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The Folk of the Air by Holly Black

[lamiacalls]

Do you like enemies-to-lovers? Do you like it when those enemies hate each other only slightly more than they hate themselves? Do you like it when they are forced to work together, must trust each other when they’d rather kill each other, and when the stakes for trusting each other are incredibly high? Do you like shifting power dynamics that both characters are extremely aware of?

Do you like the kind of protagonist who stabs herself through her own hand to prove her loyalty to a superior? Do you like your protagonists so driven that they would burn the world to the ground, including themselves, to get control? One that isn’t handed any power, so must carve it out for themselves, by any means necessary?

Then The Folk of the Air by Holly Black might be for you! It follows the struggles of Jude Duarte, a mortal in the faerie realm of Elfheim. There are some YA tropes in the first book, but they are mostly subverted by the end so never fear if at first it seems not for you. I was honestly thinking of not finishing it halfway through the first book, but now it's one of my favourite book series.

And the dynamic between the enemies is so damn juicy and iddy! Plus, the end of the first book is gloriously bloody and grim and will gear you up for the second book, which is basically “Trust Issues: The Novel” — although it’s also full of: politicking involving Jude who has the subtlety of a brick to the face, kidnapping, betrayals, power struggles, fancy parties with exquisitely beautiful people in exquisite outfits, family drama, hot sex scenes and hotter intimate-but-non-sexual scenes.

The fae in this series are cruel, tricksy, and without empathy. Mortals in general are seen as beneath fae, easily dismissed and useful only for entertainment. This leads to some toxic but very enjoyable power dynamics. They see mortals as beneath them. It also sticks with the lore that fae must always speak truth, which nets Jude some power because of her ability to lie.

Where to Find It: Any good bookshop! I also would recommend the audiobook; that's how I consumed it and the narrator is fantastic.

What I’m Requesting:
- Jude/Cardan are our enemies-to-lovers in question, and are replete with opportunities for darkfic and noncon. As well as wanting stuff set during the books, I’ll also be asking for post-series and some canon-divergent AUs (and one heat related AU). Their dynamic is so dysfunctional, they are absolutely obsessed and violently opposed to each other. Cardan is self-indulgent and sometimes cruel, and Jude is, as mentioned, driven beyond reason. They are both self-destructive in very different ways, and, especially in the first book, both keen to keep the power in any interaction. I love all shades of consent or non-consent between them.
- Taryn/Nicasia are my dark horse femslash ship. They don’t get as much interaction as they should, but Nicasia is a cutthroat Princess of the Undersea who thinks herself better and more beautiful than anyone on land. Taryn is Jude’s twin sister, and she’s fairly naive at the beginning of the series but slowly hardens as things start to go very, very wrong for her — but I don’t want to spoil too much! They both also loved the same man at some point. I will be looking for both consensual relationships (including some infidelity from their canon relationships!) and vicious dubcon — possibly noncon too, I haven’t decided.
- Jude & Eva are mother and daughter. Eva dies in the prologue of the first book, and I will be making some requests for time travel tropes that lead to them interacting. There’s a lot that remains mysterious about her mother, and lots of space to explore Eva’s relation to the fae (since she was once married to one) and her escape from Elfheim. Jude, having been brought up by Eva’s ex-husband, has never had any mortal warmth to her family relations, and I’d love to see how it would fuck her up to see what she missed. Or to discover complicated, uncomfortable things about her mother’s actions.