A Court of Wings and Ruin

Note to self. Do not start a book series when you are neurodivergent and know your brain will INSIST you finish it, even when it's TERRIBLE.

I really enjoyed the further character development of the Night Court, the tricky intrigue, and learning more about the world and creatures in it. As for the main plot, its mostly a series of power ratcheting. Hybern gets more powerful, then our fairys get more powerful. There's also extremely little sacrifice for such a world ending, overcoming-impossible-odds war. Sure, its filled with death, but can you imagine any of the main characters dying? I would have been devastated of course, but for the size of the court, the level of protagonist immunity is a little absurd.
I did learn one valuable lesson however: When hope is all but lost, maybe check you local library for any ancient all powerful monster. I love that library omg.

I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.

GOD AND TAKE A SHOT EVERY TIME SOMEONE EITHER “MAKES A VULGAR GESTURE” or sticks their tongue out. High schoolers, the lot of these assholes

This book suffers from an identity crisis. It wants so bad to be a lofty, sweeping high fantasy, and yet it anchors itself down with childish squabbling through characters who somehow seem to get worse and worse the further the book goes. It can’t be YA, because it has more sex than a bodice ripper, yet it sure is written like one.

But there’s gay people now! So!! Yay?

There are things in this book that I liked. I would have DNF’d it if not. But the bad severely outweighs the good, and Mor cannot claw her way up to two stars no matter how much I like her (her coming out is…. Not well done.)

Let’s talk about Lucien.

Oh, Lucien. You poor thing. Having him get a mating bond with Elaine was the worst possible thing to happen to him. He can no longer have growth, no longer can he have the ability to independently move past the abuse he’s gone through. Instead, for arbitrary reasons that don’t matter, the plot forces him to fuck off for the majority of the book.

And Tamlin? I’ve never seen character assassination this bad. There’s no reason for it, none at all, and what’s even worse is that he has a line so bad that I actually paused the audiobook and had to write it down. It’s just horrible, and it makes his ‘redeeming moment’ feel cheap and insulting.

I hate the word ‘mate’ and I hate the diet omegaverse verbiage. It makes me feel oily. I miss Rhys when he had some greyness to his character.

War has never been so damn boring. It was neat to see the Weaver and Bone carver get some spotlight (speaking of the reveal related to B.C, it’s. Fine. It’s okay!) but the fighting itself just lacked scale. None of it matters. A big part of why I just found myself caring less and less is that the last half of the book did NOT have to be as long as it was.

I just felt!! More and more bored! And that really bites ! Because the second book was such an improvement from the first! It’s sad to see another decline in quality.

If you keep killing characters and then bringing them back to life, then what's the point of killing them off in the first place