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A review by eri_cat93
A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
adventurous
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
This is also not a great book – BUT it’s a LOT better than the first. 3-3.5 stars
The writing, consistency, predictability, and pacing did not improve. There were, however, a few cool moments that helped to make this story much more interesting than the first, even if it’s still frustrating.
My not thorough (but still too long, sorry) synopsis of the main happenings:
Our girl Feyre has not improved or become any more likable or reasonable. She’s ‘happily’ engaged to Tampon now, but is also massively depressed, hates wedding planning, and isn’t allowed to do literally anything at all other than fuck vigorously whenever he wants to. Fey is also dreading the day Rhysand comes to cash in on their bargain for her to spend one week per month at the Night Court – which he has mysteriously avoided and been super quiet about so far.
As the wedding draws closer, Tammy Boy continues to be a dick and basically isolates her from everyone and everything but him and sometimes Lucien. Feyre FINALLY wises up and gets cold feet on her wedding day, accidently-on-purpose calling Rhysand for help. He pops in and whisks her away for a lovely week in the not-so-scary Night Court. To no one’s surprise, the Spring Court still sucks when she gets home and eventually, she has enough of TimTam’s bullshit and one of Rhy’s friends comes to save her.
Also to no one’s surprise, she gets better while at the Night Court! And they aren’t all big scary monsters! Except for the Court of Nightmares, they still suck for some reason even though they’re scared shitless of Rhysand because he puts on his mean face when he goes there. Oh and somehow Feyre goes from being 100% illiterate to a fully educated reading level in like….a month…so good for her? Plus she has special powers from all of the high lords who re-alived her at the end of the last book, super special & super unique powers.
Eventually Rhysand gets hurt and Feyre again SO EASILY catches her buddy pal the Suriel, who reveals that she has magic blood now and also that Rhysand is her mate (cue the word ‘mate’ being used ENDLESSLY for the rest of the goddamned series. We get it.). She freaks out about this and goes to hide out in Rhy’s secret cabin which she spends a week vandalizing before he shows up and she’s like “hmm you right, let’s bang”.
Also there is a scary Fae King out and about trying to bring down the wall between their world and the human world, and to beat him they have to steal something from the Court of Nightmares, even though Rhys is the High Lord of it and should just be able to…take his things? And the plan to steal it is…for Feyre to be thirsty af? Alright then. They get all of the stuff they need to fight the King and his all powerful cauldron and make a plan to go win the day!
Eventually they go to beat the cauldron but SURPRISE Tamouflage has been working with the big bad evil King all along! To rescue Feyre from Rhy’s clutches! And for some reason he was also OK with the King kidnapping her sisters to make a point to some other humans that he can turn them Fae…which he does! Oh boy, how convenient for Feyre that now literally everyone she knows is immortal too! She doesn’t have to go back to the human world to be with her shitty family, they can be here with her now!
But little does Tambrogini know that super conveniently for the plot, Feyre and Rhysand got married off page (because god forbid we get any love story actually happening on the page). Deciding it’s time to fuck up Tamato Soup’s day for being such a dick, Feyre pretends she was brainwashed by Rhysand but is better now and will go with Tator Tot. But poor lil Tammy doesn’t realize that his misogyny is about to bite him in the ass because even though he said she couldn’t be one, Feyre has become the High Lady of the Night Court and will use her not-like-other-girls powers to bring him down from the inside.
My thoughts:
How can a 600+ page book manages to make every single important plot point feel rushed? How is this possible? Why do we spend dozens of chapters doing NOTHING or doing/saying the same thing over and over to then fit the entire climax of the story into like 20 pages? Plus, the entire timeline of this book/series is INSANE. In a span of 5 months this woman goes from being a tortured prisoner, to stabbing her lover/stockholm syndrome captor, to getting engaged to him, to leaving him, to madly in love with another dude, to queen of the nighttime. it's SO FAST.
Once again, Feyre’s decision making is completely unreasonable. I will grant her grace that she is 20 years old, but even at that she’s supposedly been keeping her family alive for YEARS, but she doesn’t have the common sense to see or understand anything going on around her.
And WHY does she paint the entire cabin?!? This is a super peaceful, meaningful place to Rhysand and his Inner Circle, but she just goes to town on every single wall? I can’t think she’s a very good painter since she’s only been doing it for like…2 months? Plus, she just paints everyone’s eyes super large. So anytime they want to go have special bonding hang out time as a friend group they just gotta deal with this?
The Court of Nightmares makes no sense at all. Rhys is in charge and everyone is terrified of him, but he also has to still play politics while going there? And sneak around? What?
The sisters being Made was so annoying. It is such a big part of the future books, but to me it’s completely unnecessary. We didn’t need them in the story beyond this. I would have much preferred Feyre learning to deal with her own immortality through the lens of her human life aging and passing away while she lives on. But no, we’re stuck with a living piece of cardboard (Elain) and teenage angst meets PMS meets sociopath (Nesta) for the foreseeable future in this series.
As I said, it was better than the first book. But I still really struggled with the writing, overuse of words/phrases, pacing, and overall story arc.
Interesting/good parts of this book:
-We love a shadow daddy. I personally do not find Rhysand to be a top tier book boyfriend, but he’s much better and more interesting that Tambourine so I’ll allow it.
-Rhysand sending her music while she was a prisoner in book 1 is cute AF. Loved it, no notes.
-Feyre shape shifting into an Illyrian to get Lucien to fuck off was sick, as was our side character shadow daddies showing up on the lake to save her.
-Amren is intriguing as well – a multiversal God-like figure trapped in this universe for eternity and having escaped the in-world equivalent of Alcatraz? Sign me up. It is notable that nothing exciting happens or is explained about her character in the story overall so far, but she was at least an interesting character introduction in this book.
The writing, consistency, predictability, and pacing did not improve. There were, however, a few cool moments that helped to make this story much more interesting than the first, even if it’s still frustrating.
My not thorough (but still too long, sorry) synopsis of the main happenings:
Our girl Feyre has not improved or become any more likable or reasonable. She’s ‘happily’ engaged to Tampon now, but is also massively depressed, hates wedding planning, and isn’t allowed to do literally anything at all other than fuck vigorously whenever he wants to. Fey is also dreading the day Rhysand comes to cash in on their bargain for her to spend one week per month at the Night Court – which he has mysteriously avoided and been super quiet about so far.
As the wedding draws closer, Tammy Boy continues to be a dick and basically isolates her from everyone and everything but him and sometimes Lucien. Feyre FINALLY wises up and gets cold feet on her wedding day, accidently-on-purpose calling Rhysand for help. He pops in and whisks her away for a lovely week in the not-so-scary Night Court. To no one’s surprise, the Spring Court still sucks when she gets home and eventually, she has enough of TimTam’s bullshit and one of Rhy’s friends comes to save her.
Also to no one’s surprise, she gets better while at the Night Court! And they aren’t all big scary monsters! Except for the Court of Nightmares, they still suck for some reason even though they’re scared shitless of Rhysand because he puts on his mean face when he goes there. Oh and somehow Feyre goes from being 100% illiterate to a fully educated reading level in like….a month…so good for her? Plus she has special powers from all of the high lords who re-alived her at the end of the last book, super special & super unique powers.
Eventually Rhysand gets hurt and Feyre again SO EASILY catches her buddy pal the Suriel, who reveals that she has magic blood now and also that Rhysand is her mate (cue the word ‘mate’ being used ENDLESSLY for the rest of the goddamned series. We get it.). She freaks out about this and goes to hide out in Rhy’s secret cabin which she spends a week vandalizing before he shows up and she’s like “hmm you right, let’s bang”.
Also there is a scary Fae King out and about trying to bring down the wall between their world and the human world, and to beat him they have to steal something from the Court of Nightmares, even though Rhys is the High Lord of it and should just be able to…take his things? And the plan to steal it is…for Feyre to be thirsty af? Alright then. They get all of the stuff they need to fight the King and his all powerful cauldron and make a plan to go win the day!
Eventually they go to beat the cauldron but SURPRISE Tamouflage has been working with the big bad evil King all along! To rescue Feyre from Rhy’s clutches! And for some reason he was also OK with the King kidnapping her sisters to make a point to some other humans that he can turn them Fae…which he does! Oh boy, how convenient for Feyre that now literally everyone she knows is immortal too! She doesn’t have to go back to the human world to be with her shitty family, they can be here with her now!
But little does Tambrogini know that super conveniently for the plot, Feyre and Rhysand got married off page (because god forbid we get any love story actually happening on the page). Deciding it’s time to fuck up Tamato Soup’s day for being such a dick, Feyre pretends she was brainwashed by Rhysand but is better now and will go with Tator Tot. But poor lil Tammy doesn’t realize that his misogyny is about to bite him in the ass because even though he said she couldn’t be one, Feyre has become the High Lady of the Night Court and will use her not-like-other-girls powers to bring him down from the inside.
My thoughts:
How can a 600+ page book manages to make every single important plot point feel rushed? How is this possible? Why do we spend dozens of chapters doing NOTHING or doing/saying the same thing over and over to then fit the entire climax of the story into like 20 pages? Plus, the entire timeline of this book/series is INSANE. In a span of 5 months this woman goes from being a tortured prisoner, to stabbing her lover/stockholm syndrome captor, to getting engaged to him, to leaving him, to madly in love with another dude, to queen of the nighttime. it's SO FAST.
Once again, Feyre’s decision making is completely unreasonable. I will grant her grace that she is 20 years old, but even at that she’s supposedly been keeping her family alive for YEARS, but she doesn’t have the common sense to see or understand anything going on around her.
And WHY does she paint the entire cabin?!? This is a super peaceful, meaningful place to Rhysand and his Inner Circle, but she just goes to town on every single wall? I can’t think she’s a very good painter since she’s only been doing it for like…2 months? Plus, she just paints everyone’s eyes super large. So anytime they want to go have special bonding hang out time as a friend group they just gotta deal with this?
The Court of Nightmares makes no sense at all. Rhys is in charge and everyone is terrified of him, but he also has to still play politics while going there? And sneak around? What?
The sisters being Made was so annoying. It is such a big part of the future books, but to me it’s completely unnecessary. We didn’t need them in the story beyond this. I would have much preferred Feyre learning to deal with her own immortality through the lens of her human life aging and passing away while she lives on. But no, we’re stuck with a living piece of cardboard (Elain) and teenage angst meets PMS meets sociopath (Nesta) for the foreseeable future in this series.
As I said, it was better than the first book. But I still really struggled with the writing, overuse of words/phrases, pacing, and overall story arc.
Interesting/good parts of this book:
-We love a shadow daddy. I personally do not find Rhysand to be a top tier book boyfriend, but he’s much better and more interesting that Tambourine so I’ll allow it.
-Rhysand sending her music while she was a prisoner in book 1 is cute AF. Loved it, no notes.
-Feyre shape shifting into an Illyrian to get Lucien to fuck off was sick, as was our side character shadow daddies showing up on the lake to save her.
-Amren is intriguing as well – a multiversal God-like figure trapped in this universe for eternity and having escaped the in-world equivalent of Alcatraz? Sign me up. It is notable that nothing exciting happens or is explained about her character in the story overall so far, but she was at least an interesting character introduction in this book.