Court of Thorns and Roses / A Court of Mist and Fury / A Court of Wings and Ruin / A Court of Frost and Starlight

This book is clearly a take on the Beauty and the Beast trope. Overall, I did enjoy a lot of the book. That's why I was able to make it through to the end and even start the second book. (A word on that at the end.) Overall, I was disappointed though. There were some things that I thought could have been edited better and some of the repetition of things and certain word choices didn't make sense to me. So that's why I gave it 3 stars. I liked it. It was OK.

What I liked:
Feyre as an incompetent protagonist. She's makes a lot of mistakes, lacks empathy, and is generally not good at reading between the lines.
Some of the supporting characters had wonderful backstories of their own.
The story concept and the adventure of it all.

What I didn't like:
That Feyre was so completely incompetent. She should have improved over time but she doesn't seem to have learned much.
The love interest. He seemed hollow and uninteresting.

A word on the sequel: I started reading Book 2 but stopped before getting very far. So I won't review it. I started reading the series because Book 2 shows up on banned book lists specifically being banned from schools. It was immediately clear why as Book 2 sets the stage as erotic from the start. There was a bit of sex in the first book but this was such a different tone. I have nothing against erotica and even enjoy it sometimes but I don't like it jumping out and surprising me where I didn't expect it.

Tricky, reviewing this book. There were lots of ups and downs for me.

From the first paragraph, I got the impression that this wasn't going to be as good as the first one. It starts out with Feyre vomiting in the toilet. My first thought was, "Oh, they've got indoor plumbing in this world? That's strange."

And indeed it was strange, but I got past it. It's a fantasy world, yes, but that doesn't mean it has to conform to the default medieval style of most fantasy worlds...

At least, I THOUGHT I'd gotten past it... but I still cringed every time somebody opened a tap. To help it feel a bit more fantasy-like, the room these toilets, sinks, and baths are in is called the "bathing room", but I think if it's going to look like a modern bathroom, just call it a bathroom.

Then there's what our heroine was doing in the toilet in that first paragraph: vomiting. Yes, there's lots of vomiting happening in this book, as well as "vomiting my/his/her guts out". It just doesn't seem like a word/phrase that would be used in the time period in which this book appears to be set.

The characters wear sweaters, too. Did they have sweaters back then? Tunics, yes. Woolen overshirts, yes. But sweaters? I think not.

There are other examples, but okay, enough hating on the language. I believe I mentioned that in my review for the last book in the series, too. It's not right, it destroys the verisimilitude, and it rips me out of the world every time I see it. Enough said. Moving on.

There's a lot more introspection in this book than in the first one, and it doesn't really paint a consistent picture of who Feyre is. Sometimes she seems like a spoilt child, other times she comes across as a tough-as-nails warrior, only to be the spoilt child again a scene or two later. There's character growth, but for no apparent reason, there's also regression.

The first book was clearly young-adult. One thing this series has going for it IS the growth and general maturation of the characters from book to book. In the previous installment, Feyre was very much a child. In this one, she's well and truly an adult, and the things she goes through and the decisions she has to make reflect that. Kudos to the author for achieving that.

Having said all of the above, the overall story is still something I enjoyed, as a fantasy fan. Enough to want to pick up the next book in the series. Which I most certainly will be doing.