Where Every Scroll is a New Adventure
Taryn Duarte - Blog Posts
I feel like a constellation of wounds, held together with string and stubbornness.
The Queen of Nothing, TFOTA, Holly Black
Locke:
[The Mincing Mockingbird Guide to Troubled Birds]
I made this on my wrong blog, I meant to make post this on @tttfota
On Taryn Duarte - from someone who has yet to read the books
I saw some posts about the Cruel Prince and I subsequently fell down the Jude/Taryn rabbit hole. From what I've seen, Taryn gets the most hate from the fandom, even over the actual villains, which is pretty par for the course so I'm not surprised. But most of the excerpts and reasons I've seen come from her being very shallow and vain, and betraying Jude. Okay, that hate makes sense. BUT I am the diehard fan of hated female characters.
Prefacing this with the fact that I have not yet read the series yet, but I've seen multiple posts regarding the characters and have read excerpts and summaries, and the like.
I really hate the woman v woman that we're given so often in media and especially in ya, na, and a books. Those books usually giving the fmc one or two female friends to balance the waters, but they usually don't exist as more than appendages of the fmc.
Not sure if that's the case with the Cruel Prince, but Taryn's character seems to be the one-dimensional female foil, specifically with her overly feminine aesthetic and betrayal for the sake of romance. I think this is why I can't bring myself to actually read the books, because I know I'll hate seeing that.
Because of this I often find myself liking the "villainous" female characters as well when I find them to be anything but that, because I think they're also cool or I think that they suffer from a lack of nuanced writing (see Nesta Archeron). Jude is presented to be the villain, and I do like her and if she was the villain in another story I would also like her, but because she's still the character we're meant to root for she holds a weird place in my head since I'm not sure if Holly Black suffers from the crude idea of characterization and character relationships that is currently very prominent in fiction. I have heard that she gets a new LI apart from Locke, who she killed (yay! I love that), so it does seem to be looking up in terms of escaping the ya writing styles.
Therefore, in my head I will be holding the idea that Taryn is equally as masterminded as Jude and this is all a very elaborate ruse she's carefully cultivated since childhood and that she actually loves Jude very much. I am a sucker for tragic sisters.
I just finished The Queen Of Nothing..
I already miss them so much.
It was a wonderful series that I read faster then I have any story in a long time. I read Cruel Prince immediately and waited for Queen Of Nothing to come out so I could read Wicked King and Queen of Nothing back to back.
Jude was a charcter unlike any other that I have read before. Her and Cardan’s relationship make me laugh, smile, and cry many times.
Reading those books kinda felt like going on a rollercoaster ride. So many ups and downs, schemes, and betrayals. I don’t know if I will enjoy a book as much ever agian.
Props to Holly Black for writing a great series and one that I will reread many times over. I know I will miss these charcters deeply.
Cardan Greenbriar is such a T*ryn hater and he's so real for that
T*ryn Duarte is the worst fictional sister to ever exist like omg how can you be so stupid and unbearable