A Court of Silver Flames
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After the big fat nothingburger of the previous book, A Court of Frost and Starlight, I really wanted Maas to step up her game for A Court of Silver Flames. At the time, I thought it was the series-ender, but apparently she’s got more coming probably because she realized hellooooo this is a cash cow.
ACOSF is a slow burn that I resented at first. I think I speak for most people when I say that Nesta is insufferable, so I had a hard time reading her POV. In the end, I came around to believing that this is good story-telling on Maas’ part. Nesta is in a deep depression that (understandably) takes a while to get out of, and Maas forces us to be in that fog with her even while we’re rolling our eyes wanting her to snap out of it because good lawd ma’am you’re being such a jerk to everyone.
While I eventually appreciated Nesta’s inchworm-like journey through her character arc, I’m pretty unsatisfied with the last 100 pages of the book. It was a completely different change of pace– barely anything happened for 600 pages and then BAM here’s a bunch of things all happening way too fast with little to no logical explanation. I’ll complain about those in a bit. For now, I’ll say that sometimes this series is super bingeable and I’m reading a hundred pages at a time and sometimes it gives me a tremendous ick. This book has the best smut of the series, so it has that going for it, but I wish that Maas tied more loose ends and was tighter with her fantasy loopholes rather than letting anything be fair game, no matter how inexplicable. A Court of Silver Flames receives 3 out of 5 flames.
*Spoilers below* so that I can fully give my thoughts:
The crown is supposed to be all-controlling but Cassian’s love was somehow enough to overpower it (this is cheesy and lazy to me). Also, he stabbed himself but then Nesta’s power overrode that and that wasn’t remotely unpacked, we just moved right along?
Maybe unpopular opinion but justice for Tamlin! Yes, he was too controlling of Feyre and he erred in his efforts to win her back but he redeemed himself in many ways and he got totally screwed the rest of the series. Like I wanted to give him a hug.
Why was Mor even in the series, especially this book? Seems like she was a ‘token lesbian’ trope that got attention for five pages.
Amren became totally useless and lame. She should either have a more interesting role or she should have been killed off in that big battle (I found it unbelievable that with every fight, no one from the Night Court would take an actual long-lasting hit).
So we’re just not going to find out about what Elain decides mate-wise? Also, the concept of mate was supposed to be super rare and special but now everyone gets a mate. I saw a meme of Oprah giving out mates like cars and it’s spot on.
I was sick of Rhysand and Feyre’s POV, so I’m glad with the perspective choices Maas made in this book. Still, the kid thing was haphazardly thrown in. Way too little time and effort put towards a very pivotal plot point.
Obviously, Cassian is hot.
