The Folk of the Air in Order (The Cruel Prince and After)

The core is three novels. Everything else — two novellas and a sequel duology — hangs off them, and none of it should be read first.

The full Elfhame reading order

1. The Cruel Prince (2018) — Jude Duarte, mortal and furious, trying to win a place in a court that despises her. The book that made court intrigue a romance subgenre again.
2. The Lost Sisters (2018) — A short novella from Taryn's point of view, best read between books one and two. Optional, but it recontextualises a betrayal you have just watched from the other side.
3. The Wicked King (2019) — Jude in power and out of her depth. Shortest of the three novels and the one with the best ending.
4. The Queen of Nothing (2019) — The resolution of the Jude and Cardan arc, and the end of the original trilogy.
5. How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories (2020) — An illustrated novella centred on Cardan, published after the trilogy. Read it here, not earlier — much of it only means anything once you know how he ended up.
6. The Stolen Heir (2023) — A sequel duology begins, following Oak and Suren. New protagonists, same world, and it assumes you have finished the trilogy.
7. The Prisoner's Throne (2024) — The second half of that duology, and currently the last word on Elfhame.

Black has also written shorter Elfhame pieces scattered across anthologies and bonus editions. They are genuinely minor; nobody needs them to follow anything.

Do you have to read the novellas?

No, and plenty of people don't. But they are the two pieces of this series that reward being read in exactly the right place. The Lost Sisters is Taryn explaining herself directly to Jude, and it works only if you read it while still angry — that is, between books one and two.

How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories is the opposite: a retrospective, illustrated, and structured as a series of tales about Cardan's childhood. Reading it before the trilogy would defuse the character entirely. Reading it after is one of the more satisfying epilogues in modern fantasy.

Is the Stolen Heir duology worth it?

It is a genuine sequel, not a cash-in, but it is a different book. Oak and Suren are younger, the tone is colder, and the story is a road narrative through the wild parts of Faerie rather than a court thriller. Readers who came for Jude and Cardan's specific dynamic sometimes find it a step sideways.

It also spoils the trilogy comprehensively, so there is no version of the reading order where it comes first.

The other thing to know is that the duology is not a romance in the way the trilogy is. The central relationship develops far more slowly and the book is structurally a quest rather than a court drama. Readers who arrived for Jude and Cardan and stayed for the political knife-work generally get on with it; readers who came only for the couple sometimes stop after The Queen of Nothing and are perfectly happy.

What to read next

For more court politics with a romance spine, ACOTAR is the obvious neighbour and The Plated Prisoner the darker one. For the same enemies-to-lovers charge in a very different setting, try Kingdom of the Wicked.