A Court of Thorns and Roses

This wasn't anything to write home about. I get why it might have broad appeal but I've definitely read better romantacy books--and worse. I have some general criticisms on why I didn't enjoy this more. First, the protagonist started off very interesting and then got very un-interesting. I liked learning about her and her world and how she saw things, but as the story wore on, she became flatter and more of a trope than a unique person.

Secondly, the writing is just overly dramatic at several points. To the point where it grated (though sometimes it looped back around and just flat out became funny.) Some of the things Feyre says are so overwrought, which only further contributes to my previous point.

She also seems to suffer from holding the Idiot Ball several times. I couldn't tell if we were supposed to think she was clever or not. Sometimes she was, and sometimes she wasn't, and it always whatever was most convenient to the plot at the time.

Finally, I really didn't care for the set up of a love triangle. Having an anti-hero in the mix is fine--I tend to like those characters--but holding up a neon sign that says "Secondary Love Interest" just diminished what would have otherwise been an interesting character.

I had been promising myself that I would read this series but I always kept putting it off. Mostly, this was due to the fact I had read A Throne of Glass a long time ago and found the female lead not readily to my liking. I had always promised myself that I would eventually give it another try but first, I wanted to read A Court of Thorn and Roses. I had been hearing a lot of mixed reviews but my friends have mostly been the ones telling me that the series was much better once you started reading it.

I won't lie when I have been told that the series is a mixture of Hades and Persephone with Beauty and the Beast. I have always been a sucker for these and I had placed this series on my TBR. Now that I had time, I decided this would be the series for December. The final books that would end my 2023 reading year.

But now having read the series, I am a bit torn about where to rank it. While the story felt slow - too slow for that matter, it did have its moments. But again, the female lead is what drove me insane. I don't what it is about Maas's female leads but they end up being extremely annoying. I don't feel she improves much. I don't want to give too much away, but I found her decisions and actions frustrating at times. However, there were also moments where she showed strength and resilience, which I appreciated.

On the other hand, the world-building in this series was phenomenal. Maas has created a rich and vivid world, filled with different courts and creatures. I was completely immersed in this fantastical world and loved learning about the various realms and their politics.

The romance in this series felt slow. For one thing, I am glad that this was not some insta-love with both declaring how much they were made for each other, blah blah blah but it was taken slowly allowing the characters to see each other's flaws and strengths but at the same time I also felt that it was at a crawl. It could be frustrating at times and at other times it felt right.

Final Thought:

Despite its flaws, I did enjoy reading the A Court of Thorns and Roses series. The rich world-building and captivating romance kept me engaged despite some of the frustrations with the main character. I would still recommend giving it a try, especially if you enjoy fantasy and romantic elements.

4.35/5

I enjoyed this book so much, just tore through it! I read it right on the heels of Throne of Glass and while I enjoyed that book, you can just see how much Maas has improved as a writer. I'd also note that while Throne feels very YA in plot, characterization, tone, etc. Court could easily have been marketed as adult fantasy rather than YA (which is probably why I liked it more).

The plot is an interesting mash-up of the traditional version of Beauty and the Beast and the ballad of Tam Lin: Feyre (= Fair = Beauty, btw, took me a while to pick up on that) is the youngest daughter of a failed merchant, and while hunting to feed her family she kills a giant wolf she knows is one of the Fae. As a result, the high lord Tamlin, in the form of a huge beast, breaks into their home and demands that she come back into Faerie with him. Feyre is suspicious, but after days/weeks of Tamlin being nothing but kind to her she starts to trust and eventually love him. But then the larger plot kicks in and we find out that the Fae are being oppressed by a Hybernian High Queen, who has a special need for Tamlin. Tam sends Feyre home, where she finds herself and comes to terms with her mean older sister before returning to Faerie to save her love. To do this, she has to pass three trials and/or answer a riddle, while acting as a servant in the court in the meantime. After coming close to death, she accepts the help of Rhysand, the queen's (secretly reluctant) bad-boy boy-toy and assistant, and finally beats all three trials and solves the riddle, freeing Tamlin who then goes on to free everyone else from the queen's tyranny. Sadly, none of the trials involves holding onto Tamlin while he changes into his beast form, which was a disappointment as I was waiting for that Chekhov's gun to go off. There's also a strong Howl's Moving Castle influence, in that Feyre has to figure out a mystery contract that the people involved can't tell her about, a contract that turns out to involve Tamlin, who's been casually called stone-hearted, literally having a heart of stone.

Have to talk about Lucien, Tamlin's right-hand man. In any other book I suspect he would have been the love interest, as he's charming and has his own tragic past, but who can over-charm/over-tragic Tamlin? Feyre starts to trust him much earlier than Tamlin and I could read a whole book of the two of them being buds.

And Rhysand. Ah, Rhys. We first meet him as a terrifying threat capable of reading or shredding Feyre's mind; at the court, he's a somewhat ambiguous figure who offers Feyre a deal that's better for her than it needed to be: he will heal her if she will spend two weeks with him out of every month. She haggles down to one and they agree. He then proceeds to treat her as his property, a toy to play with in front of the court and Tamlin, in a particularly iddy turn of events. It turns out that he was doing it all to make Tamlin angry enough to take down the queen once he was freed, although I think this is reaching a bit for justification of iddiness. Yeah, I checked Wikipedia and I know the series is overall Feyre/Rhys and not Feyre/Tamlin. I literally cannot imagine how this works given everything Feyre and Tamlin just went through for each other ... but Rhys is pretty spectacular, and I have already ordered the next book from the library to find out.