A review by marie_thereadingotter
The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black

adventurous emotional tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

   With the stress of this past year, it took me a good while to get into the book, but once I did I could hardly put it down. It doesn't help that I also kept requesting books from NetGalley and putting books on hold from the library.

    This series has been one heck of a ride. I read Cruel Prince what feels like forever ago, and while I had both Wicked King and Queen of Nothing on my shelf for a while now, I only read them this year. I think I like not having that wait between the books and reading them back to back.

    This book felt far more action-packed than the other two books, book one had an espionage vibe, book two was a lot of court intrigue, and this book was super fast-paced and full of battles. I was never sure what was going to happen next.

    I was never sure about the Carden/Jude romance. I didn't see it in book one at all, and I started to see it in book two. But this book is when things started to make sense when more about Carden's past was revealed and exposed why he behaved the way he did. It made me empathize with him a lot. He had it rough, and basically, all of his family members almost literally left him to the wolves.

    I devoured the last 3-4 chapters in just a few hours, and I really want a spin-off of this series. I noticed reading Wicked King that there was an easter egg for The Darkest Part of the Forest, and there were even more easter eggs in this book, so I would love to read more easter eggy stories about this world.