Reviews with content warning for Cursing - A Court of Wings and Ruin

Okay it put me in a pretty big reading slump not gonna lie. Like i picked up to other books in an attempt to get me to keep reading it. But the plot was so tense at certain points that it kept me interested. I did hate that the whole book was centered on war and politics like i could’ve cared less. Why did it take them 700+ pages for the war to happen in the last 200. I was not amused. Even though we hate Tampon i would like to give him a hug for being lonely now. Like it wasn’t his fault he had attachment issues well maybe it was but i don’t know if i would want him to drop his roll as high lord of the spring court to go be with luicien at velaris. But also how is Az and Luic gonna fall in love with Elain like im dancing on the edge ready to find out. What else are they to face now that hybern is gone ??? Idk if I’ll continue reading or not havent decided yet.overall it was an okay book I wouldn’t 100% recommend it though.

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what_karla_reads's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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readbyella_'s review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

5.0

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flamesocks's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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graceskate's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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shayna_hadassah's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

I felt like reading this was like watching the bad syfy channel movies with my dad: fun to experience, but overall not great.
It felt like the plot was too big for the author's skill level. There were a lot of moving parts that weren't integrated as seamlessly as they should have been for a plot that felt like it could have been fast and interesting, but ended up puttering around.
There were a lot of twists that the audience had no clue about. One, maybe two, would be fine. There's supposed to be a war going on, I get it, characters don't have a lot of intel. But it seemed like every time our protagonists maybe had an edge, surprise!, the bad guy actually has a way to counter that. Again, doing this minimally would have been fine, but it just felt uncharitable. Like, the villain was so overpowered. He had numbers, he had magic, he had strength. Literally they had no way to win until what was essentially a deus ex machina at the end. Were there clues to how they would win? One or two. But it didn't feel like there was any effort made to clue the audience in to what the solution was.

Spoiler

The big reveal that Miryam and Drakon had not only caught wind of the problem, but actually arrived to help, along with Feyre's father of all people, felt completely cheap. I almost stopped reading with only about 40 pages to go because that was ridiculous. Miryam and Drakon hid their people so well that their friends didn't actually investigate? Ridiculous. You fly by their island and see it in ruins and don't land to see if there are clues? Unbelievable. Literally unbelievable. You expect me to believe our protagonists are so smart and thorough and clever in their scheming but they don't do that? Either that's a massive plot hole to save your surprise to throw the audience, or I now don't actually believe your protagonists are that smart or clever. Or compassionate, even.
And then the girls' father shows up to help??? The man did nothing. For so many years. And what, it was too dangerous to send a message?? Give me a break. You find a way to finally help your daughters and you don't send them a message like, heads up, I'll be gone for a while. Maybe you should go visit relatives in [insert place here]. No coded message, no hints that something bad might be coming? If Nesta and Elain hadn't already been taken and changed, or if Feyre and the others hadn't figured out where Hybern was going and moved them out of the way, they'd literally be dead by the time he got there.
Amren changing to an avenging angel to win for them felt cheap only because there were no clues to what she actually wanted to do. More lies about who was needed and what the spell was going to do. Amren felt like a background character for most of the book, uninvolved in the main plot and not consulted near as much as she was in the previous book. No question of hey, what spells have you found, if not the one we're looking for. Also they never let the Book speak?? This is a magic book that apparently will talk sometimes. And we never got to know what it said. I would like to hear it. Make the Book a character. We already got new monster characters that were trotted out when convenient and then not really mentioned otherwise, there's no reason not to treat the Book the same way.
And then what about Elain's powers? She had a few visions they didn't interpret in time, and then found the Suriel, and then nothing. Sure, she couldn't see Hybern, but there was almost no other mention of what she could do. She couldn't see Miryam and Drakon? Or the human armies? Lucien? She couldn't see the last queen again? It was like woah cool powers! and then nothing.

Lots of secret deals going on that the audience doesn't have a chance or even a hope to piece together, which leads me back to my point of the plot was too big for the author's skill level. This could have been fun and suspenseful, but using a red herring well doesn't feel like something this author has really practiced with. The whole thing feels like all the other movies/shows/books that are more concerned with surprising the audience than letting them be an active participant in trying to figure out how the story progresses.
Other than the plot my main gripe is apparently no one understanding that Seraphim is a plural word. The singular is Seraph. It's a Hebrew word, and grammatically masculine, so the -im suffix is what makes it plural. Saying "she was a Seraphim" is the same as saying "she was a dogs." It's wrong. Relatively minor as far as these things go, but every time I read it I was immediately thrown out of the story.
Other than that I didn't mind the mentions of mates as much as I've seen it bother other people. I think constantly referring to Rhys as "my mate" was annoying in scenes with a lot of people when using his name would be just as easy. Mostly that was just clunky though. I feel like using a title like that would be better saved for when the gravity of the connection was necessary to the scene in some way. Suffice to say, just use characters' names when you have a conversation between so many of them. Or if you're worried, find a smoother way of distinguishing. Or better yet, don't introduce five or six brand new characters in a scene where all of them are going to be having a conversation with a cast of characters ranging from "I've already read more than a thousand pages involving them" to "This is only the second time I've even seen this character mentioned." I kept them straight for the most part, but that makes it difficult and clunky for anyone.
That said, using male/female instead of man/woman was not my thing. I understand that it's supposed to be that the Fae aren't people, and so don't use those words, but unfortunately, the only people I know of in real life who use male/female instead of man/woman are the most insufferable people on the planet. I get that the idea is to make the Fae seem more primal in some ways than humans and using male/female is simpler with the different kinds of faeries that exist in this universe, but having male/female in dialogue between characters was uncomfortable. I'm willing to let it slide since I understand this could just be a me problem.
There was some swearing but it felt weird and out of place, which feels awkward to say considering there are literal sex scenes in the book. Just with the way the characters usually spoke, swearing felt almost like it was shoe-horned in there. If they're going to swear, it should feel like something they'd actually say. And if one or two characters only swore to make a point or to be intentionally vulgar, that's one thing, but they all do it. Which feels related to the characters not all feeling entirely distinct. Our main cast for the most part feel like themselves, but some of the others get murky and hard to tall apart without dialogue tags.
Then there's the whole issue of Tamlin.

Spoiler

Having him be a bad buy, then a double agent, then a triple agent, and then a good guy, or however many layers there were, just seemed lazy. No clues as to whose side he was actually on or what his actual plan was. Him keeping his true intentions from Feyre seems par for the course, given his previous characterization, so I'm actually cool with that. He keeps her in the dark because he's trying to control what happens to her. Cool! That's actually good. But then at no point does anyone actually call him out on how he treated Feyre or the consequences of that. You had a meeting with all the High Lords together and Tamlin is like "oh yeah Feyre destroyed my people's faith in me" and she didn't bother saying "you trapped me in that house and they already hated the way you treated me" or anything else! Alis clearly had an issue with everything! (By the way, what happened to her anyway? She wasn't in the book past the first 100 or so pages and then she was mentioned one other time.) Lucien clearly was uncomfortable (though he wasn't in that scene so a pass but on thin ice) with what Tamlin was doing even if he just enabled him. The sentries clearly had a problem with him in those first 100 pages! I realize that in the scene with all the High Lords you're trying to make alliances but holy shit, hand Tamlin's ass back to him for once. He didn't have forces to offer anyway! The best he could do at that point was feed you information or give you an inside man, and he can do that with his tail between his legs! Who cares! If he was the only wild card there that the audience had to guess on, or had to think about whether it was reasonable to expect him to ultimately be a good guy, that would have been fine! It would have been fun and added to the suspense to keep adding and subtracting from his character and wonder where he was ultimately going to fall! But added with everything else and the other secrets the author kept from the audience, it just didn't work.

There felt like a lot of telling and not a lot of showing in the book. Feyre said like eight times "it was about choice" when talking about Rhys and how he helped people. (She did this once or twice in the last book too.) Listen, exposition or reinforcement like that can be good! Use it when it's important. In the last book, Feyre said it when it was a realization, like hey, this dude has been painted as a bad guy but he's actually been letting me make my own choices this whole time. Excellent! It was used in making an important decision, so saying it in words is good! But saying it so many times when you could just as easily just. let us see him do that (which we did! These words followed an example of him doing that!). There was a lot of repetition of description which just got old. Not everything needs a description if I already know what it looks like.
The spicy scenes were written pretty awkwardly I thought. Like the curtain drops weren't terrible, if a little corny. The actual explicit scenes (fewer than in the last book, I think?) felt like they couldn't strike a balance between what was going on and the emotional weight of the scene, so they were just weird. It felt like the author couldn't figure out a good way to get the scene from her head and on the page.
I do enjoy the duality of the courts in these books. I think the duality of Tamlin when Spring is usually thought of as a peaceful time of growth and then having him actually be more closely represented by the sometimes extreme changes that come in the in-between of winter and summer is super interesting. Likewise the Night Court having both Dreams and Nightmares, and Rhys being thought of as the monster that goes bump in the night but once you get a good look there's nothing to be afraid of.

Spoiler

Helion had a similar bit for the Day Court, where he presented as harsh and unforgiving, but he's actually warm and pleasant. Kallias for the Winter Court seeming harsh and unforgiving but he can also be cool and serene.

I think that's something that really adds depth and layers to the story. I think it should have been given more time or should be something that's focused on more in the future though. And something else that should be shown more than told.
I debated giving this book more stars since I did finish it, I did overall enjoy it, and there were a few moments that felt like they really had heart. Ultimately it stays at two for the whiplash between having twists with no warning, and then almost holding the reader's hand through other scenes. The series would do well to trust its audience and throw them a bone every once in a while.

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siravalondulac's review

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adventurous emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

feyre is supposedly the main character - not that you would notice that

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meredith_williams_'s review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The third installment of this series came with just as much action and suspense as the second. I really enjoyed the way the author continued to expand the universe and introduce new settings and characters. I also liked the development of some of the side characters and their back stories. I think SJM does a good job of exploring both the good and the bad that exist within her characters and the duality makes for a much more intriguing story. There were some parts that felt a little slow to me and there were a few plot points that felt repetitive, but overall, the end was satisfying!

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