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, where 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, the heir to Elfhame she was once promised to in marriage and whom she has resented for years.
Oak, now seventeen, is charming, beautiful and manipulative. He’s on a mission that will lead him into the citadel, 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 can not trust, as well as confronting all the horrors she thought she’d left behind.
I wasn’t sure if I was going to read The Stolen Heir. I’d read the others in the Folk of the Air series, and can’t say I was particularly interested in the overly politicised plot, or the characters (and why are people so hot for Cardan? Maybe that’s what happens when you don’t read Tithe first). Seeing as I’d read the Folk of the Air trilogy, (and The Stolen Heir was only £8.50 from The Works) I figured why not! Might as well see what happens. And I’m glad I did!
First of all, I’ll say this about Holly Black, she does love writing a girl with a depressing backstory, doesn’t she? Jude’s upbringing was a rainy day compared to Suren’s situation. Kidnapped from her human family home when she was a child to be abused and mistreated by her real parents, then escaping back to the human world to live alone, in hiding, and eating out of bins. But she’s resilient, and despite everything, still manages to show compassion to humans who don’t know a bad deal when they’re making one. It’s very “Cinderella persevering through hardships” and makes a refreshing change from the stereotypical Strong Female Lead, usually depicted as a badass with a sword.
Suren’s (or Wren, as she prefers to be called) relationship with Oak is interwoven into her backstory through a few short flashbacks that let the reader know they already have a foundation of friendship to build on from childhood (and not, let’s say, the slightly more toxic origins of the school bully). Oak is also a more relaxed and amicable character than someone we could name. He’s a courtier, versed in all the courtly arts and a right little charmer. But he’s also skilled in sleight of hand and deception, characteristics that lend themselves to someone hard to trust. Especially when doubt and betrayal come into play.
Plot wise, The stolen Heir reminded me of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part one. Because there’s a lot of walking. A little bit of something happens here, then a little bit of something happens there…then it’s more walking, and even more walking. (Someone said it was like reading a travel blog, which I thought was hilarious and pretty accurate) but the book doesn’t feel as though it’s missing anything. We get different creatures in this new landscape – trolls and hags and creatures made up of sticks and body parts. Then there’s Lady Nore’s gruesome bedroom decor (the stick monsters and the bedroom making me think The Stolen Heir as a more child friendly version of Peadar O’Guilin’s The Call. Now that’s a book with some f*cked up fairies).
And speaking of other books The Stolen Heir brings to mind…I have to be honest and say I did not love the ending. (I know it’s the first in a duology and we need some intregue to carry the plot forward, but why do it like that??) The character shift from Wren felt sudden, a little out of character, and for the worst! Reminding me of Merissa Meyer’s Heartless and Malice, by Heather Walter. The character change also sees Wren adopting a more political stance, which is very Jude like, and not what interests me at all. For a lot of people this is where the book improved, just not for me.
(A quick note on the rules of faerie speech – they can’t lie, right? We all know that – it’s something we learn from the early days of Tithe, and is a recurring point in every Holly Black book set in this universe, usually playing a crucial part as the final dramatics are played out. There are two parts of The Stolen Heir that bothered me in relation to that fact (see under the star rating for the details).
The Stolen Heir was an engrossing read, and I sped through it. There weren’t really any surprises to be had from the plot, but I’m hoping Holly doesn’t turn Wren into another Jude. Looking forward to reading the second one.
So Oak is searching for Mellith’s magical heart (now there’s a book title!) a magical artifact he plans to give to Lady Nore in exchange for his father’s freedom. Oak tells Wren and Tiernan (his personal guard), that it’s impossible to get ahold of, so forms a plan to kill a deer and use the deer heart instead (à la Snow White’s huntsman). Now…they still can’t claim to have Mellith’s heart if they’re asked outright by Lady Nore, so I thought…why don’t they just name the deer Mellith? Then that’s Mellith’s heart! Not the Mellith….but a Mellith. And then they could have more open conversations with each other if you know what I mean.
The other point is an issue I picked up waaaay back in chapter two, when Oak tells Wren, “She has reclaimed the Citadel of the Court of Teeth and, since that court is no more, has made a new one.” So there’s no more Court of Teeth. A few pages later, Wren is thinking of the vow Lady Nore gave her. “I, Lady Nore of the Court of Teeth, vow to follow Suren and obey her commands.” Only there isn’t a Lady Nore of the Court of Teeth anymore. That’s no longer a thing. The vow is null and void, and I spent the whole book expecting that to be the unsurprising shock revelation waiting for me at the end. But that’s not how it played out, and I wonder why not? How did Holly manage to overlook something so obvious like that? It would have given Nore a way to be deceptive if she thought they truly believed Wren could command her, but nope. It just annoyed me so much I had to mention it here lol.
WHEN THE BOOKENDS 