My intent (though made clear about two months ago - time really flies) was to re-re-re-read this book and give an honest review on why I loved it so much. There was something familiar, yet original, about the encounters and storytelling from SJM. I read it once then twice and then I read the second book, took notes on both, and then simply forgot to catalog my thoughts on here.
Originally, I was going to bypass this series because it was so well-loved and popular that my review would be a drop in a bucket, but the point of this blog is to create an "ongoing series of shamelessly sharing my thoughts on books that no one [asks] that I review." Here I am now 7 years later thinking I should just re-read it and put everything on paper.
I have the original hardcover copy of this somewhere in my mother's house, the paperback somewhere in my house, a kindle version, and the audiobook for when my job requires me to make long drives. Each version has been lovingly read (and listened to) cover to cover. The initial shock of finishing the latest Crescent City novel (#2) in the winter has worn off and, while waiting for SJM to crank another one out, I turned to the horror genre for something new. This was partly because the despair of reading every self-published KindleUnlimited "romantasy" available was slowly chipping away at my soul, sanity, and brain cells. I need a break.
About the Author
Sarah J. Maas looks suspiciously like Jennifer Larence from just the right angle in her author's portrait.
She's one of the best-selling authors of the decade, since her debut with Throne of Glass in 2010, which she began writing when she was just 16 years old. Since then, she's finished the series with seven books, ending with Kingdom of Ash, started and ended her most popular series: A Court of Thorns and Roses, and published the first two books of her new series: Crescent City.
She lives in Pennsylvania with her children, college sweetheart husband, and dog.
About the Book (beware spoilers)
We start in a freezing wood where our protagonist, Feyre, is crouching in the cold, hoping that something will pass by in the dead of winter. Finally, she sees a doe and aims her bow, but before she can shoot it, an enormous white wolf shoots out of the brush and kills it instead. She shoots an ash arrow through its eye and, initially believing it to be fae and wanting to rid the world of one more of them, kills it. When to her shock it doesn't transform back into a faerie, she skins it for the pelt, collects the dead doe, and carries both to her hovel.
In her home, we are introduced to her father, crippled and senile probably, carving wooden figures in front of a low burning fire. His leg is disgustingly warped from a brutal attack by debt collectors that he didn't pay on time. We learn that the family used to be rich and the father was a famous merchant who took too great of a risk sending their fortune across the sea, where it was lost in a storm. The mother was a socialite who took great pains to keep up appearances. Before she died of sickness, she made Feyre promise to look after her two sisters; luckily for the mother, this was before they were destitute. Apparently, promises to dead people in this land are forever binding, lest ye be struck down by a hot fairy. So Feyre has been stuck making sure her sisters are kept alive - which has become increasingly difficult every year.
The next day, Feyre and her sisters - Nesta, the beautiful, angry, bitter one that is revealed later on to be resentful that Feyre took care of them while their father did nothing, and Elaine the beautiful, not-angry, clueless one that seemed to have no significant character development in this book - go to market and encounter one of the Children of the Blessed. These are humans who dedicate themselves to the Fae, believing if they worship them enough, one will come and take them as a lover beyond the wall where they will live forever in a beautiful land. The village is not fond of them; they roam the markets trying to convert others to their cause, conveniently forgetting that the High Fae enslaved humans hundreds of years ago.
Feyre sells the pelt for good money and they have a great meal that night, the first in a while, and are just about to doze off when a beast destroys their front door. It's an enormous monstrosity that demands to know who killed the wolf. Feyre steps up and it tells her that in order to pay for killing a faerie, she must either give her life (violently torn to ribbons) or go to Prythian. She chooses to go to Prythian.
They cross the wall and Feyre arrives at the Spring Court. She finds out Faeries can lie, and iron can't hurt them and they have a ridiculous amount of magic at their fingertips - which makes her wonder how and why she's still alive (seriously she thinks this the whole book). She's suspicious of everything she sees and hears, and was constantly finding ways to leave, desperate to return to her family. One night she sees her father at the edge of the Spring Court Manor beckoning her to go with him. She sneaks out (against the advice of everything that she has been told and believes about Prythian!) but is caught escaping by Tamlin, who we later find out is the High Lord of the Spring Court, and is sent back to the manor. It wasn't her father; it was a mischievous and violent lesser faerie called a puca. This only elevated her dislike for fae, but who's fault is it that the fairy food rattled loose your few functioning brain cells into thinking her handicapped father limped through the winter forest, cross a magic wall, survived long enough to make it to the manor, and knew exactly where she was.
After finding out Tamlin's court is cursed to wear masks after a masquerade 50 years ago, Feyre befriends Lucien, Tamlin's best friend and emissary. He tells her more about the fae world and, during a ride through the forest, hints at an all-knowing creature called the Suriel. She traps it and asks it questions, curious about the unknown blight that Tamlin and Lucien keep hinting at. She braves the Suriel to see if there was a way to save her family, believing they were starving now that she wasn't there to provide. Before she can learn more, she encounters the naga, hideous creatures with a taste for flesh. She frees the Suriel, kills two nagas, and was about to be killed by the third before Tamlin rescued her.
Feyre begins to relax, realizing she doesn't have to worry about her family or herself anymore, and Tamlin is happy to provide for and protect someone. He starts teaching her to read and gives her paints to explore her artistry, and she softens up little by little. On one particular night, Tamlin brings back a mutilated faerie and Feyre helps it through its death. She expresses her regret about killing Andras, the wolf from the forest, with hate in her heart, and Tamlin opens up to her even more, despite his "heart of stone."
During the spring festival of Calanmai, Feyre, forbidden from approaching the festivities, sneaks in to see the ritual. She's saved from an attack by a mysterious man, later revealed to be Rhysand, High Lord of the Night Court. She's returned to the manor by Lucien, who warns her to stay in her room. Of course, she doesn't listen and is found by Tamlin, post-ritual. He bites her neck in some weird passionate claiming fueled by the magic of Calanmai, but apparently, she's into that.
After that night, Feyre and Tamlin grow even closer and they're both increasingly attracted to each other. Until Rhysand shows up at dinner and finds out who Feyre is. She's sent back to her family by Tamlin, who tells her he loves her before she goes, however, she is too scared to say it back (even though she wants to). She returns to Nesta, Elaine, and her father, who were all set up nicely in a mansion by Tamlin so that Feyre could finally rest easy. Elaine and her father thought Feyre was just at some distant sickly aunt's home, but Nesta was too stubborn for magical glamour; she knew that Feyre had been taken by the fae the entire time. This brings them closer and Feyre tells Nesta about her High Lord. Talking about it and seeing that her family didn't really need her anymore, she realizes she made a mistake in letting Tamlin send her away.
Feyre returns to the manor in Prythian and finds it ransacked. Alis, her lady-in-waiting, explains the "blight" she was led to believe would ravish the continent. It's actually a High Fae named Amarantha; she was a former lieutenant for a neighboring kingdom, sent over to Prythian as an emissary. She fought in the original human vs. Fae wars 500 years before and loathed humans. Her sister, Clythia, fell in love with a human named Jurian during the wars and it cost her her life. In vengeance, Amarantha captured Jurian and spent months torturing him before finally killing him and keeping his eye and a finger bone as keepsakes. The time she spent on Jurian cost the High Fae (the ones who wanted to keep humans as slaves) the wars.
50 years ago, she returned to Prythian under the guise of peace, hoping to establish trade between the courts and the neighboring kingdom. Initially, the High Lords were suspicious but they eventually gave in; all except Tamlin, who had known her prior to the wars, and was aware of her true sadistic nature. Tamlin's initial refusal of her cost Lucien his eye. In a perceived apology, Amarantha invited everyone to her court Under the Mountain, a sacred mountain in the middle of Prythian, and ask that Tamlin's court come with masks to celebrate Tamlin's shape-shifting abilities. But, obviously, it was a trap, and she cursed everyone in his court to wear the masks, stole the High Lord's powers, and kept all but Tamlin's court trapped Under the Mountain. And for 50 years, she's had Prythian in a death grip and Rhysand working as her personal bedwarmer.
Cue Feyre. The only way to break the curse was for Tamlin to get a human woman with hate for the fae in her heart to say she loved him and mean it within 49 years. And Feyre was too scared to say it before she left Tamlin, 3 days before the deadline.
Horrified yet determined, Feyre travels to Under the Mountain and is quickly captured by Amarantha's equally sadistic fiends. She is given 3 tasks (one a month) to save Tamlin and restore his power at an undetermined time or solve one riddle at any time and break the curse immediately.
She kills the Middengard worm in her first task and is badly wounded. Rhysand saves her from the brink of death but only in exchange for her company in the Night Court for one week a month for the rest of her (admittedly short and human) life. The bargain is marked with a tattoo and Rhysand spends the rest of the month before her next task flaunting her at Tamlin. It turns out Rhysand is secretly trying to manipulate Tamlin into a rage so that he'll kill Amarantha. Rhysand would give Feyre fairy wine to get her drunk and hopefully make her forget the horrors she witnessed and committed during Amarantha's parties, every night between tasks.
The second task involves Feyre solving a riddle written on a wall and pulling the correct lever before a ceiling of hot spikes falls on both her and Lucien. She never fully learned how to read, though, and is now caught with her shortcomings in full view of all the fae. Lucien was spelled to not reveal the answer but Rhysan intervenes telepathically and Feyre makes it out. Another month of fairy wine and partying goes by.
For her third task, Feyre must stab three fairies through the heart, and I have to say reading this scene is difficult. According to Amarantha, all three are innocents, and Feyre kills the first two with serious resulting trauma. The third one is revealed to be Tamlin, and though she hesitates, she remembers Lucien mentioning his "heart of stone" and thrusts the blade up into his chest hoping she hits a stone. Lucien was being literal and metaphorical; Tamlin does indeed have a heart of stone. Feyre completes the third task.
Amarantha is furious, absolutely livid. She points out that even though she said she'd free everyone when Feyre finished her tasks, she didn't specify when; Feyre's last chance is figuring out the riddle. Before she can figure out the answer, Amarantha starts wailing on Feyre, cracking bones, with no reprieve from the torture, bringing her back to consciousness every time she blacks out. Feyre finds the answer to the riddle is love and says it out loud, right before Amarantha snaps her neck, killing her. Feyre answering the riddle immediately returns the powers to the High Lords; Tamlin impales Amarantha to the wall and rips off her head.
In return for saving Prythian, the High Lords each give Feyre's body a kernel of power while she watches from Rhysand's eyes, assuming their special bargain tied them together. She's reborn as a High Fae with a mortal heart. She's completely in shock and the trauma of killing those faeries and just dealing with Amarantha's insanity is too much for her mortal brain. Before returning to the Spring Court with Tamlin, she talks to Rhysand who is about to return home, but not before he looks like he's seen a ghost and winnows away.
Feyre happily returns to the manor with Tamlin and we're set up for another book when the characters realize that Jurian's eye and finger bone were mysteriously missing.
About My Thoughts
"Absolutely no faults" is what I wish I could say. However, it would take less time to write out what I thought was less appealing than what I loved.
It was a highly original story; SJM is amazing at crafting intricate plots (don't get me started on Crescent City) and she tied up each loose end neatly, except the ones needed for the next book. I also laud her for creating some serious morally gray characters. This book may not have been a great example of that, but as you read on, you can tell she has fun creating characters that will never show you what they're really thinking.
However, Amarantha was not the greatest villain. She was just kind of in the periphery, haunting Feyre (who for some reason really wanted to go back to her god-awful family, even before she learned they were doing ok thanks to Tamlin just so she could live on the edge of starvation when they did nothing for her ever?). I did not completely understand why Amarantha even gave her a way out of the mountain with the trials. I understand she's this crazy old immortal who loves new entertaining things like a mortal who claims they love a fairy (she's seen this before in her sister). She just seemed like she was setting herself up to fail - might as well play it safe because being immortal does not equal being smart.
Feyre was not a smart human. She didn't have to be street smart (forest smart?) to get the riddle. As soon as I read it, I thought the answer was obvious, but Feyre had to be on the brink of death to know the answer. She could've just reflected (in the weeks that she was in a cell) a little more tactfully on why she was even there - because she loves Tamlin.
There was a surprising amount of nothing happening at the beginning of the book. It was a good world-building opportunity but we just got lore dumped when Feyre came back and met up with Alis. I assumed Feyre knew relatively little of anything because she was too young when her family fell into poverty to learn to read. We mostly get information on how dangerous Prythian is for humans, but we all knew that - especially Feyre.
I really like Tamlin, but the inklings of overprotectiveness were off-putting to me and I completely understood when I read the second book. Rhysand was properly terrifying at first, and equally gross when we find out what he was doing with Amarantha, but the Good Guy Who Pretends To Be Bad To Survive trope is a little overdone. Speaking of overdone tropes, Feyre's plain jane descriptions of herself were giving me Wattpad Y/N fanfiction energy. We get it, you're a normal-looking human who thinks they don't even deserve a first look, never mind a second, from a handsome fairy lord.
And finally, I have to say this: even though I understand that Feyre is scared out of her mind every time her weak human self comes across something that she can't protect herself or others from, she has a bad habit of either peeing herself or vomiting or both. This reaction seems very over the top - but to be honest, she's the only human we see deal with that craziness of Prythian.
Verdict: 8/10 biased, 6.5/10 unbiased
One of the first books since Clockwork Angel that kept me awake when I first read it all those years ago. I re-read it a bunch of times (especially ACOMAF) and it's so comforting that it felt like when I watch and re-watch The Office. I have a lot of fun reading all SJM books (almost all) but this short series was her best so far in my opinion.
Now after catching up in the Crescent City Series, I realized she wants the world to burn.
If you want similar books to ACOTAR, you'd have a shorter list if you looked up "A ___ of ___ and ___" on Google, because every single romantasy since the dawn of Rhysand has come up eerily similar to ACOTAR. I have yet to encounter anything published after 2015 that doesn't have ridiculously close parallels to ACOTAR. Not to say the tropes didn't exist before, but romantasy really exploded after this series and I think it drew a lot of new writers to start out with this genre, nice clean cut YA romance fantasy.
No comments:
Post a Comment