A review by vader
A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas

adventurous lighthearted medium-paced

• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

“Males are horrible creatures, aren’t they?” Amren said.
“Repulsive,” Mor said, clicking her tongue.

Those two? They know what they’re about.

My reaction to A Court of Thorns and Roses was lukewarm at best. I didn’t go into that novel hoping for much, so I got more or less what I was expecting. I thought it would be the same with A Court of Mist and Fury, and I was ready to suffer through Feysand becoming an item.

I was so wrong. So completely uprepared for the following fuckery.

Abuse apologism

Ladies! Did you know that abuse is alright as long as your abuser thinks it’s ok? It doesn’t matter if he drugs you, sexually abuses you, and physically attacks you as long as he has his reasons! Hear him out, he swears it was for your own good. He feels terrible, can’t you understand him? He’s a victim, too, so he knows what it’s like. Feel free to jump into a serious sexual and romantic relationship with him as soon as you can!

I know I’m being harsh, but why wouldn’t I be? Not only is SJM selling explicit novels to teenagers, she’s also telling them that abuse is ok. Because Rhysand wasn’t drugged, hypnotized, magically controlled, or in any other way coerced to torture Feyre. He did it because he could, because he wanted to. Why else did he take her out of her cell and drug her? If she was in it, she wouldn’t see the “nightly terrors” that happened Under the Mountain, either. It was all a power play. I’m also not missing how dismissive he was of Lucien’s help - it’s a classic abuse tactic: make the victim feel like they’re alone and the abuser’s the only person who can help.

So no, Rhysand, telling Feyre your reasons for being a meanie a violent pig doesn’t make them ok. Feyre, you shouldn’t be so quick to accept them, and SJM, you shouldn’t sell this as peak romantic behavior!

Feyre’s first visits to the Night Court are still full of this shit, too, what with Rhysand blackmailing Feyre into working for him if she wants any information on what’s going on in the place she’s being forced to stay at, what his own motives for keeping her there are. So his “it was just Under the Mountain!” excuses? he can shove them where the sun won’t shine.

Hypocritical main character

Feyre constantly complains about nobody paying attention to how much she was wasting away at the Spring Court, yet she doesn’t bother to even learn the name of Tamlin’s friends. She sees Ianthe making advances on Lucien and how uncomfortable this makes him, does nothing to stop it, and then resents him for not helping her get out of the Spring Court.

She feels like a prisioner there, but when she’s forced to go to the Night Court she’s at ease because she’s got a luxurious room, which tots means that she’s not a hostage, right?

Everything in this book is about her trauma, what she went through, what she’s feeling. She never stops to think about how everyone was affected by Amarantha’s reign, unless it’s to demonize Tamlin or glorify Rhysand. The rest of the characters might as well be cardboard cutouts, for how much Feyre cares about them.

Character assasination

This one’s entirely on Maas. I understand that the first character the protagonist falls for doesn’t have to be the endgame, but that doesn’t mean that you have to completely change your previous love interest’s personality to the point of being unrecognisable only so you have an excuse for the relationship to end. People naturally fall out of love. You don’t need to add even more abuse to the mix to make it alright, especially when your MC runs straight into the arms of another abuser. It moots whatever point you might want to make about freeing yourself from toxic relationships, and it’s lazy writing. Instead of thinking up a feasible reason why they should’ve broken up, you change the personality of one of the characters and boom! there it is.

Racism

In this book we’re formally introduced to the Summer Court, which is made up of Black faeries. We had already met one of them in ACoTaR, the previous High Lord, who was terribly humilliated by both Amarantha and Rhysand, and then killed by the later. Now, part of the Inner Circle of the Night Court goes to play them a visit with the objective of retrieving (aka stealing) the part of the Book of Breathings that was kept by the Fae.

Feyre and Rhysand start an ugly game of manipulation in which they have to convince the Summer Court they are not there with bad intentions. Tarquin and his courtiers, despite their initial suspitions, are none the wiser. He even asks Feyre to convince Rhysand of an alliance, since he doesn’t believe all the horrors he’s heard of the Night Court (for some plot-convenient reason).

What does Feyre do to repay this kindness? some mind-rape, stealing, and more humilliation. Gosh, gotta love how SJM treats Black people as her convenient punching bag. And to elevate her precioush favesh, obviously.

Another thing I noticed is that, despite everyone on the Night Court being white, the Illyrians, we learn, are brown. The most “uncivilised” culture in the region… the ones who make their “females” go through what I think is some sick equivalent to FGM… the child abusers… are people of color. It’s as sick as it sounds.

Finally, to close this section, I want to callout SJM on her appropriation of mehndi for her tattoo designs, and of clothing similar to bedlah (”belly dancing” outfits / what Jasmine wears in Aladdin), which is only worn by white women, and which to my understanding already has a complicated history.

Bad Writing

I wanted to leave the most irritating issue for last. Not because it’s as bad as racism or misogyny from a moral standpoint, but because it’s the most obvious thing. You can convince yourself that Rhysand is a good person, you can think that it’s not really racist because the fae aren’t real black people, you can do all the mental gymnastics that you want to, but there’s no way in hell that you can tell me that you read these:

…what-what Tamlin had tried to do and had done, what I had done-
(…) - from Chapter 14

Had she… had she pursued him like that? Had he… had he been forced to say yes because of her position? - Chapter 21

Even if… even if I had no money of my own - Chapter 24

Cassian’s warning growl rumbled in my stomach - Chapter 45

…Mor said in a voice that was young and old. - Chapter 57

We had shown them… we had… we had done everything. - Chapter 57.

And think “ah, yes, this is the work of an amazing writer who obviously knows about grammar and the meaning of words.” I know I complained about the same thing in my review of ACoTaR, but Maas’ has sold enough books that she should have enough money to hire a good editor, and enough sense to listen to them. Those fragments are not good! And that’s just a few I have bookmarked! I’m not even getting into plot holes (if female fae get their periods at age 17 and are fully mature at around 70 years old, doesn’t that mean Mor lost her virginity at what’s the equivalent of 11 years old for a human?), inaccuracies (like the existence of pens in Prythian), or straight-up laziness (like Feyre’s unnamed father being conveniently absent every time the fae have to go speak with the Archeron sisters).

It’s bad! There’s no excuse! How can this book have an average of 4.69 stars on Goodreads? Someone please tell me!

Ugh. I guess I’ll see my final thoughts when (if) I finish ACoWaR, but I’m sure I’m going to hate it even more than this. Hopefully Nesta takes one for the team and kills everyone at the Night Court once her no-bullshit common sense tells her that it’s full of back-stabbing violent people, starting by her sister.

“Then bespake the strings all three,
‘Yonder is my sister that drowned me.”