A Court Of Thorns And Roses

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.

I picked up this book since it was recommended as similar to another story I enjoyed. To start with, it wasn't similar.

What this is for the first 50% of the book: a re-telling of the story of The Beauty and the Beast, which has inherent issues. Because there is no telling of Beauty and the Beast that doesn't have some sort of weird Stockhom Syndrome thing going on. It's highly problematic.

This may be my unfamiliarity with the current young adult genre, but there seemed to be stolen themes and characterizations from other stories. Feyre gives a strong Katniss vibe. Possibly that's unfair, and maybe YA themes and tropes make that a routine characterization. Then there are the two male characters that could be borrowed from the story that I was told this was a "vanilla" version of. I guess, if someone wrote poorly contrived fan-fiction and didn't really understand those characters. Maybe the third male character that was introduced was supposed to be some version of them. I'm not sure.

And while the middle 40% or so is supposed to be the falling-in-love part, it is so slow. So slow. There are several DNF reviews because of how slow it is. And it isn't really convincing. Why did Tamlin and Feyre fall in love with each other? How did they build a connection so strong to withstand the trials in the last quarter of the book? I actually doubted Feyre truly loved Tamlin once Rhysand was introduced.

And then we get the story of Feyre and Rhysand. That's even more Stockholm Syndrome-y than the Feyre-Tamlin relationship. Because of the way the Tamlin Feyre relationship is built, it only makes sense that Feyre is going to fall in love with Rhysand. It doesn't happen in this book, but it seems set up for future books.

And then there is the scene that is outright stolen a Jacquelyn Carey novel, the scene of Phedre taken to a party in a see-through diamond gown. It is a scene that is well-known to Carey fans. Oh, look. The names of the main characters are incredibly similar. Sure, it's hard to find new names, but Maas has many many names (nearly all the places and characters) that I've read before in other novels.

The story and the type of Fae involved and some of the themes of the Fae seemed very like Seanan McGuire's October Daye Fae. The Fae in A Court of Thorn and Roses aren't really well characterized. When the similarities arose, I simply used McGuire's Fae to fill in the holes. And the ending puts Feyre in Toby's conundrum, only less well done and without stakes and effect McGuire has built.

If I'm seeing all those similarities from books I'm familiar with, I wonder what similarities I miss from books I haven't read.

My final complaint is the world-building. It isn't very good, as seen by the fact that I used characterizations from someone else that were similar. Unless it's historical fantasy or urban fantasy (which this is neither) using maps based on current Earth continents is really lazy. There's no reason for that. And without the maps, how the world is divided is not truly well planned.

If I give it 2-stars, what is okay? Well, even with the slow middle, it is a fairly fast read. The writing is fine. I've read much worse writing. Since it does use tropes and is a re-telling and borrows from other stories, it is a fairly brainless and easy read. The "it's okay" rating from Goodreads just really pegs exactly how I feel about this book.

Happily smiling I just closed the book. Well, this is my kind of novel. This is how I like to be entertained and how a story would look like if I had to mix some of my favourite books.

A few <3 words in no specific order:
Action. Fantasy. Love. Fae. Murder. Evil women. Monsters. Beasts. Strong women. Hot men. Strong men. Hot and strong men. Fights. A card in the beginning of the book and a pronunciation overview in the back. That. Cover.

Actually, it is a Beauty and the beast retelling. Yes. Somehow. The beginning has definitely similarities to the fairy tale but all in all it is really an outstanding story with an own plot.

Feyre. I love her. Really. She's a great protagonist. She's not dump, she's clever and she acts (quite) logical. Also she's not displayed as the perfect heroine.

The men. Hell yes!

I can't decide who I fancy most: Tam, Lucien or Rhys. In the beginning I was Tam's all over but coming to the end I must say that Rhys is definitely a great potential for the future stories of the series.

Fae, fairies, high lords, high fae. Speaks for itself. Should be part of every fantasy novel. Really.

I am so grateful that there is no major cliffhanger in the end, nevertheless I cannot wait for the sequel!! (Why so long until 2016?!?)

If you liked this book, I can highly recommend the Fever series by Karen M. Moning. Really. Fae and shapeshifter, strong woman. Fights. Love. All the stuff we need.

I went into Sarah J. Maas’ new series with high expectations that just weren’t met. I enjoyed A Court of Thorn and Roses well enough but it felt a bit of a generic fantasy romance. I love novels about dark fae and faerie politics so I thought this one would be right up my street. However, I felt you could have substituted the faeries for vampires, and it could be one of many urban fantasy stories I’ve read over the years.

Once Feyre goes beyond the wall, she discovers not everything she’s been taught about faeries is true. There are some terrifying and dangerous races amongst them, but there are also faeries who are little different from humans. All is not well in Prythian, and the fae magic is weak. I was interested in the world-building, and which parts of faerie mythology were incorporated; I definitely found some of the minor characters more interesting than Feyre and Tamlin.

The middle is very slow and I found it all a little unconvincing. Some of this is justified by what is revealed later on, however I wanted a bit more of a reaction from Feyre. Hasn’t she just been used? However things got interesting when Rhysand popped up. He’s a much more complex character even if he isn’t the nicest. Maybe I just like the opportunity for a good redemption story. Tamlin was portrayed as too nice, if you ask me. He does plenty that should be questioned but is just glossed over.

It’s a bit sexier than most young adult fantasy, even though I personally found the Throne of Glass characters sexier because they weren’t necessarily defining each other by how hot they were. Tamlin might well wear a mask but he is clearly good looking and muscular and I didn’t quite feel enough of an intellectual bond between them. It was all too much heaving bosoms and coy looks for my liking.

In parts, this is a Beauty and the Beast retelling, although in saying that it might give some clues as to what is going on. Feyre is one of those characters that starts off as “plain”, because she is modest and telling it in first person, but eventually turns out to be a beauty. It feels a bit like one of those films where the main character is a geek then takes off her glasses and undoes her ponytail and, bam, she’s hot.

Anyway, there’s one key thing that happens which would make me read the second book in this trilogy. It feels very much like an earlier work which has been dusted off, since Sarah’s become so successful. It just isn’t as polished as her other, very excellent, books.

Review copy provided by publisher.