We go on a quest with Suren and Oak and in the process, we get to explore different areas of Faerie, including the spaces where the mortal world touches Elfhame, other Courts, and the terrifying Ice Citadel. Paste: What can readers expect from this story? It seems as though The Stolen Heir really expands this world beyond just Elfhame, from the Court of Moths to the Court of Teeth and more.īlack: The Stolen Heir is a road trip story. It also gives me a chance to set up some new things that are going to play out in the future of Elfhame… Writing The Stolen Heir gave me an opportunity to expand my faerie universe and to see it (as well as an older Cardan and Jude) from a new angle. Holly Black: I am so glad! When I was writing The Queen of Nothing, I had the idea for what I wanted to do with Suren and Oak.

Paste Magazine: First, let me just say that I loved The Stolen Heir and am so glad to be back in the world of Faerie! What made you want to return to writing in this universe? (Or was that always the plan?) We got the chance to chat with Black herself about her highly anticipated return to the world of her Folk of the Air trilogy, what continually draws her to tell stories about the realm of Faerie, and whether readers can expect to see The Cruel Prince power couple Carden and Jude again. But when she’s rescued from the witch by none other than Elfhame’s heir, Prince Oak, the pair will set off on a journey that will force Wren to face all the horrors-both physical and mental-she thought she’d left behind for good. Lonely and haunted, she spends most of her time releasing humans from ill-considered bargains with faeries and trying to avoid the storm hag Bogdana who serves her mother’s court. The story primarily follows Suren, the young changeling queen from the Court of Teeth whom we met briefly in The Queen of Nothing and whose abusive relationship with her parents has led her to abandon Faerie for the moral world, where she lives feral in the woods. Now, Black takes us back to this magical realm with The Stolen Heir, a sequel that picks up the threads of several of the original trilogy’s minor characters eight years after the original books-and takes them (and us) into some darker, more disturbing places. Her mega-popular Folk of the Air trilogy- The Cruel Prince, The Wicked King and The Queen of Nothing-was a New York Times bestselling series, and captivated millions of readers around the world. And with good reason-few authors writing today manage to make the lush, magical realm of the fairy folk more appealing. If you’ve read any sort of fantasy fiction about the world of Faerie in the past decade, you’ve probably come across the work of Holly Black.

The stolen heir book