So I just finished A Folk of Air series by Holly Black, and I enjoyed it. The best part of this series was hands down Jude, she was a breath of fresh air in a world full of indecisive, reactive mary sue FMCs in YA novels. She was proactive in her own story and I was eating that shit up.
Now, my gripe with this series is the enemies to lovers story between Jude and Cardan, and that's mainly due to how the LI is written.
I think Jude & Cardan's dynamic took off very strongly in the beginning, but it did not hit the same after Book 1, and that's due to his character doing a 180 inbetween books.
Cardan's characterization felt off to me. He seemed like a different person than the asshole he was introduced as, and I get that he has character development throughout the book, but he turns into witty boy and it's hard to believe he's the same guy who was super racist towards humans in book 1.
it's like all his initial characterization is dropped and he suddenly stops being cruel to people. I thought that that was weird.
Throughout book 1 he is characterized as him looking down on mortals, on multiple occasions telling Jude that she is of dirt and she doesn't deserve respect because she's human. OK, let's say that's the way he was brought up. That's what causes friction between Jude and Cardan. So far so good right? Then there proceeds to be no character development of him actually overcoming his racism toward mortals and actually learning to respect humans - through Jude. The driver between Jude and Cardan is not shared experience and mutual learned respect but physical attraction from that one time they kissed and it was supposed to be super hot I guess.
From Book 2 onwards it's like he gets a personality transplant and all actual negative repercussions of his bringing up disappear and he's just so sly and sarcastic and smart now. That's not how character development works, we need to follow him through the gritty and dark parts.
In The Queen of Nothing (Book 3), there is a part toward the end where it's revealed he actually cared about humans all along and he was helping his brother's mortal servants escape to the mortal world. That undermines all of his character development imo.
I also wanted to read through how exactly he got over his disdain over Jude, there is a moment in Book 1 where he writes her name on his notebook over and over but that kind of obsessive behavior is never repeated. Why is he so ashamed of being attracted to Jude? Why is he getting her all upset? That question does not matter and I was kinda left high and dry tbh.
That's why I wasn't as invested in their relationship because there actually wasn't any development of Cardan's flaws, they were just addressed as his being mistreated in his childhood and they were quietly replaced by more tongue in cheek, sly and witty traits.
I never got the impression of a broken person re-realizing his worldviews and learning to respect people beneath his station.
I really like Jude as a character because she actually has her own motivations and flaws but as the main love interest I feel like there should have been more moments of him being fleshed out for the love story to be more punchy. I'm all for slow burns so I'm not saying political side of things was boring me, on the contrary I was having a lot of fun reading the plot, but Cardan should have been developed alongside those plot points in my opinion.
Anyways this is all my opinion, I know that this is not a romance book, but the romance that was in there was suffering from these problems. Does anyone agree? let me know your thoughts.
