A Court of Thorns and Roses

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

Sigh. This was something. This is a Beauty and the Beast retelling but with Faeries. I actually was enjoying this book for the first part of it, before it just got on my nerves. The best part of this book is definitely the first three chapters. That’s when Feyre is being a hunter and just being strong for a family that doesn’t give her the respect she deserves. But when she actually gets to the Faerie palace, it all goes downhill from there. First of all, when she gets to the palace a switch is flipped where she suddenly goes from a strong, smart character, to an absolute idiot. I'm not quite sure why this happened, but so many times people are warning her with red flags waving, yelling "DON'T GO OUT OF THE PALACE IT'S DANGEROUS" and "DON'T DRINK THAT WINE IT'S DANGEROUS." But what does Feyre do? Because she's BORED, she ventures out of the palace into danger territory and, feeling adventurous I guess, drinks the dangerous wine. GIRL YOU'RE AT A PALACE. PICK UP SOME HOBBIES.

Another big stupid thing of this book is all the info dumps. The FIRST lesson that people are taught when creating stories is to SHOW not TELL. This is a book of just endless telling. Any question asked will be explained in DETAIL. The absolute worst part of this book was from page 277-288 where I got a 12 PAGE INFO DUMP ON THE VILLAIN'S BACKSTORY. I hadn't even met the villain yet so why would I even care about their childhood? While Feyre and the house maid are cleaning up the palace, the house maid is just spewing out all of this information in LOOOONG paragraphs. For twelve pages straight, Feyre is just listening to the house maid go on and on and on about everything. That's so unsatisfying and frankly, very boring. I spent fifteen minutes kinda reading (though I remember none of it) those paragraphs and had to stop so many times because I was sooo bored.

The last 25% is so strange. It actually has something going on, though, which is improvement. There is action and and a show of the character's smarts instead of stupidity and actual stakes for the story... for some of it... so that's good. The villain in this last 25% is absolutely ridiculous. Their motivations were so strange and I kept wondering why they didn't just kill the main character when they had MULTIPLE opportunities to do so. 

Also, the curse is revealed and it is the flimsiest, stupidest curse I've ever read in my life. So let's break it down (spoilers for the curse lol): Tamlin (the "beast" dude) must get a human girl to fall in love with him. A human girl who has killed one of his faerie friends out of hate instead of in self defense. Then, in order to break the curse, she must explicitly say "I love you" and mean it. This must all be done in like... idk a few months? Tamlin was given like 50 years or something but I guess he was procrastinating. Now. There are so many things that are subjective. I'd say that Feyre killed the faerie who was disguised as a wolf because her family was starving. What if she said "I love you" but the curse was like "eh... bUt dId YoU mEaN iT?"

I found the very end, about the last five percent, to be even more incredibly stupid. Feyre does an wonderful thing that lowered her likability points CONSIDERABLY. (spoilers: she kills two Faerie for the sake of her one true love who she's about to ditch in the next book anyway. good for her) There's also a weird magical element that is introduced at the VERY end that's incredibly dumb and makes this whole magic system seem super flimsy. (spoilers: to my incredible dismay, Feyre is revived after literally dying and rises as a freaking Faerie. Is this just something that the Faeries know how to do? Do they just assimilate people all the time?)

A Court of Mist and Fury 

This book is an improvement (in some ways). The characters are better– some of them –and the pacing is a lot smoother. There were also a lot of changes. So much so that it just made the previous book seem... a lot worse. There is a switch – in love interests – which was very jarring. This pretty much made the entirety of the first book... completely pointless. I'm not even sure if this was planned because love interest #2 was only in the first book for about 30% of it... Also their personalities completely flip which makes me think that the author just liked love interest #2's name better or something. It's also funny to think about when the first book was about Feyre doing everything for her ONE TRUE LOVE and sacrificing everything for the ONE TRUE LOVE... and then in this book she pretty much goes SCREW THAT GUY.

One glaring thing that stood out to me was the over-dramatization... of pretty much everything. Also – for some reason – every single person in this book – human or fae – is referred to as "male" or "female." Someone will be having a conversation where they just say, "The males are over there..." which is a little weird. Also if you're in a relationship with someone in these books, they call you "mates." They say "mate" so many times throughout this book– and I cringe every time. It's like I'm watching an animal documentary. It's also extremely uncomfortably super heteronormative and just... yeck.

The video game-esque plot was a lot more enjoyable than the last book's do-nothing plot. A quick summary of the plot goes like this... Feyre ends up in Rhysand's (love interest #2) palace. They suspect that some King has an item – so they go under a rock to find a creature to tell them where the item is. Then in order to defeat the King's item, they have to get another item. And in order to go get that Feyre must train to get the item by getting another item. Then after getting the item for training they have to get the actual item. Then they have to go to another place to get half the item. Then they have to ask some other people for the other half of the item – But they find out they need another item in order to get that half of item so they have to go retrieve that item as well to get the other half of the item that will defeat the item that the King has. Overall it feels like a Zelda game. But it was engaging enough to keep me reading so props to that.

But just in case you missed the info dumps... don't worry because they're still there! Even when I had to learn about characters who I didn't hate's backstory, they dragged on and on to the point where I just got bored– Rhysand has his backstory told MANY times throughout this book with every single bit of detail not left out...(and he's like 500 something years old so there's a lot to cover) It lasted for so long and my eyes just glazed over... therefore I might have missed some of childhood of Rhys's story but eh– whatever. But he's not the only one who gets loooong backstories– There are four new characters and you get to learn about each other them because WHY NOT. You also get to learn about the oncoming war that I kept on forgetting was going to happen because it was presented as the least interesting thing going on for some reason–

Also – if you're wondering why I've used – so many dash marks... and dot dot dots... you can thank the book for annoying me enough to want to share with you – the sheer amount of dash marks – and dot dot dots – that are on every page – in every sentence. For some reason – this just makes me think that the scene just keeps stopping when you can finish the sentence without that dash mark–

A Court of Wings and Ruin 

This seems to be an ongoing trend with some of SJM's books. They start with me liking them. Sometimes even really liking them. Then they just go down down down. This book is a real roller coaster of a read. Just when the plot is getting interesting and the characters are at their peak of character development, the whole book goes down so fast.

I wish some of the characters had, you know, a personality. To be honest, none of them have very memorable traits. All I know is that Feyre is the golden girl and all the dudes have really nice abs.

Rhysand went from a villain in the first book, to the love interest in the second book, and now he's Jesus. He's worshipped by everyone. Every High Lord has four powers each in this series: shape shifting, shields, teleportation basically, and whatever power corresponds with their region (i.e. Winter High Lord has ice powers). Rhysand has about seventeen on his own: mind reading, mind manipulation, mind communication, mind shatter, shields, shape shifting, darkness (he spews darkness out of his hands), invisibility, teleportation, grow wings, bring down a mountain, turn enemies into mist, grab items out of thin air from pocket dimensions, turn on/off objects without touching them, telekinesis, silence people, body control (freeze people in place). What did he do to get those??

There are so many stupid fake-out deaths. Nobody ever seems to be in that much danger because they'll walk off the battlefield hurt, with their wings shredded and their guts on the floor. But then a few hours later they're up and about and flying across the world again. (Spoiler Alert) So Rhysand dies and I am like "YES!" because I don't like him that much anyways. But also I just wanted someone to die. But then three paragraphs later HE'S BACK (because he's Jesus, remember?). And I am like "DAMMIT!" Also some other character named Amren also died, but she died off-page so I didn't even know she was dead. AND THEN SHE COMES BACK TOO. And I was like, "WHY CAN'T YOU GUYS JUST STAY DEAD?!" I mean the plot armor in these books is really amazing. It's basically to the point where nobody will ever even so much as have a broken bone from falling from the sky. They'll probably just walk it off, in fact, and keep going. 

So let's start with the plot... except it doesn't exist. I kind of kept forgetting that there was a plot and I don't think this counts as one. To be honest, I can't even remember how they defeated the villain and that was the most recent part of the book since it was technically at the end. But basically, from the notes I took because this was all slipping my mind faster than a buttered fork, the squad needs to find the Deathly Hallows Dread Trove. There's the Resurrection Stone Mask that can raise the dead, a harp that can... teleport? (I don't remember but it's probably invisibility or something), and finally, the Elder Wand Crown, the most powerful wand item in existence that rivals everyone's powers. The gang needs to get all three. But not badly because they do a lot of lounging around instead. 

The story is very Nesta-character driven. Nesta is Feyre's sister and to be honest, I never really liked her. Actually, I never really liked anyone in this series but that's beside the point. I appreciated that the story was told from third person perspective with Nesta and Cassian (Rhys's best friend brother person) which meant that I wasn't stuck in Feyre's head the entire time, a small relief. However, Cassian's point of view had pretty much nothing in it. He basically somehow had zero character development whenever his point of view of being presented. And another important thing to mention, this book would never have happened if there was a therapist in town. You're telling me that out of all the soldiers and people of war that are living in the great city of Velaris, Rhys didn't hire ONE therapist??! That could have saved this whole book from existing!!

I'm not sure if these books have a magic system because it seems pretty nonexistent. But even if it did, the main characters keep breaking all the laws of the magic that it doesn't even matter. So many excuses come up with new powers that kind of just grow for convenience as the story goes on. I like magic systems and I'd appreciate one please and I haven't exactly seen one in any of these books. Powers are just flying out of the characters left and right when the plot needs them to with the only explanation being "Welp, guess they touched the magic cauldron." Like, if you get this many powers from the cauldron (yes, it's an actual cauldron), why isn't everyone touching the magic cauldron? I feel like this would really help out their war situations.

Yeah, so, I didn't like Rhys or Feyre in the previous books, but I was starting to warm up to them because they weren't constantly on page, therefore I wasn't being smacked in the face with their wonderful decision making. But then. They reveal. That Rhys and Feyre. Made the dumbest decision in the universe. (Spoilers btw but at this point do you even care?) So in either the Holiday Special or the third book (I can't really remember), Rhys and Feyre make an unbreakable vow. Their deal was that they wouldn't leave the world without the other. Now, in my mind, I thought that just meant that they couldn't leave the city or something. But no. The deal was turned out to be that if one of them died the other one died too... WHAT?! This deal was made UNPROMPTED. There was literally NO POINT to it. Now, because of their AMAZING decision making for a deal that didn't need to exist, Rhys is stuck in the house and now I'll never see the most powerful Faerie in the universe do anything cool, and Feyre is also stuck doing nothing because they won't let the other one die so they'll never risk anything. WHAT WAS THE PLAN THERE?? So now I'm back to not liking them anymore. Also, this is very important because Feyre might die giving birth and because of their MASTER decision making, now the KING OF THE ENTIRE NIGHT COURT MIGHT DIE TOO. Also on that side note: there is a miscarriage scene that I saw some reviews say was very triggering. So WARNING there. This is also stupid because if their love is eternal, WHY do they need a blood bond????????? Do they not trust their eternal love or something? HM??! And Rhys never tells Feyre that she might die in childbirth!!! HELLLLOOOOOO?!!!!!! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU HONEY?!

Anyways, the action was fine. At some point (big spoilers) Nesta participates in The Hunger Games The Blood Rite and it has pretty decent action. I wish there was more of it, honestly, like there was in Throne of Glass. Nesta kind of just hears people die but there's barely any visible killing. If you're going to stick someone in The Hunger Games, I'd really like to see some violence please. Since I'd been hearing about this event for the past 3 books, I wanted to see HIGHLY TRAINED Illyrian warriors who have apparently been training since birth go absolute berserk on the killing field. But NOPE. Nesta had about three months of training and voila she kills at least half a dozen of them all at once (???). Some lame mighty Illyrians. The villain (I already forgot her name) is pretty nonexistent and I'm pretty sure the villain has a total of one page amount of screentime before she dies. Don't know if I was supposed to know who that was. For all I know, Nesta killed some random lady walking along the street.

As much as I thought Throne of Glass was very "meh," that series at least had direction (for about 3 books). It was going somewhere. I also don't hate ALL of those books. It was making progress towards a larger goal. A Court of Thorns and Roses seems to have no direction. This series is going no where. I think that the first and second book might have had better direction but after the second book, it kind of felt like we were at a stalemate and SJM didn't know what to do next. I'm not even sure what just happened when I read this one. The only reason I liked it more than the others was because I liked Nesta and Cassian A LOT more than Rhys and Feyre. That's not saying much btw. 

Last thought: Remember in my review of A Court of Wings and Ruin when I said that I wished the dead just stayed dead. Yeah, I still stand by that statement. It's not that I want characters to die... but I just want the characters to die. These books have way more fakeout deaths than actual deaths in the entire series. Like please stay dead. Pretty please. It would add to the stakes and I would stop rolling my eyes every time one of you rise up again, fully healed or walking off the stab wound in the chest.

Update: Yeah, I've decided that when the next book comes out, I'm not going to read it. I'm getting no joy from this series, so it's just not worth it for me. This was fun though! I wonder if I'll actually stick to what I just said about not reading the next book...