded the very bridle that had enslaved her, and took a prisoner of her own.
This duology does not seem to be as loved as the Folk of Air series, and it is such an injustice. Oak and Wren are everything.
5 out of 5 stars.
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