A Court of Thorns and Roses
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I’m not a fantasy girly. I’m not hating on it, I’m just not naturally drawn to it. My parents didn’t let me read Harry Potter growing up so maybe I have fantasy-trauma. Regardless, I genuinely gave A Court of Thorns and Roses a chance. I loosely knew of it as ~faerie smut~ and at the end of the day, smut is smut, wings or no wings! Unfortunately, the (sparse) smut couldn’t outshine this book’s glaring flaws for me.
Let’s start with world-building. While I appreciate that a book like this is more accessible than Game of Thrones, ACOTAR’s world was somehow simultaneously dumbed down and confusing. It threw out a bunch of different characters but then only focused on a few ad nauseum, so I still have questions about the different faerie realms and their relationships. Also, the rules of the world were too loosey-goosey with several loopholes that made it difficult to understand what applies and what doesn’t. It’s like teaching someone a new game for the first time and then throwing in an advanced twist on the first round. It was also hard to take “serious” events seriously when they were easily reversed by magic. There was a lot of that, and it felt like cheating. Save it for truly momentous events!
If Maas failed to wow me with her world-building, maybe she invested her talents in character-building? Nah. It’s written from the perspective of Feyre and woooof does she exude ~I’m not like other girls~ energy. She’s supposed to be a clever girl with a hardened exterior, but for someone so ‘smart’, this dumb ass does some really reckless things. I get that it’s to advance the plot but I feel like there are more organic ways to do that than to see the main character constantly make conscious, idiotic choices that so obviously put her in danger. Don’t do that a zillion times and then try to convince me that she’s clever.
This is also supposed to be this grand love story, but I didn’t believe in their love. They barely interacted before POOF, all of sudden we were supposed to think they were made for each other. That leads me to my last complaint: the writing itself. She lovvvved to state the obvious and then repeat herself over and over. She’d be like ~better to do this task than to be tortured into oblivion~. Yes, no shit. Here’s an example: “These trenches were its lair. And I was dinner. Just one chance. That was all I had. Better than no chances at all.” Yes, a chance to live is better than no chances at living. It’s the choppy sentences for me. Don’t even get me started on her overuse of ellipses…
I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t enjoy this story at all. It really picked up in the last 100 pages with more fast-paced drama and more multi-dimensional characters like Rhysand (am I the only one who thinks he’s hot? He gives Scar from Lion King energy). Because it’s written in a soap-opera style where each chapter ends on a cliff-hanger, I had page-turning moments where I was dying to see what happened next. Everyone says that the rest of the books are so much better than the first yada, yada, yada. There is a part of me that’s curious but I don’t think it overshadows all this other crapola. A Court of Thorns and Roses receives 2 out of 5 flames. Shout out to my friend Vanessa who let me borrow her copy, which has a very cute, personalized “From the library of Vanessa- Love it & Return it” stamp on the inside cover that I’ll probably steal as a future gift idea for myself. Real recognize real!
