Abigail Barnette's Blog, page 11

A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter 11, “when a couple of fae/they were up to no good/started makin’ trouble in the garden outside the castle where I am being held prisoner.”

As promised, I’m importing the A Court of Thorns and Roses recaps here from Patreon. These were originally written beginning in August of 2020, so there will be references to upcoming or seasonal events that won’t fit with our current timeline. I am not a time traveler and you’ll never be able to prove that I am. I will also include editors notes like this every now and then as we go, mostly to amuse myself but to give re-read value to those who’ve already been on this awful, awful journey with me.

We left Feyre just as she’s seen her father approach the gates of the manor.

I didn’t give myself a chance to panic, to doubt, to do anything but wish I had stolen some food from my breakfast table as I layered on tunic after tunic and bundled myself in a cloak, stuffing the knife I’d stolen into my boot. The extra clothes in the satchel would just be a burden to carry.

My question here is, why would she have to “steal” food in a place where they have been actively pushing her to eat? But anyway, after all this careful planning for her escape she was definitely thinking about getting around to doing, the moment has come. She’s surprised that her father has come to save her and thinks, well, I must be worth more than what Tamlin is giving them.

My father—my crippled, broken father had come.

The ableism in this book is something else. I get it, he’s got a disability and this is a kind of medieval, fairytale setting, but that’s exactly what it is. A fairytale. I understand and appreciate realistic ableism in historical settings because I feel like, you know, don’t sugar coat this shit. I know a lot of people think it’s good representation for disabled people to put them in historical stories and never have the character experience any ableism or have any trauma from experiencing ableism but if you’re setting it in a real-world situation, it just doesn’t sit right with me. But this isn’t a real-world book. This is a totally new world, in which the author would be free to simply…have no ableism. Feyre could simply have had empathy (substantial bits of her characterization would need to be reworked), acknowledged how impossible the journey would have been, the pain he must be in from his disability. Both of those would have been so much better than “crippled, broken.” ed.—It’s especially galling to imply that he’s only overcome his disability due to greed.

Feyre makes sure there’s nobody in the garden and climbs down a trellis. There’s another borderline-ableist bit about how her father is limping with his cane and how surprising it is that he made the journey, and those things could have easily been expanded by focusing more on the “oh my gosh, my father cares about me enough to have made this harrowing, physically demanding journey,” and less on, “wow, how did Crippy McGee manage to hoist his lazy self up out of his chair and make it all the way here?” ed.—AAAAY must the mon-ayyyy!

My father reached the gates. They were already open, the dark forest beyond beckoning. He must have hidden the horses deeper in. He turned toward me, that familiar face drawn and tight, those brown eyes clear for once, and beckoned. Hurry, hurry, every movement of his hand seemed to shout.

My heart was a raging beat in my chest, in my throat. Only a few feet now—to him, to freedom, to a new life—

I guess I’m shallow because yet again, I’m like, why would you want to go back to the family that you actively resented? I guess if it’s all you’ve ever known, but she seemed to bone-deep fucking hate them to the point that it sounded like if she hadn’t made that vow to her mom, she would have been happy to see them starve to death.

Now, as we all likely anticipated:

A massive hand wrapped around my arm.

“Going somewhere?”

Shit, shit, shit.

Feyre Rose Steele

I didn’t dare move, not as his lips thinned and the muscles in his jaw quivered. Not as he opened his mouth and I glimpsed fangs—long, throat-tearing fangs shining in the moonlight.

He was going to kill me—kill me right there, and then kill my father. No more loopholes, no more flattery, no more mercy. He didn’t care anymore. I was as good as dead.

“Please,” I breathed. “My father—”

“Your father?” He lifted his stare to the gates behind me, and his growl rumbled through me as he bared his teeth. “Why don’t you look again?”

You know what happens next.

Only a pale bow and a quiver of pale arrows remained, propped up against the gates. Mountain ash. They hadn’t been there moments before, hadn’t—

Yeah, it’s some kind of shape-shifting fairy thing.

“Weren’t you warned to keep your wits about you?” Tamlin snapped. “That your human senses would betray you?”

Yes, Tamlin, thank you. That’s what I was thinking.

On the other hand, I should cut Feyre some slack. She’s never read a fantasy novel before. Maybe she didn’t see that coming. You know, even though she’s been warned like nine hundred times about things in the garden.

“Fool,” he said to me, turning. “If you’re ever going to run away, at least do it in the daytime.” He stared me down, and the fangs slowly retracted. The claws remained. “There are worse things than the Bogge prowling these woods at night. That thing at the gates isn’t one of them—and it still would have taken a good, long while devouring you.”

Nay, Tamlin, ’tis you who are the fool. Because now, Feyre is gonna just focus on the daytime part and disregard every other warning she’s ever gotten.

Feyre is like, my dad shows up here and you think I’m not even going to try to see him, except she once again calls him her crippled father like it’s a job title and not an outdated adjective to apply to other people. She also is like, do you really think I’m gonna be psyched about staying here with you?

He flexed his fingers as if trying to get the claws back in, but they remained out, ready to slice through flesh and bone. “What do you want, Feyre?”

“I want to go home!”

“Home to what, exactly? You’d prefer that miserable human existence to this?”

Exactly! She hated her family, she hated that she had to do all the work for her greedy sisters, she didn’t even like her boyfriend. Feyre, you wanted the fuck out, you got the fuck out.

She goes on to say that because she made that promise to her mother, everything she’s ever done since has been to take care of her family. Again, she doesn’t even seem to like the mother she made this vow to but okay. Feyre tells Tamlin that he’s forcing her to break that vow but it’s like…

Feyre.  You’re not upset about your family. You’re not missing your family or your old life. You’re missing your identity.

Feyre has spent years of her life in a cycle of perpetual martyrdom and resentment. Now that it’s been lifted from her shoulders, she has no idea who the fuck she is as a person. I would be able to forgive that if she’d been in an abusive situation but she was really just in a situation where she didn’t like the fact that they’d lost all of their money and her family didn’t know how to cope with the trauma of a violent altercation that left the breadwinner disabled.

Sorry. Broken. Crippled.

Tamsin states the obvious:

“You are not breaking your vow—you are fulfilling it, and then some, by staying here. Your family is better cared for now than they were when you were there.”

Tamsin, Tamlin, I don’t fucking remember, either way, a-fucking-men.

Those chipped, miscolored paintings inside the cottage flashed in my vision. Perhaps they would forget who had even painted them in the first place. Insignificant—that’s what all those years I’d given them would be, as insignificant as I was to these High Fae. And that dream I’d had, of one day living with my father, with enough food and money and paint … it had been my dream—no one else’s.

Yes, Feyre. I’m sure they’ll all forget you. Every time that fairy money shows up on their doorstep, their chest of gold or whatever, probably delivered by a leprechaun, they’re gonna be like,  “whoa, wtf is this? Why is this happening? What a strange and unexpected occurrence, completely unrelated to that night a huge, menacing beast tore our door off and threatened to kill us for some reason that has now slipped my mind.”

Like, didn’t her sister even buy her the paint to make those flowers? And LOL that she’s suddenly shocked that her dream of her sisters somehow disappearing and her living at home with her dad forever wasn’t shared by the sisters who would have to disappear and the father who maybe wants some peace and god damn quiet with his adult children out of the damn house.

But Feyre is like, I can’t give up on them and tacks on some moping about how of course her father would never come to get her.

Fed and comfortable. If he couldn’t lie, if it was true, then … then it was beyond anything I’d ever dared hope for.

Then … my vow to my mother was fulfilled.

Oh, shit, how are you gonna find enough wood to build yourself a new cross, Feyre?

My life was now owned by the Treaty, but… perhaps I’d been freed in another sort of way.

Such introspection. And so quickly, too.

They head back inside and Tamlin explains that they don’t need sentries at his house, since he’s there, and most troops are at the border. He, too, trained to guard the border during the war and he’d never expected to have the responsibility of running the manor. Feyre figures that’s why he needs Lucien around to do the talking for him, but she doesn’t want to ask any other questions because it seems too personal.

At this point, she doesn’t think to herself, oh wow, what a weird parallel between our circumstances. Instead, she changes the subject to learn that the fairy that tried to lure her off the grounds is a puca, a creature that would have dragged her away and eaten her alive.

“These lands used to be well guarded. The deadlier faeries were contained within the borders of their native territories, monitored by the local Fae lords, or driven into hiding. Creatures like the puca never would have dared set foot here. But now, the sickness that infected Prythian has weakened the wards that kept them out.” A long pause, like the words were choked out of him. “Things are different now. It’s not safe to travel alone at night—especially if you’re human.”

Weren’t humans always unsafe in fairyland? Yous guys were at war.

This would also be a good time for Feyre to reflect on the fact that she’s been kinda wrong about how the world beyond the wall works but, eh.

“What else is different now?” I asked, trailing him up the marble front steps.

He didn’t stop this time, didn’t even look over his shoulder to see me as he said, “Everything.”

Like, idk, Feyre. The fact they have masks fused to their faces is one of the things that’s different. In fact, kinda all they’ve talked about with you since you arrived is how things are different now? It’s come up in almost every conversation.

But anyway.

After a section break, Feyre finally accepts that she’s definitely gonna stay in Prythian forever.

As much as I longed to ensure that Tamlin’s word about caring for my family was true, as much as his claim that I was taking better care of my family by staying away—even if I was truly fulfilling that vow to my mother by staying in Prythian … Without the weight of that promise, I was left hollow and empty.

Those are the same thing, Feyre.

I turned the page hoping that this would be where she had some moment of further introspection where she realizes that the vow wasn’t important and only fomented resentment or something and she regrets it all worked out that way, but obviously that doesn’t happen. I assume it will at some point because it’s the natural progression of her character arc.

Just like I assume Tamlin is going to turn out to be a great guy and Lucien is going to be an evil villain.

I’m not skipping this next part, it’s just exposition in a paragraph. I wanted yous all to know that before you thought, Jenny, why would you skip a huge chunk of the book. I did not skip a huge chunk of the book. The book skipped a huge chunk of the book. The following is all exposition in a couple of paragraphs.

Feyre starts joining Lucien on patrol and she brings her bow and arrow with her every time but it makes her think about how one arrow changed her fate and when she tries to shoot a doe, she changes her mind.

Then it’s off to dinner!

No, really. Imagine the scene that just got skipped over. Plot and character development happened in that moment for Feyre, and it was consigned to a couple of paragraphs before moving on to talk more about Tamlin. Literally, the female main character’s arc is happening in the background of her own story while the author fixates on the male characters.

Feyre mentions that Tamlin leaves dinner early all the time now.

On the third night after my encounter with the puca, I’d scarcely sat down before Tamlin got up, giving an excuse about not wanting to waste hunting time.

Lucien and I stared after him for a moment.

What I could see of Lucien’s face was pale and tight. “You worry about him,” I said.

Lucien slumped in his seat, wholly undignified for a Fae lord. “Tamlin gets into … moods.”

Oh good. Yous all know how I love “moody” male characters.

“He prefers being alone. And having the Bogge on our lands … I don’t suppose you’d understand. The puca are minor enough not to bother him, but even after he’s shredded the Bogge, he’ll brood over it.”

Sweet, he’s gonna stay moody, too. Gosh, I hope someone cracks his moody shell and overlooks rudeness or mistreatment at his hands to prove her love or whatever.

I’m not saying that’s going to happen, I’m just saying it’s a trope I wouldn’t be shocked by in this book.

“And there’s no one who can help him at all?”

“He would probably shred them for disobeying his order to stay away.”

A brush of ice slithered across my nape. “He would be that brutal?”

Feyre, who has spent this whole fucking book so far talking about how cruel and inhumane fairies are, is shocked that a fairy would be cruel and inhumane.

But again, let me tell you how much I love moody characters who refuse help but continue being “moody.”

Lucien explains that you can’t hold onto power by being friends, and fairies aren’t scared of any consequence other than death. Of course, his actual words are:

“[…]We’re too powerful, and too bored with immortality, to be checked by anything else.”

which doesn’t make sense to me because if they’re “bored by immortality” then how would death be a deterrent? I’m not objecting to the use of “immortal” as meaning “won’t die of natural causes” but I’m 100% objecting to the idea that people who are bored of living forever would view death as a horrible punishment rather than a reward.

It seemed like a cold, lonely position to have, especially when you didn’t particularly want it. I wasn’t sure why it bothered me so much.

A. Because it’s what you just went through with your vow to your mother B. You’re gonna fuck him  the answer is C. Probably, all of the above.

After a section break, we’re in a nightmare Feyre is having about shooting Andras. She’s aware in the dream that she doesn’t want to shoot him, but she doesn’t have the choice to stop. After she shoots him, he transforms and she realizes that she’s skinned him in his faery form. Here’s some of the imagery that really jumped out at me:

One shot—one shot straight through that golden eye.

A plume of blood splattering the snow, a thud of a heavy body, a sigh of wind. No.

Love “a plume of blood” because you can really see the arterial spray.

I blinked, and then—then my hands were warm and sticky with blood, then his body was red and skinless, steaming in the cold, and it was his skin—his skin—that I held in my hands, and—

One of the things that’s been overall bugging me about this book is that Maas seemed so reluctant to show these dark and brutal things the fae do, but she mentioned them all the time. It was consistently, “or worse” and “they could eat you” but we didn’t see this stuff. We never saw anybody weeping over a mangled body found in the woods. Feyre never has a memory of someone being attacked, someone she knew, anything to connect her to the violence she was telling us about. I really, really liked this nightmare because it goes so much further and shows us graphic gore. Now, is graphic gore necessary for every fantasy story? No, obviously not. But if you’re going to talk about blood and death and violence and then never really show any, you’re gonna lose me. And this nightmare sequence upped the stakes both in terms of delivering on the promise of darkness and showing us that on at least some subconscious level, Feyre is starting to understand what she’s actually done to Andras. He’s not just a random faery, he’s a person she killed and skinned and even if she didn’t mean to, it happened.

Then, she wakes up and blames her family for her lack of self-examination:

Perhaps it was the quiet, the hollowness, of the past few days—perhaps it was only that I no longer had to think hour to hour about how to keep my family alive, but … It was regret, and maybe shame, that coated my tongue, my bones.

Regret is like almond milk. It coats the tongue.

And the chapter hook? Is that she gets out of bed.

A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter 10 or “No, she didn’t copy Harry Potter.”

As promised, I’m importing the A Court of Thorns and Roses recaps here from Patreon. These were originally written beginning in August of 2020, so there will be references to upcoming or seasonal events that won’t fit with our current timeline. I am not a time traveler and you’ll never be able to prove that I am. I will also include editors notes like this every now and then as we go, mostly to amuse myself but to give re-read value to those who’ve already been on this awful, awful journey with me.

We just left Feyre on an actually decent chapter hook, so I really did think that we’d come back to a chapter that started out like, “After my scary afternoon ride with Lucien, Alis bathed me again and here is the sumptuous outfit I turned down because I’m not like other girls and then we ate dinner.” But to my surprise, we actually do pick right back up in the action.

The description of the encounter is really tense and well-written, which proves that Maas can actually write. Apparently, it comes and goes, but this part of the book is excellent. What basically happens during the encounter is that Feyre becomes increasingly cold and scared and desperate to look at the thing Lucien said not to look at. It’s a long section without anything to really criticize, so I’m just going to show you the bits and pieces that really stuck out to me as being great imagery/characterization/turn of phrase.

My blood froze as a creeping, leeching cold lurched by.

and

Even the balmy spring woods seemed to recoil, to wither and freeze.

really set a creepy tone.

I will grind your bones between my claws; I will drink your marrow; I will feast on your flesh. I am what you fear; I am what you dread … Look at me. Look at me.

OH GOD IT’S MY CELL PHONE BILL

Basically, reading this passage is exactly like getting that weird feeling that you should run, the one that strikes the moment you turn off the last light before going to your room at night.

I stared at the coarse trunk of a distant elm, thinking of pleasant things. Like hot bread and full bellies— 

I will fill my belly with you. I will devour you. Look at me. 

A starry, unclouded night sky, peaceful and glittering and endless. Summer sunrise. A refreshing bath in a forest pool. Meetings with Isaac, losing myself for an hour or two in his body, in our shared breaths.

This is great characterization for Feyre and we should have been seeing more of this way earlier. We’ve gone this entire time with Feyre straight-up telling the reader, “woe is me, I’m poor.” But when we see her happy thoughts here, they’re very simple in a way that tells you there isn’t much joy in her life if the highlights are not being hungry and occasionally hooking up with a guy she’s not that into. This is what we needed throughout to view Feyre as a person and not a high-tech robot designed to whine constantly and demand sympathy from everyone it passes. THIS is what could make Maas a genuine legend as opposed to like, the YA version of George R.R. Martin (he’s a good storyteller but a bad writer fight me), but she doesn’t seem interested in consistently doing it.

Finally, the thing leaves and everything goes back to normal.

And then:

Lucien’s russet eye was dark as he answered hoarsely. “No. It was a creature that should not be in these lands. We call it the Bogge. You cannot hunt it, and you cannot kill it. Even with your beloved ash arrows.” 

“Why can’t I look at it?” 

“Because when you look at it—when you acknowledge it—that’s when it becomes real. That’s when it can kill you.”

A long time ago, even before I ever planned to recap this book, I mentioned to someone that I’d given up on it before and they were like, “Well, she ripped off Harry Potter, anyway.” And I was like, that’s weird, because I thought it was a fairytale or whatever. And they were like, she uses a lot of J.K. Rowling’s world-building,” and I thought, wait, are you confusing her with Cassandra Clare?

The second I read this passage, I knew exactly what this person was talking about. That Maas had somehow copied the boggart from Harry Potter. Which made total sense because this person was 100% Harry Potter obsessed and often felt that other forms of media copied it. But bogge is just one of the many words for the creature from folklore that becomes your worst nightmares. Bogge, Boggart, Bogle, Boogey, Boogey Man, they’re all used to describe the same thing.

And some Harry Potter fans need to read something else. ed.—I have revised this opinion; all Harry Potter fans need to read something else. But in an interesting twist, Maas’s books have become so popular that her fans now accuse other authors of ripping her off, with anything from, “Your book is a noun of noun and noun, you copied SJM!” to “Fairy courts? You know Sarah J. Maas like, invented those, right?”

A shiver spider-walked down my spine.

A description so nice, she’s now used it twice. It’s just way too distinctive to repeat twice in the same book. Or at least, within seven chapters of each other.

This was the Prythian I’d expected—the creatures that made humans speak of them in hushed tones even now. The reason I hadn’t hesitated, not for a heartbeat, when I’d considered the possibility of that wolf being a faerie.

Hey, speaking of that, maybe you should say this out loud to Lucien in an attempt to get him to understand why you killed Andras? Like, maybe you guys could have a conversation that advances the plot a little?

After an hour of meandering through the trees, hardly speaking to each other, I’d stopped trembling enough to turn to him.

Or not.

“So you’re old,” I said.

Like, at all. Even though you’re trying to win him over to your side and you could have had a single conversation to show him your perspective. But if that happened, the plot might advance in a way the author didn’t plan out on post-its, so it simply cannot happen.

Feyre asks Lucien if he fought in the fairy war or whatever from long ago. And he says:

“Shit, Feyre—I’m not that old.”

That’s right. Lucien the High Fae speaks as if E.L. James wrote him.

Feyre asks if he’s a warrior, but what she’s really trying to find out is whether or not Lucien would actually kill her. Lucien says he’s not as good a warrior as Tamlin is, but he knows how to fight.

“Would you like me to teach you how to wield a blade, or do you already know how, oh mighty mortal huntress? If you took down Andras, you probably don’t need to learn anything. Only where to aim, right?” He tapped on his chest.

Okay, surely now she’s going to point out that she’d been as afraid of Andras as she was of the bogge, right? Because this is the perfect place to–

“I don’t know how to use a sword. I only know how to hunt.”

We’re getting closer though, right? She’s going to bring it up, eventually.

Probably after this:

Lucien fell silent, considering. “I suppose you humans are such hateful cowards that you would have wet yourself, curled up, and waited to die if you’d known beyond a doubt what Andras truly was.”

Surely, this is the lead-in that Feyre needs to make Lucien understand that she’s not a murderer, she was protecting her own life.

“Do you ever stop being such a prick?” I snapped back. 

Dead—really, truly, I should have been dead for that. 

But Lucien grinned at me. “Much better.” 

Alis, it seemed, had not been wrong.

As you may have expected, Feyre does not address or engage the subject of Andras at all. But that’s not what the scene was for. The scene was for Feyre to show what a badass she is and to make it clear that Lucien admires her moxie.

There’s a section break, and Feyre describes her “tentative truce” with Lucien as going away as soon as it’s, say it with me, DINNER TIME!

Tamlin isn’t happy that Feyre has gone off with Lucien:

Tamlin was lounging in his usual seat, a long claw out and circling his goblet. It paused on the lip as soon as I entered, Lucien on my heels. His green eyes pinned me to the spot.

Look, every author accidentally fucks up pronoun referral. But it’s so fucking consistent in this that I might as well be struggling through The Time Traveler’s Wife.

But also? Gotta love a guy who gets menacing when jealous.

Tamlin slowly looked at Lucien, whose face had turned grave. “We went on a hunt,” Lucien said. 

“I heard,” Tamlin said roughly, glancing between us as we took our seats. “And did you have fun?” Slowly, his claw sank back into his flesh.

I can’t help but imagine Tamlin moving in slow motion while everyone else is moving at normal speed here.

Tamlin asks if Lucien caught anything, and Feyre thinks Lucien wants her to jump into the conversation but she doesn’t have anything to add. I guess he’s either wanting her to bring up the bogge or keep the conversation rolling so he doesn’t have to mention it? It’s not super clear.

Lucien’s throat bobbed. “The Bogge was in the forest today.” 

The fork in Tamlin’s hand folded in on itself. He said with lethal calm, “You ran into it?”

Wasn’t all the stuff on the table made of pure gold? Unless I’m misremembering and the cutlery is all steel or something, bending it is not really that spooky or impressive. But also, I hate that I know there is going to be a love triangle between these characters, yet she’s supposed to be afraid of them to the point that she describes them as lethal.

Metal groaned as Tamlin’s claws punched out, obliterating the fork.

Again, if it’s gold I’m not all that impressed because gold is soft as hell. And speaking of which, if the cutlery was all gold which I’m pretty sure she mentioned, how the fuck is that knife she stole going to protect her?

I’m getting off track. What we really need to figure out is how he’s holding this bent fork that his claws come out of the backs of his knuckles and slice up something in his palm. Did they go through his hands? What is happening here?

He rose to his feet with a powerful, brutal movement. I tried not to tremble at the contained fury, at how his canines seemed to lengthen as he said, “Where in the forest?” 

Lucien told him. Tamlin threw a glance in my direction before stalking out of the room and shutting the door behind him with unnerving gentleness. 

Lucien told him but the author wasn’t super interested in describing the magic forest in her fairy kingdom. That’s boring. Let’s go to dinner and talk about how much we hate wearing pretty clothes.

Tamlin is going to kill the bogge, which he can do but Lucien can’t. 

The gruff High Fae halfheartedly flattering me was capable of killing a thing like the Bogge. And yet he’d served me himself that first night, offered me life rather than death. I’d known he was lethal, that he was a warrior of sorts, but…

Is he lethal? You’ve never described him as lethal. Or a warrior. Thanks for knowing in advance that I have a short-term memory that spans five whole minutes and that I would need to be constantly reminded of shit that’s already been way overstated.

The Stockholm syndrome is so real here. Oh wow, he can murder people but he gave me food whoa, now I see him in a whole different light!

I had no idea how anyone could face that immortal horror, but … it wasn’t my problem.

And just because Lucien wasn’t going to eat anymore didn’t mean I wouldn’t.

This is the first time I have genuinely liked Feyre, I think. I wish she had been this way the whole time. Just minding her business, eating food and giving zero fucks.

But then she goes to her room and starts giving a fuck again.

I sharpened the knife I’d hidden away on a bit of stone I’d taken from the garden. An hour passed—and still Tamlin didn’t return.

What if he doesn’t return, Feyre? Does that mean you’ll be free? Is that like, something you might want to have run through your mind?

Nope, instead, she thinks she’s silly to wait up for his return. She’s about to go to bed when she sees something moving in the garden.

Not Tamlin—but someone lurked by the hedges, facing the house. Looking toward me. 

Male, hunched, and— 

The breath went out of me as the faerie hobbled closer—just two steps into the light leaking from the house. 

Not a faerie, but a man.

My father.

Oooh spooky chapter hook! I bet it isn’t some form of faerie tricky or anything totally predictable like that because so far this book has been a thrill-ride of totally unforeseeable twists and turns.

A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter 9, or “I don’t think I’m reading the same book you’re writing.”

As promised, I’m importing the A Court of Thorns and Roses recaps here from Patreon. These were originally written beginning in August of 2020, so there will be references to upcoming or seasonal events that won’t fit with our current timeline. I am not a time traveler and you’ll never be able to prove that I am. I will also include editors notes like this every now and then as we go, mostly to amuse myself but to give re-read value to those who’ve already been on this awful, awful journey with me.

The prompt for this text window was “how’s your next thing coming?” and like, you’re gonna have to be more specific, Patreon. This is the year of Chaotic Creation and I have my fingers in so many pies at the moment.

But I’ll never forget my true passion, reading really popular books and becoming so increasingly disillusioned about the publishing industry that I am slowly turning into a chestnut.

Now, if you don’t remember that Feyre’s plan is to somehow win over Lucien to intervene with Tamlin re: her captivity, don’t worry. It gets repeated several times in this chapter. But that’s what’s happening when Feyre is being bathed yet again.

Hygiene is an astonishingly large presence in this book.

Anyway, Feyre is waiting for the servants to run her bath and she’s thinking:

Tamlin had mentioned that he and Lucien had various duties, and aside from running into him in the house yesterday, I’d seen neither of them around. So, locating Lucien—alone—would be the first order of business.

Now is as good a time as any to reiterate how bewildering Feyre’s logic is with regard to this plan of manipulating a High Fae who hates her and her entire species,  who specifically wants her killed, into doing her this big favor. It doesn’t make sense, considering Tamlin is the one who’s been kind.

Feyre asks Alis where Lucien will be that day and it turns out, he has guard duty. Feyre heads out to the stables, where she’s startled by Tamlin.

How had he crept up so silently on the gravel? Faerie stealth, no doubt.

…uh. I’m not sure it was ever in doubt that someone creeping up is stealthy.

Anyway, Tamlin asks if she set trip wires the night before and she’s like,  no because I trust you when you say nobody’s gonna hurt me, and then he tells her he doesn’t have to work that morning and she notices how hot he is:

Indeed, his usual tunic was off, the baldric gone, and the sleeves of his white shirt had been rolled up to the elbows to reveal tanned forearms corded with muscle.

Rolled up sleeves and tanned forearms corded with muscle? Trout likey.

#TeamTamlinsForearms ed.—#TeamLiterallyNothingElseAboutHimOrThisBook

He asks if she’d like to ride with him to see the rest of the grounds. As in, he is seeking out her company intentionally. So, this High Fae who can decide whether Feyre lives or dies is open to dialogue, to talking to her. This is the opening she’s hoping to get…with Lucien?

But Feyre interprets his invite as somehow forced or inauthentic:

Again, that effort to be accommodating, even when every word seemed to pain him. Maybe he could eventually be swayed by Lucien.

OR BY YOU.

I guess maybe I’m just not understanding how Tamlin seems less likely to respond to overtures of friendship from a human than Lucien does. I just didn’t pick up on that in the text.

You know.

Where the characterization should go.

Of course, it’s not like Tamlin is any kind of prize, because this is his reaction when she declines his offer:

Tamlin clenched his hands into fists, as if fighting against the claws itching to burst out. But he didn’t reprimand me, didn’t do anything other than prowl back into the house without another word.

Boy oh boy, do I love heroes who are moved instantly to near-violence by the slightest rejection.

Soon enough, if I was lucky, Tamlin wouldn’t be my problem anymore. I hurried for the stables, tucking away the information. Maybe one day, if I was ever released, if there was an ocean and years between us, I would think back and wonder why he’d bothered.

…none of this addresses anything we’ve read during their interaction.

1. We already know that this is a mutual problem

2. He didn’t give her any information. He asks if she wants to go riding and she turns him down, and he leaves without further conversation. There is no new information revealed in this encounter.

3. Why he’d bothered with what? Honoring the centuries-old treaty but having a moral objection to executing humans? He has to. He’s explained that.

These are just random, unrelated sentences.

Was Maas a first-time author when this got picked up, or did she already have a hugely popular series out there somewhere that would justify releasing this draft of the novel?

Oh. Oh, I see. She had a hugely successful other fantasy series. Is it better than this one? ed.—it is not better than this one.

Feyre gets to the stables, where we learn that all the servants are cursed to wear horse masks.

For them I felt a shred of pity at what the blight had done, the ridiculous masks they now had to wear until someone could figure out how to undo the magic binding them to their faces.

Reminder: they have to wear these masks on their faces because of the blight. Hope you didn’t forget that.

Also, doesn’t really endear Feyre to me that she feels pity for the servants. Like, oh, these ones are meek and they’re serving me so they’re the good kind of people I hate? WTF.

She also notes that they don’t look at her and might be mad about the whole “being a faerie murderer” thing.

Any attempt at casualness took a stumble when I finally found Lucien astride a black gelding, grinning down at me with too-white teeth.

Don’t register this as a nitpick, but I wonder why they have to geld their horses. Like, if they can change into animals and shit, couldn’t they just talk to stallions and be like, “settle the fuck down and let me ride you, asshole!” or something? Like, surely the stable hands can turn into horses, right?

Which just opened up an absolute horror show of implications in my mind. Let’s get the fuck out of that idle train of thought, thank you very much.

On the other hand…how do we know the horses aren’t faeries, too? The one that Tamlin brought her on seemed to have a mind of its own, right? This is not to say horses don’t have a mind of their own. Just that when they have a mind of their own it is literally never in favor of anyone but the horse.

Wait, are they gelding faeries? Or are the horses gelded so they don’t fuck the stable people when they’re horses?

Clearly, we’re not getting off the train after all.

“Morning, Feyre.” I tried to hide the stiffening in my shoulders, tried to smile a bit. “Going for a ride, or merely reconsidering Tam’s offer to live with us?”

This dialogue is actually spoken by Lucien but the tag would never indicate that.

I tried to recall the words I’d come up with earlier, the words to win him, but he laughed—and not pleasantly.

If you’re trying to recall them, too, don’t bother. We weren’t privy to those thoughts.

At this point, we enter the world of huge block paragraphs, so expect a fair amount of summing up because again, they tell us a lot of shit we already know.

Lucien invites Feyre to ride out on a hunt with him. He even gives her a weapon. Feyre notes again that the stable faeries don’t pay any attention to her. Despite acknowledging that she’s never hunted on a horse before and doesn’t even know how to chase game, she’s going out with him because this has all worked out super conveniently. 

“No ash arrows today, unfortunately.”

I clenched my jaw to keep a retort from slipping off my tongue. If he was forbidden from hurting me, I couldn’t fathom why he would invite me along, save to mock me in whatever way he could. Perhaps he was truly that bored. Better for me.

You really shouldn’t bother making a retort in this case, anyway. Because that would make you a real bitch, Feyre. You killed his friend, you haven’t shown any true remorse, and you stalk around complaining about them…not killing you? And forcing you to live in luxury instead?

I don’t know. Maybe I’m shallow. But if someone showed up and was like, hey, I should kill you but instead, come away from your shit family and have a life of unparalleled opulence the likes of which you could never dream, I would be like, wow, did I ever luck out. Thanks for not killing me for my honest mistake/self-defense.

I don’t need her to be grateful to them. I need her to acknowledge that life is better in faerie land and that if she “escapes,” she’ll be in a much worse situation. Then, I need to hear why she would prefer that. Because the thing is, we’re supposed to be feeling that she’s strong and brave and true of heart because she wants to keep this vow to her family. But if she does go back to them, she’ll actively hurt their chances at survival. We already know that their lives have vastly improved, so technically, escaping would break her vow. What, then, is the impetus for seeking escape?

There isn’t one. There is no reason at all at this point for Feyre to continue trying to escape to fulfill her vow to her family. We need new motivation.

For example, if Feyre went, “Wait, this blight could hurt my people, too? Maybe I should stay here and make it my mission to help stop the blight,” she would be a) fulfilling her vow and b) not whining about the escape we all know she’s not gonna make.

Anyway, they ride out on their hunt and Feyre describes the staggering unbelievable beauty of the landscape that looks basically like any damn forest with trees in it that could exist right here on our own earth because why put any fucking effort into establishing a truly cool and unusual fantasy world when people are gonna shit themselves about your imagination and incredible world-building anyway?

But lest you think she’s like other girls, she sees flowers and has this reaction:

Those were things that weren’t necessary to my plans, useless details that only blocked out everything else: the shape and slope of the path, what trees were good for climbing, sounds of nearby water sources. Those things could help me survive if I ever needed to.

Without a valid motivation to escape, all this does is remind us that Feyre is a Strong character. You don’t have to explain or justify Strong. You just have to repeatedly show your character being Strong in the face of a plot you don’t seem to have thought too hard about.

Feyre thinks about the differences between the bow she used at home and the one she’s carrying now and how she probably wouldn’t be able to shoot this one, anyway.

Let me tell you how fucking shocked I was to get to the end of this chapter without Feyre somehow pulling off an amazing shot even Lucien missed or something like that.

“Well?” Lucien pressed. “No game good enough for you to slaughter? We’ve passed plenty of squirrels and birds.”

Like, I was convinced at this point that Feyre was going to shoot a sparrow in flight or something that would make me go, you know what? Recapping isn’t the job for me anymore. It’s time to go back to college and finish that mortuary science degree.

Luckily, that does not happen and I can continue working pantsless, which is largely frowned upon in the funeral industry.

Feyre tells him that they seem to do all right without her hunting help. Then she smells lilacs and enjoys the smell of them for a second before remembering that flowers are not useful. Feyre asks why, if Lucien is Tamlin’s emissary, he’s patrolling the grounds.

The answer is, because the author needed it to happen.

But he tells Feyre that it was Andras’s job and now he’s doing it. And for some reason, this is what makes Feyre realize that maybe she should, idk, feel any remorse for killing Andras.

Andras had a place here, and friends here—he hadn’t been just some nameless, faceless faerie. No doubt he was more missed than I was. “I’m … sorry,” I said—and meant it. “I didn’t know what—what he meant to you all.”

Can Feyre just once, for the love of everything sacred, acknowledge that other people have feelings without mentioning that she has it fucking worse? Just once? ed.—She cannot and does not.

Feyre may be the most self-obsessed character I’ve ever read, and remember, I read part of Grey.

Lucien shrugged. “Tamlin said as much, which was no doubt why he brought you here. Or maybe you looked so pathetic in those rags that he took pity on you.”

“I wouldn’t have joined you if I’d known you would use this ride as an excuse to insult me.” Alis had mentioned that Lucien could use someone who snapped back at him. Easy enough.

Or, Alis was trying to get you killed. I mean, let’s be real here: if it was safe to snap back at him, why hasn’t she?

He smirks and apologizes.

I might have called him a liar for that apology had I not known he couldn’t lie. Which made the apology … sincere? I couldn’t sort it out.

Since we know that Feyre has been wrong about everything else, why does she assume she’s still right about the lying thing? Is this setting us up for a double-cross later and whoever crosses her will be like, “Ha ha, we can lie after all!” and she’ll be shocked and hurt or something?

“So,” he said, “when are you going to start trying to persuade me to beseech Tamlin to find a way to free you from the Treaty’s rules?” 

I tried not to jolt. “What?” 

“That’s why you agreed to come out here, isn’t it? Why you wound up at the stables exactly as I was leaving?” He shot me a sideways glance with that russet eye of his. “Honestly, I’m impressed—and flattered you think I have that kind of sway with Tamlin.”

Can he read minds? That would be awesome, if he just dropped that bombshell like, “Yeah, my magic eye can see your thoughts.”

“Before you waste one of your precious few human breaths, let me explain two things to you. One: if I had my way, you’d be gone, so it wouldn’t take much convincing on your part. Two: I can’t have my way, because there is no alternative to what the Treaty demands. There’s no extra loophole.”

“Loophole” is the word that makes me suspect he can read thoughts. Feyre has used it five times in thirty pages, according to Kindle, so when Lucien uses the same word, it feels very intentional.

“I admire your balls, Feyre—I really do. Or maybe it’s stupidity. But since Tam won’t gut you, which was my first choice, you’re stuck here. Unless you want to rough it on your own in Prythian, which”—he looked me up and down—“I’d advise against.”

Your balls. See, balls are masculine and that’s much better than feminine, so this shows us that other people see how Not Like Other Girls she is.

No—no, I couldn’t just … just stay here. Forever. Until I died. Maybe … maybe there was some other way, or someone else who could find a way out. I mastered my uneven breathing, shoving away the panicked, bleating thoughts.

This just doesn’t make any sense. Winding up in Prythian fixes all of her problems.

she’s away from her shitty family she hatesshe’s no longer expected to wait hand and foot on anyonein fact, the oppositeher family is being cared for, fulfilling her vowshe can paint all fucking day if she wants, probablyshe isn’t starving anymore

Maybe I’m just not understanding something here. Maybe I’m a selfish, cruel, unfeeling person to think that if my family treated me like shit and expected me to be the sole breadwinner and then said to never come back, I wouldn’t feel too bad about this arrangement that’s working out for everyone.

That’s probably because I’m not a strong enough character.

Strength is never rethinking your initial plan or adjusting for new information. Just plow straight ahead, listening to no one.

She asks where the rest of the court is, and he’s like, how do you know about the court, and Feyre is like, idk, most regular-ass houses don’t have emissaries. Then she says that servants chatter and asks if that’s why they made them wear bird masks.

Now, this should not be the number one priority here, okay? I don’t give a shit why the servants have bird masks.

Lucien scowled, that scar stretching. “We each chose what to wear that night to honor Tamlin’s shape-shifting gifts. The servants, too. But now, if we had the choice, we’d peel them off with our bare hands,” he said, tugging on his own. It didn’t move.

Yes, we know that they can’t take their masks off. Trust your reader to internalize information, even if your heroine can’t.

That said, I know I repeat a lot of points in these recaps. I trust you. I’m just in disbelief and need to express it so it doesn’t build up like an urgent but stubborn poop on a long drive. 

“What happened to the magic to make it act that way?”

The blight, Feyre.

See what I meant about not internalizing information?

Lucien let out a harsh laugh. “Something was sent from the shit-holes of Hell,” he said, then glanced around and swore. “I shouldn’t have said that. If word got back to her—”

Bet money “she” is the villain and “she” is the only other fuckable woman in this story.

Also, a reference to “Hell” implies there are Christians and Muslims in Prythian because they’re the ones who believe in it.

Prythian was ruled by seven High Lords—perhaps this she was whoever governed this territory; if not a High Lord, then a High Lady.

Surely, we’re not still relying on Feyre’s understanding of Prythian for worldbuilding, are we? Since it’s all been wrong so far?

Feyre asks Lucien how old he is, and he tells her just “old,” and then she’s like btw, what are your powers? Please state them clearly to the reader so I don’t have to reveal them via action:

“Trying to figure out my weaknesses so you can—” I glowered at him. “Fine. No, I can’t shape-shift. Only Tam can.”

Again, this dialogue is delivered by Lucien, not Feyre. 

So, if only Tamlin can shape-shift, why was Andras a wolf? Because Tamlin used his power to shift Andras into a wolf so he wouldn’t be detected by humans.

Why a wolf? Why not a bug or something? Because humans kill wolves, right? Why be anything a human would want to kill? Feels like Tamlin kind of painted a target on him.

“Anyway,” Lucien went on, “the High Fae don’t have specific powers the way the lesser faeries do. I don’t have a natural-born affinity, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t clean everything in sight or lure mortals to a watery death or grant you answers to whatever questions you might have if you trap me. We just exist—to rule.”

So,  is Tamlin not a High Fae, then? Because he has a specific power.

We learn of the existence of an old and dangerous type of faerie called Suriel, who have to tell the truth if captured. But Lucien is like, fat chance you’re gonna get their help, drop it or you’ll be imprisoned in the castle for your own damn good.

 Feyre asks Lucien how he got his scar, and he’s like, because I talked back to the wrong person. Not Tamlin, though. Tamlin supplied Lucien’s new eye.

All of a sudden, Lucien gets real, real nervous and warns Feyre to drop her weapons and stare straight ahead, despite the spooky bush-rustling happening around them. Even the horses are afraid, but they keep walking ahead until the chapter hook:

And then I felt it.

So, we get to see what she feels in chapter ten,  I guess.

A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter eight, or “Dinner Vu”

As promised, I’m importing the A Court of Thorns and Roses recaps here from Patreon. These were originally written beginning in August of 2020, so there will be references to upcoming or seasonal events that won’t fit with our current timeline. I am not a time traveler and you’ll never be able to prove that I am. I will also include editors notes like this every now and then as we go, mostly to amuse myself but to give re-read value to those who’ve already been on this awful, awful journey with me.

The prompt that showed up in the text window here? It was “What’re you thinking about?” Leaving aside how weirdly informal that contraction is (we’re not bros, Patreon blog post composition window. This is a work thing only), the thing I’m thinking about is how frustrating this book is.

Do you like stories that outright tell you to strap the fuck in because there are gonna be a huge series of super boring and repetitive events coming up? Well, boy howdy. Have I got a book for you.

Chapter Eight opens in the garden that Alis told Feyre not to go into alone. She’s there, alone, because she shook her escort, the guy who could protect her from the stuff that will get her if she goes into the garden alone.

As one does.

You might be thinking, but wait! At the end of the last chapter, Feyre said she would find out soon enough whether or not the High Fae would warn humans about this magical blight souring the land. We must have moved onto the scene where that happens.

Alas, dear Patrons, it appeared to be the only way the author could figure out how to hook the reader into the next chapter. Maybe she meant for chapter seven and the beginning of chapter eight to be together, but it made chapter seven too long? Either way, it’s the worst possible way to set up a hook. “I’m going to find out something later and it’s super foreboding and ominous, just wait until you turn the page…SIKE! Still in the fucking garden!”

We’re also still doing the dance of whether or not to escape, whether escape is possible, and whether or not Feyre has weapons:

I pretended to meander through the exquisite and silent gardens, mentally marking the paths and clever places for hiding if I ever needed them. He’d taken my weapons, and I wasn’t stupid enough to hope for an ash tree somewhere on the property with which to make my own. 

You pretended to meander through the garden and find places for hiding? That doesn’t sound super useful. You should have actually done that, rather than just pretending.

Just in case you were wondering, she doesn’t have any weapons. It’s super important to mention that in every single scene because the author is pretty sure you’re as smart as a goldfish and you can’t remember from one scene to the next whether or not Feyre has her weapons.

Let’s not even cover the fact that she has already said, many times, that trying to fight would be futile. Or the fact that she needs an ash tree if she has any hopes of killing a faerie. Remember, the ash arrow isn’t the only thing that kills faeries, it’s just the only thing that gives a human a fighting chance against one. Feyre described the effects of ash as simply interfering with the faeries’ magic long enough for a human to have a chance to strike.

So…if the faery magic is already fucked up by the blight, why does she need the arrow to kill them?

Upon inspection the night before, I’d learned that there was no lock on my window. 

Feyre: oh no, am prisoner! much captive!
Tamlin: you can leave literally whenever you want. In fact, I don’t really want you to be here, so…
Feyre: such captured! oh, woe! oh imprisonment!
Tamlin: no, seriously. I’m not going to make you stay here. You can go anywhere you want.
Feyre: cruel beast! let feyre go!
Tamlin: I’m trying my ass off trying to get you to leave.
Feyre: am forced to languish here in my cell! am desperate for escape! oh injustice! an injustice on feyre!
Tamlin: Get out.

Sneaking out and rappelling down the wisteria vines wouldn’t be difficult at all—I’d climbed enough trees to not mind the height. Not that I planned to escape, but … it was good to know, at least, how I might do so should I ever be desperate enough to risk it.

Not that she planned to escape, just that she’s constantly talking about making plans to escape.  Where would we get such a silly idea?

I mean, that’s just about as silly as rappelling with a stiff wooden vine adhered to the building for structural support. But whatever, enjoy your ride.

She decides she’s better off in fairyland for now.

But not without trying to find someone who might plead my case to Tamlin.

You’ve already pled your case to Tamlin and he’s already told you that the only way to fulfill the treaty is for you to stay in fairyland. He doesn’t even want you there. Nobody wants you there. If they could send you back, don’t you think they would? I would. Within like twenty minutes I’d be like, “Eh, I’d prefer a race war, actually.”

Feyre remembers Alis saying that she thought Lucien could use a snapping at or whatever, and for some unknown reason, that makes Feyre think he might be a good person to win over.

I’d never been particularly good with words, had never learned the social warfare my sisters and mother had been so adept at, but … I’d been decent enough when selling hides at the village market.

The amount of Not Like Other Girls in this book astounds me. It’s actually kind of impressive, all the ways it gets shoehorned in. Feyre had never learned how to be a sneaky, underhanded bitch like every other woman in the story, but she’s naturally awesome at a task perceived as more practical.

She’s going to use these bargaining skills to convince Lucien, the dude whom she fully acknowledges wants to kill her, to convince Tamlin to take some other sort of action to fulfill the treaty:

If there even was one.

…there is. And it’s you being dead.

I’m becoming increasingly irritated with the fact that the author is bashing us over the head with shit we already know, yet can’t be bothered to have her heroine remember things consistently.

So, Feyre is still pretend meandering when:

A prickling sensation ran down my spine. I’d spent enough time in the woods to trust my instincts.

Well, clearly fucking not, if you’re wandering around the garden that Alis said would fucking murder you.

Feyre sees two flickers of light in the shape of “small figures” who giggle. They’re freaking her out when out of nowhere, Alis is calling Feyre for lunch.

Like, how long has Feyre been pretending to meander? Because in the last chapter she ate breakfast, got dressed, and ended up out here after looking at a painting. Is she a mouse? Does she need to eat twenty times a day?

After a section break, Feyre is back on the “I need weapons!” kick:

I stole a knife from dinner that night. Just to have something—anything—to defend myself with.

Then she notes that “dinner was the only meal I was invited to attend,” despite us seeing Alis call her into the house for lunch on this very same page. I guess that was just by herself? Either way, she’s fine with it because she doesn’t want to eat with High Fae, anyway.

I could endure an hour of sitting at their fancy table if it made them think I was docile and had no plans to change my fate.

I like how all the luxury she’s “enduring” is part of a clever ruse. Like, she doesn’t really want any of this stuff, she’s playing nine-dimensional chess so they’ll just think she’s not planning anything.

I supposed I should have pitied them for the masks they were forced to wear, for the blight that had infected their magic and people.

I mean, they’re not technically forced to wear the masks. They can be talking beast creatures, right? I would choose that over wearing a fucking mask all day.

We get details about Lucien’s glorious hair and his bejeweled sword that’s super fancy, though Feyre is confused about who he’d use a sword against since there’s nobody around.

Perhaps it had something to do with those invisible things in the garden.

Right, those invisible things you SAW WITH YOUR FUCKING EYES WORDS MEAN THINGS SARAH THEY MEAN THINGS. ed.—They do not mean anything to Maas, and they continue to not mean anything to her throughout the book.

Alis had said the house was safe, but warned me to keep my wits about me. What might lurk beyond the house—or be able to use my human senses against me? Just how far would Tamlin’s order not to harm me stretch? What kind of authority did he hold?

Can I answer this one? He has authority over the stuff in the house. Alis already explained that. So did he. And the stuff that’s lurking beyond the house is other fae. This has all been subtly explained with a bulldozer full of repetition over and over since they got there.

Lucien calls her out for staring at him, asking if she’s looking at the sword or planning to kill him and she’s like, no way.

His lazy, vicious grin was still there. Act civilized, behave, possibly win him to my side … I could do that.

Still not sure why LUCIEN is the one she has to win over. I get it, she thinks she’ll get nowhere with the guy who could have killed her but didn’t. Why she thinks she’ll get further with the guy who just straight up wants her killed, I have no idea. But I think I just need to stop questioning anything about this book. It’s the only way the story is going to work.

Tamlin says that Feyre likes to hunt, and she corrects him:

“I hunted out of necessity. And how did you know that?”

You…told him…you killed his friend and sold the pelt?

But no, the way Tamlin put two-and-two together was by…seeing the bow and arrows in her house.

“When I saw your father’s hands, I knew he wasn’t the one using them.”

Ah, yes. His soft, lazy hands that he uses to…carve wood. Not “scarred, callused hands” like Feyres.

Feyre once again comments on practical things she could buy for her family with Tamlin’s decadent treasures. This time, it’s a plate that sparks her ire. Then Lucien asks her how old she is, she says nineteen, he’s like, damn, you’ve got to be twenty-one to legally fulfill your obligation to the treaty and he takes her back to her village where she finds that her family already knew that and just used her absence to move away to where she can never find them because she’s insufferable.

I wish that’s what happens, but instead, Lucien just says she’s a skilled killer (because Feyre can only be insulted if those insults imply that she’s actually a badass) and she gets mad before she remembers that she’s trying to win them over:

Docile, unthreatening, tame … I’d made my mother a promise, and I’d keep it. Tamlin’s looking after my family wasn’t the same as my looking after them.

Oh, right. The promise. The promise Feyre made to her mother. Feyre’s mother’s promise.

Once again, I’m asking you to please trust that your readership isn’t made up entirely of goldfish.

Feyre goes on to fantasize a little about what it would mean to provide for her family and number one on the list is her sisters being “married off.” Feyre is so Not Like Other Girls that she’s gone full circle and become a medieval dude. ed.—I’m going to take a page out of Maas’s book and beat you over the head, dear Hater: she vociferously objected to her sister getting married in an earlier chapter.

Does Feyre get married off in this little daydream? Don’t be silly! She gets to follow her passion for painting! Her sisters get married off like brood mares, then she gets to follow her passion because she doesn’t need a man. See? It’s feminism!

“So is this what you do with your lives? Spare humans from the Treaty and have fine meals?” I gave a pointed glance toward Tamlin’s baldric, the warrior’s clothes, Lucien’s sword.

The way this is worded makes me think another character came in when I wasn’t looking, but she means that they both wear warrior clothes, I guess?

“Didn’t …,” Tamlin interrupted, his deep voice surprisingly gentle, “didn’t your mother tell you anything about us?”

And then Feyre is like, no, she didn’t have time to. And like…what? Someone has taught her about faeries. I don’t remember if it specifically was her mom, but she does think she knows something about them.

Then, Tamlin asks her how her mother died. And how did he know her mother is dead?

When I lifted my brows, he added a bit more softly, “I didn’t see signs of an older woman in your house.”

That’s the problem with those pesky older women. Just because you didn’t see signs of them doesn’t mean there isn’t an infestation.

Predator or not, I didn’t need his pity.

Again, while this probably sounded cool and tough in the author’s head, it just doesn’t make any sense. Predators aren’t known for showing pity, so it’s not like it’s a built-in function that you’d expect in the first place. And if she means she doesn’t need him to pity her to stay alive, that doesn’t make sense, either, since she’s only alive right now because of the pity he took on her in sparing her life.

But I said, “Typhus. When I was eight.”

I better never get trapped in a middling fantasy novel where everything is exactly like Earth because I will be furious and loud about it. ed.—the fact that Maas’s spectacular worldbuilding is often brought up with breathless praise will me furious until the day I die. She’s such an imaginative and skilled fantasy writer, but she can’t come up with anything better than a carbon-copy of Earth, complete with Earth diseases?

Feyre gets up to leave.

“Feyre,” Tamlin said, and I half turned. A muscle feathered in his cheek. 

Lucien glanced between us, that metal eye roving, but kept silent. Then Tamlin shook his head, the movement more animal than anything, and murmured, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

And we’re still supposed to think she’s got a better shot at digging deep and finding some kind of humanity in Lucien. Yeah, no sense in trying with this dude, he’s basically an animal, right?

I also refuse to imagine what a feathered muscle looks like.

When Feyre leaves without responding, she thinks:

Let Tamlin dismiss me as a rude, uncouth human not worth his careful watch.

I’m not sure I’m reading the book the author was writing because so far, Lucien has been the character dismissing her as human and not worth the trouble.

I’d be better off persuading Lucien to speak to Tamlin on my behalf—and soon, before any of the others whom they’d mentioned appeared, or this blight of theirs grew. Tomorrow—I’d speak to Lucien then, test him out a bit.

Writing Tip: when you decide you actually want one character to be the bad guy instead of the other, you need to go back and change that in the chapters you’ve already written.

Truly, I despair. I DNFed a different book last week and it had so many similar problems that I’ve decided Maas-style fantasy is a blight upon literature and it must be stopped. ed.—I truly believe that Sarah J. Maas, her fandom, and her copycats have done so much damage to traditionally published fantasy that it may never recover.

In my room, I found a small satchel in the armoire and filled it with a spare set of clothes, along with my stolen knife. It was a pitiful blade, but a piece of cutlery was better than nothing. Just in case I was ever allowed to go—and had to leave at a moment’s notice.

Just in case.

We’re 19% into the book. Gosh, I hope the remaining 81% is just more of Feyre planning to get away, then abandoning the plan as hopeless, then going back to the plan while simultaneously explaining why the plan will never work, rinse, repeat until Jenny’s eyes melt out of her fucking skull from the sheer heat of her rage at having read such a clumsy vomit draft she had to PAY FOR.

That’s it. That’s the chapter.

A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter 7 or “The Bold and the Beautiful”

As promised, I’m importing the A Court of Thorns and Roses recaps here from Patreon. These were originally written beginning in August of 2020, so there will be references to upcoming or seasonal events that won’t fit with our current timeline. I am not a time traveler and you’ll never be able to prove that I am. I will also include editors notes like this every now and then as we go, mostly to amuse myself but to give re-read value to those who’ve already been on this awful, awful journey with me.

Feyre is taken back to the dining room where the faeries are waiting and she continues to notice that these bros are rich. She’s thinking about how they have nothing back home, which naturally leads into:

A half-wild beast, Nesta had called me. But compared to him, compared to this place, compared to the elegant, easy way they held their goblets, the way the golden-haired one had called me human … we were all half-wild beasts to the High Fae.

Nothing in the opening paragraph connects in any way to thoughts about beasts or anything else but whatever, let’s go for it.

The Beast tells her again that the food is safe and she needs to eat, etc. He asks her what she wants and she thinks, like, escape? What the hell do you think she wants, Beast Dude?

Lucien notes that “Tamlin” has lost his game with the ladies in the past “decades,” and Feyre realizes for the first time that oh, wow, these guys could be really old.

I carefully studied their strange, masked faces—unearthly, primal, and imperious. Like immovable gods or feral courtiers.

That’s another one of those great lines that are just making me more and more furious as the book goes on. This is what I want to hear about. The deadliness. The scariness. Not, you know, whether or not the fairies find her hot, which of course is brought up immediately. Lucien makes a comment about how much better she looks but that she should have worn a dress.

Wolves ready to pounce—that’s what they were, just like their friend. I was all too aware of my diction, of the very breath I took as I said, “I’d prefer not to wear that dress.”

Gosh, I hope her dislike of dresses and her Strong Female Character insistence on wearing pants and not dresses is a topic of conversation from here on out.

“And why not?” Lucien crooned. 

It was Tamlin who answered for me. “Because killing us is easier in pants.”

It’s Tamlin, of course, who apparently sees that she’s a scrappy little fighter or whatever and that the clothing choice is based on that. Wow, he really sees her. Or whatever.

I’m being harsh here because something went sproing in my head in the middle of the night and I remembered that Tam Lin is a character from some ancient fairytale that druid-type people who like to go to Ren fairs tell their children instead of Cinderella or whatever. From what I remember of Bronwyn Green’s explanation, Tam Lin had to be rescued from capture by the fairy queen or something, so we’ll assume that Tamlin here is somehow oppressed by an evil fairy woman who is exactly like “other girls” because that’s the hell slope we’re skiing down and it’s liberally dotted with trees and boulders of internalized misogyny. ed. — This is the first time I’ve re-read these recaps since I wrote them and I’m astonished at how well I guessed this plot point.

Feyre asks the High Fae dudes what’s going to happen to her now that she’s their captive and Tamlin is just like, sit down. The table is set with all these amazing foods that she still hasn’t eaten.

The servants had probably brought out new food while I’d washed. So much wasted. I clenched my hands into fists.

How do you know that’s what happened, Feyre? This is a magic world with magic creatures. They could have magicked the food. They could have magicked some fucking sterno cans, you know?

Intent on packing in every fantasy novel cliche into his character as possible, Lucien makes a crack about how he won’t bite. Tamlin fixes Feyre a plate and somehow does it in a way that is “smooth and lethal; a predator blooded with power.”

I’m a bit insulted that my children have never praised the lethality of my dinner table skills. Never once.

Of course, Feyre is quick to point out that she can fix her own plate, but this time she’s not doing that Strong Female Character thing over a teensy stupid point. She actually just doesn’t want him to get any closer to her.

Tamlin paused, so close that one swipe of those claws lurking under his skin could rip my throat out. That was why the leather baldric bore no weapons: why use them when you were a weapon yourself?

Why wear a baldric if you’re not carrying weapons?

Tamlin points out that it’s an honor for a High Fae to be serving Feyre. I’m surprised she didn’t already know that from the incredibly detailed yet extremely vague stories she’s heard.

For some reason, Tamlin decides to compliment Feyre on the fact that her hair is clean and she looks better. Personally, I look forward to hearing more about how Feyre looks. I will never get enough of how Feyre looks. And that’s good because this chapter has a lot to provide in the “Feyre is gorgeous” department.

Still, I leaned back and kept my words calm and quiet, the way I might speak to any other predator.

You know how sometimes you write something and you think, wow, that is such a good metaphor, I’m a god of craft, and then you go back later and read it and you’re like, that doesn’t make any sense? She should have gone back later and read that and got that feeling. I get what she’s going for. It just falls apart the moment you think to yourself, “Wait, when she speaks to what, now?”

Anyway, that’s the tone of voice she uses to ask them if they’re High Fae (they are) and what’s gonna happen to her.

“What do you plan to do with me now that I’m here?”

Tamlin’s eyes didn’t leave my face. “Nothing. Do whatever you want.”

This marks the beginning of Feyre generally asking the wrong questions for getting the answers she needs. “Do whatever you want” is intensely open-ended. What’s the next thing she asks?

“So I’m not to be your slave?” I dared ask.

Lucien choked on his wine. But Tamlin didn’t smile. “I don’t keep slaves.”

Good to know, Tamlin, but you might also point out that were she to be your slave, that would not fall under “do whatever you want.”

See what I mean? She’s told she can do whatever she wants, she asks if she’s going to be a slave. These concepts are in polar opposition; the question has already been answered.

Feyre has mistaken this castle for the guidance counselor’s office and asks like, no, what am I supposed to do with my life now that I’m here? And Tamlin is like, I don’t care what you do, you can do whatever you want as long as you’re not a pain in the ass, and Feyre jumps the tracks and is like:

“So you truly mean for me to stay here forever.” What I meant was: So I’m to stay in this luxury while my family starves to death?

The relationships in a toxic family are tricky. You know that scene in Tangled where Rapunzel’s mom falls out the window to her death? You know how in spite of all the abuse and evil and kidnapping, and all the reasons Rapunzel has to not love and to even hate her mother, she still lunges forward to try and stop her from toppling out? I think that’s what’s happening here with Feyre. Otherwise, I have absolutely no idea why she would give a shit about her family again, suddenly, when she’s made it clear that she’d be fine if they died so long as she got to murder another faerie.

I didn’t mind begging—not for this. I’d given my word, and held to that word for so long that I was nothing and no one without it.

Hey! Look at that! A clear, understandable motive for why she kept her vow that she made to her shitty mother to take care of their shitty family. Do you know when this would have been helpful? Literally, any time before the “vow” started to feel like a forced and lazy plot device.

Feyre asks if there’s another way to atone, and Lucien is like, LOL bitch you haven’t even said you’re sorry yet. So Feyre does the bare minimum to apologize and it seems kind of sarcastic, and Lucien asks how she killed his friend.

My spine stiffened. “I shot him with an ash arrow. And then an ordinary arrow through the eye. He didn’t put up a fight. After the first shot, he just stared at me.”

“Yet you killed him anyway—though he made no move to attack you. And then you skinned him,” Lucien hissed.

“I didn’t know he was one of you,” Feyre would have said, had this book gone through more than a cursory glance at edits. She’s sitting here like, I killed this faerie, here’s how I did it. Awesome, Feyre, but you could be honest and say you didn’t know it was a faerie. And you can then be dishonest and say that you used the ash arrow because it was bigger and heavier and more likely to bring down a wolf that size.

I have a feeling that just not talking is going to be what drives like 900% of the entire series conflict.

Tamlin doesn’t want to hear the gruesome details of his friend’s death. Feyre responds by reminding him that her loved ones are still alive. Like one does in the face of someone else’s grief.

“My family won’t last a month without me.” Lucien chuckled, and I gritted my teeth. “Do you know what it’s like to be hungry?” I demanded, anger rising to devour any common sense. “Do you know what it’s like to not know when your next meal will be?”

Why is he supposed to care? Why are you calling upon the mercy of a creature you’ve spent the entire story describing as merciless?

But ha ha, check fucking mate, Feyre:

“Your family is alive and well-cared for. You think so low of faeries that you believe I’d take their only source of income and nourishment and not replace it?”

This is a much different picture of faeries than we’ve previously gotten. Like, you killed my friend, allow me to care for your family…doesn’t make sense. I’m not objecting to the idea that Feyre must have learned prejudice and, gasp, the humans might be the real bad guys. That’s a perfectly expectable fantasy novel plot. I’m just having a difficult time understanding why the humans need a treaty to protect them from these allegedly raping, murdering, eating-peopleing creatures that…lavish food and fine clothing upon their captives and make sure that their enemies don’t starve to death, or why mercenaries routinely have to fight against these hideous terrors who aren’t bad.

“Why should I trust a word you say? You’re all masters of spinning your truths to your own advantage.”

And here, right the fuck here, is what I mean by not asking the right questions. She knows they twist their words. So, when Tamlin said that Feyre could do whatever she wanted to do, that was the time when she should have said, “Do I have your word on that?” quickly followed up by, “I want to go home and you said I could.”

You’re playing by your captor’s rules, Feyre. Use that.

“Some would say it’s unwise to insult a Fae in his home,” Tamlin ground out. “Some would say you should be grateful for me finding you before another one of my kind came to claim the debt, for sparing your life and then offering you the chance to live in comfort.”

Okay, but are we ever going to find out…WHY? WHY is he letting you live in comfort? WHY did he specifically come claim the debt if he doesn’t want to deal with ungrateful humans living with him forever? These are some enormous plot holes. If a plot hole like this opened up in your yard, you’re losing your swimming pool, friend. If plot holes were sinkholes, this book would be the Yucatan Peninsula. If the plot were a dairy product, it would be swiss cheese. And none of these are a) difficult to catch or b) difficult to fix. It’s so frustrating to read.

Feyre’s response to this is to try to attack him. Remember, that one thing that was too dangerous to do? He uses magic to restrain her in her chair. She can’t move her arms or get up.

“I’m going to warn you once,” Tamlin said too softly. “Only once, and then it’s on you, human. I don’t care if you go live somewhere else in Prythian. But if you cross the wall, if you flee, your family will no longer be cared for.”

OMFG IS THAT MOTIVATION I SEE?! IS MOTIVATION ACTUALLY HAPPENING?!

Now, Feyre has something tangible hanging over her head. It’s not about the vow to her mother that she resents, it’s not the starvation keeping her there, it’s the fact that her family is being cared for–fulfilling her vow–and they won’t be if she leaves.

So far, the reasons we’ve been giving for why Feyre absolutely, positively must stay with Tamlin forever have been that the treaty demands it, that there’s some kind of magic component to the treaty that prevents her from leaving, that she’s starving, the faeries are too dangerous to chance it, it’s just been heaped up and heaped up in confusing and unconvincing ways and literally the only thing we needed to focus on ever is the part about her family.

I’m so relieved to know we’ve got at least a half-way decent reason for why she has no choice but to stay. Obviously, the thing about the vow would be way more believable if the entire first part of the book hadn’t been about how much her family sucks and she hates them and her mom also sucked but for some reason Feyre can’t bear to let dead mommy down but at least this is a start at…something.

His words were like a stone to the head.

Oh, if only.

If I escaped, if I even tried to run, I might very well doom my family. And even if I dared risk it … even if I succeeded in reaching them, where would I take them? I couldn’t stow my sisters away on a ship—and once we arrived somewhere else, somewhere safe, we’d have nowhere to live. But for him to hold my family’s well-being against me, to throw away their survival if I stepped out of line …

In chapter four, her entire plan is to put her family on a ship and sail away to be safe. Also, he’s been holding her family’s well-being against her since the second he showed up at her house. Why the constant retreading? We get it. She’s there. There are now good reasons she can’t leave. Let’s move on.

Tamlin tells Feyre that she can either eat or starve but the food isn’t tampered with, and he also says that Lucien will be “polite” which I guess it’s impolite to openly antagonize someone who murdered your friend?

One glance at Tamlin’s smoldering green eyes told me what I wanted to know: his guest or not, I wasn’t going to get up from this table until I’d eaten something.

Oh, his eyes are smoldering now, are they? And he’s controlling what you eat? Fantastic. This is exactly the type of thing I like to read in books, especially when I’m STRONGLY suspicious that she’s going to bone down with this dude.

Feyre gives in and eats like a wild person, just shoveling it in until Tamlin is like, yo, you’re gonna puke, no more food for you. He’s probably right but I’m still not super thrilled to see this theme running strong through every single genre aimed at the New Adult age bracket.

At least, we find out what Tamlin meant about Lucien being “polite”:

“It’s been a few decades since I last saw one of you,” Lucien drawled, “but you humans never change, so I don’t think I’m wrong in asking why you find our company to be so unpleasant, when surely the men back home aren’t much to look at.”

Sexual harassment was what Tamlin was talking about. It was sexual harassment.

Feyre wants to know why Lucien would bother sitting around with a human at all. I have a similar question, but specifically, why would anyone want to sit around with Feyre?

Lucien said, “True. But indulge me: you’re a human woman, and yet you’d rather eat hot coals than sit here longer than necessary. Ignoring this”—he waved a hand at the metal eye and brutal scar on his face—“surely we’re not so miserable to look at.” Typical faerie vanity and arrogance. That, at least, the legends had been right about. I tucked the knowledge away. “Unless you have someone back home. Unless there’s a line of suitors out the door of your hovel that makes us seem like worms in comparison.”

Writing tip: don’t be afraid of paragraph breaks.

There was enough dismissal there that I took a little bit of satisfaction in saying, “I was close with a man back in my village.” Before that Treaty ripped me away—before it became clear that you are allowed to do as you please to us, but we can hardly strike back against you.

Now, here’s where Feyre really fucks up, I think: Lucien and Tamlin give each other a look and Tamlin asks if she loved the dude and Feyre says no.

I have a feeling that’s going to come back to bite her or something. That true love would have made her obligation to stay in Prythian null and void. But if that does happen, if that’s a thing we discover? I wholly support Feyre’s reasoning for not saying she loved Isaac, which was that if she really did love him, she wouldn’t want Tamlin and Lucien to know he exists, anyway. That’s actually decent motivation there.

Tamlin questions her again about whether she loves anyone and she’s like, uh, is this really why you brought me here? Which thank you, Feyre, I would also like to know why their handsomeness and your sex life are the prime topics at this dinner.

Before heading off to bed, Feyre again asks Tamlin why he’s keeping her there, and he says he kills enough already and she’s not even going to make a blip on the radar of his life (I’m paraphrasing here) so why not let her just stay as long as she doesn’t kill anyone?

A faint warmth bloomed in my cheeks, my neck. Insignificant—yes, I was insignificant to their lives, their power. As insignificant as the fading, chipped designs I’d painted around the cottage. “Well …,” I said, not quite feeling grateful at all, “thank you.”

What are you complaining about? You were miserable and unappreciated at home, you’ll be miserable and unappreciated here. But you leveled up in the food, clothing, and not being murdered by your fellow villagers for rabbits department.

I gotta admit, it takes a lot of balls to murder someone’s friend, be granted mercy instead of a death sentence, receive a massive banquet and new clothes, then be like, woe, anguish, they’re not enthralled with me and making a big ole fuss.

This section ends with Feyre going to bed, and we rejoin her when she’s awake before dawn…remembering her sisters fondly?

Nesta must be stretching her legs and smiling at the extra room. She was probably content imagining me in the belly of a faerie—probably using the news as a chance to be fussed over by the villagers. Maybe my fate would prompt them to give my family some handouts. Or maybe Tamlin had given them enough money—or food, or whatever he thought “taking care” of them consisted of—to last through the winter. Or maybe the villagers would turn on my family, not wanting to be associated with people tied with Prythian, and run them out of town.

I love that nobody really has to be present or doing anything at all, Feyre will just victimize herself on their behalf.

If Tamlin had indeed provided for them, if those benefits would cease the moment I crossed the wall, then they’d likely resent my return more than celebrate it.

Your hair is … clean.

First of all, they told you to never come back. Second, how did thinking about Tamlin providing for her family lead to remembering that he complimented her on her clean hair? There is no connection here, but it leads into her thinking that surely Tamlin is somehow a nice High Fae who can help her find loopholes in the treaty so she can get away.

Because he said her hair was clean.

Alis enters and there’s a comical thing about her walking through a rope that Feyre had strung across the door to protect her from intruders.

Alis looked me over from head to toe. “You think a bit of rope snapping in my face will keep me from breaking your bones?” My blood went cold. “You think that will do anything against one of us?”

I’m actually starting to like Alis as a character because at first, she came off as a nice, doting, nanny-like figure and now she’s sinister as fuck out of nowhere. I hope that gets developed even more as we go along.

Feyre says the rope was a warning to give her time to run and Alis is like, yeah, that wouldn’t work, either.

Alis clicked her tongue. “At least you’re willing to put up a fight, girl. I’ll give you that.”

Have there been others? Ones who didn’t put up a fight? That’s what I want to know. But Feyre doesn’t ask.

Another bird-mask servant comes in with Feyre’s breakfast.

Alis poured me a cup of what looked and smelled like tea: full-bodied, aromatic tea, no doubt imported at great expense. Prythian and my adjoining homeland weren’t exactly easy to reach.

How does the main character of this fantasy novel keep forgetting that magic exists? Does she think that creatures that can make food appear and disappear on a table couldn’t do the same with a cup of fucking tea?

Feyre asks Alis what kind of place they’re in.

“It’s safe, and that’s all you need to know,” Alis said, setting down the teapot. “At least the house is. If you go poking about the grounds, keep your wits about you.”

Okay, so Feyre definitely is going to want to stay inside and not go outside at all, ever. Glad we got that settled.

Feyre asks Alis what kind of fairies she should stay away from.

“All of them,” Alis said. “My master’s protection only goes so far. They’ll want to hunt and kill you just for being a human—regardless of what you did to Andras.”

So, staying inside. She’s definitely not going to go outside. Again, glad this is settled. Also glad to learn that no, the fairies aren’t actually nice, after all.

I just realized that a book I had planned to revise/re-release has a hero named Andras and the fact that it was published in 2011 will mean nothing so I guess it’s back to the drawing board on that one.

Not because names are copyright or something. Just because I don’t want people to think I’m being snarky.

The point is, Alis has told Feyre that everyone in Prythian will want to kill her, which makes Tamlin’s offer to let Feyre just roam around the countryside on her own, for all that he cares, pretty much a death sentence.

When I was done eating and bathing, I refused Alis’s offer and dressed myself in another exquisite tunic—this one of purple so deep it could have been black. I wished I knew the name for the color, but cataloged it anyway. I pulled on the brown boots I’d worn the night before, and as I sat before a marble vanity letting Alis braid my wet hair, I cringed at my reflection.

I don’t remember Alis offering her anything. I guess she declined help getting dressed? Why not just say that?

Gird your loins, Dear Patron, for our heroine is in front of a mirror and cringing at her reflection. So, you know what time it is: Woe Is Me I’m Not Pretty Time.

It wasn’t pleasing—though not for its actual appearance. While my nose was relatively straight, it was the other feature I’d inherited from my mother. I could still remember how her nose would crinkle with feigned amusement when one of her fabulously wealthy friends made some unfunny joke.

We have reached an entirely new level of Not Like Other Girls. It’s not that Feyre is worried that she might be ugly. She tells us right off the bat that her appearance itself isn’t what’s horrible. No, what’s horrible is that she shares features with her horrible family. I mean, look at what she’s cursed with:

At least I had my father’s soft mouth, though it made a mockery of my too-sharp cheekbones and hollow cheeks. I couldn’t bring myself to look at my slightly uptilted eyes. I knew I’d see Nesta or my mother looking back at me. I’d sometimes wondered if that was why my sister had insulted me about my looks. I was a far cry from ugly, but … I bore too much of the people we’d hated and loved for Nesta to stand it. For me to stand it, too.

A soft mouth? Prominent cheekbones? THINNESS? Don’t even get me started on the “slightly uptilted eyes.” She says she’s “a far cry from ugly,” but her reflection is cringe-worthy because she looks like her shitty, shitty family.

I get it. Feyre got handed a raw deal in the family department. But I would sympathize with her and understand internal conflict better if she didn’t spend all her time talking about how much she hates them. Because now she’s in a palace with everything she ever dreamed of and I’m supposed to think she’s desperate to get back to these people who made her so gorgeously hideous or whatever she’s trying to say here?

I would have lived up to my namesake were it not for the effects of poverty, but I’d never particularly cared. Beauty didn’t mean anything in the forest.

She said, after listing all the ways she’s gorgeous, up to and including directly telling us twice. It’s not important to her.

In a move that cements Alis as my favorite character so far, she suggests that Feyre go out and take a stroll through those gardens that will probably kill her. Instead, Feyre decides to explore the castle, where she finds a beautiful still life painting of a vase of flowers. After a poetic description of the skill required to create such an amazing piece, she thinks that maybe the fairies aren’t so bad, after all.

Because they have an interest in common with her.

Did the author realize how narcissistic her character comes off? Not in a psychology way, just in a really self-absorbed, the world revolves around me way.

Feyre is mulling over her plans to appeal to the kind side of the fae and convince Alis, who has already threatened her with death like a bunch of times in one morning, to show mercy and find a way to free her, Tamlin shows up:

He wore those warrior’s clothes, cut close to show off his toned body, and three simple knives were now sheathed along his baldric—each long enough to look like it could gut me as easily as his beast’s claws.

So…why does he need the knives?

He’s gruff with Feyre, demanding to know where she’s going. Which is like, dude, you told her you don’t give a shit what she does and the first thing she does you’re like, wtf?

Feyre even tells him, hey, I didn’t realize I wasn’t allowed to leave my room.

“Of course you’re not under house arrest.” Even as he bit out the words, I couldn’t ignore the sheer male beauty of that strong jaw, the richness of his golden-tan skin. He was probably handsome—if he ever took off that mask.

Man, this is some rapid-onset Stockholm Syndrome. Which may have been the title of the last recap, wasn’t it?

Tamlin asks Feyre if she wants a tour and she’s like, hard pass. So, he’s like, yeah, I need fresh air, let’s take the tour and she’s like, nah, you’ve done enough.

A half-smile, not so pleasant, no doubt unused to being denied. “Do you have some sort of problem with me?”

What, like, aside from the kidnapping her and holding the safety of her family over her head as a punishment if she leaves your fortress? Women. Will we ever truly understand them?

So, where’s Tamlin gonna take Feyre? Into the big ole danger garden, where else! But he reiterates that he’s not going to kill her.

I almost stumbled down the garden steps as I glanced over my shoulder. He stood atop the stairs, as solid and ancient as the pale stones of the manor. “Kill—but not harm? Is that another loophole? One that Lucien might use against me—or anyone else here?”

“They’re under orders not to even touch you.”

Then she’s not actually in danger? Because that’s not what Alis said.

“Yet I’m still trapped in your realm, for breaking a rule I didn’t know existed. Why was your friend even in the woods that day? I thought the Treaty banned your kind from entering our lands.”

You thought a lot of shit about the Treaty that wasn’t true. But what I can’t understand is why she doesn’t just stick to the truth of what happened: she saw a wolf, she didn’t know if she was in danger or not, so she shot it.

“That Treaty,” he said quietly, “doesn’t ban us from doing anything, except for enslaving you. The wall is an inconvenience. If we cared to, we could shatter it and march through to kill you all.”

But they do cross the wall to kill people? And they do take them back to be slaves? That’s all we’ve heard about all along. And yeah, Feyre clearly had some bad intel, but what was that mercenary getting paid to fight, if fairies aren’t getting through the wall?

The entire sense of danger we’ve had so far has basically been built on A Big Misunderstanding and I know this series goes on and on so…how does that conflict get maintained? I can’t see a path toward any suspense or surprise or anything because the only reason our main character is afraid of the fairies is that she doesn’t know anything about them.

At least she asks why Andras was in the forest if they don’t care to have anything to do with humans.

“There is … a sickness in these lands. Across Prythian. There has been for almost fifty years now. It is why this house and these lands are so empty: most have left. The blight spreads slowly, but it has made magic act … strangely. My own powers are diminished due to it. These masks”—he tapped on his—“are the result of a surge of it that occurred during a masquerade forty-nine years ago. Even now, we can’t remove them.”

It’s that episode of Goosebumps!

The choice Tamlin and his friends have now is to either live with the mask on forever or live in their animal forms. Andras had come to the woods to find a cure, which apparently he was going to find inside of a deer? Because when we saw Andras, he was killing a deer.

But don’t worry: whatever is going on with the magic curse can affect mortals, but probably won’t make it over the wall.

That he’d even admitted so much spoke volumes about how he imagined my future: I was never going home, never going to encounter another human to whom I might spill this secret vulnerability.

Yeah, that’s pretty much the “once you see the kidnapper’s face” moment.

Feyre does have the sense to ask if they plan to attack, based on the info the mercenary gave her. But Tamlin turns off the info faucet and instead asks her if she rigged the trip wire in her room for him. Although, I’m not sure it’s really a trip wire if it smacks you in the face. He tells her it’s not necessary because he’s civilized. He says he’ll see her at dinner and then, hey, remember the thing about how everything in the garden will kill her?

It wasn’t a request, but I still gave him a nod as I strode off between the hedges, not caring where I was going—only that he stayed far behind.

The one,  the ONE, place she’s supposed to be afraid of stuff and she wants the only person who can actually protect her from that stuff to stay away. Brilliant, Feyre. You’re really crushing this.

A sickness in their lands, affecting their magic, draining it from them … A magical blight that might one day spread to the human world. After so many centuries without magic, we’d be defenseless against it—against whatever it could do to humans.

It sounds like what it does is fuck with magic and diminishes magical power. If humans don’t use magic…

But what do I know? I’m just a confused reader.

Feyre’s worries provide us with the chapter hook:

I wondered if any of the High Fae would bother warning my kind.

It didn’t take me long to know the answer.

So, tune in next time for the answer, I guess.

A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter six or “Masquerade! Mediocrity on display!”

As promised, I’m importing the A Court of Thorns and Roses recaps here from Patreon. These were originally written beginning in August of 2020, so there will be references to upcoming or seasonal events that won’t fit with our current timeline. I am not a time traveler and you’ll never be able to prove that I am. I will also include editors notes like this every now and then as we go, mostly to amuse myself but to give re-read value to those who’ve already been on this awful, awful journey with me.

CW: disordered eating thoughts, ableism

Hey there, readers. If you were imagining a fantastic world ruled by magical, beautiful beings, what would it look like?

The estate sprawled across a rolling green land.

Okay, I can work with that. I mean, there’s an incredibly lush fantasy world in Ashes of Love and it’s a lot of rolling green land, too, so it’s not like the concept can’t work, right? Grass is grass. It doesn’t have to be majykkal grass, you know? ed. — You should watch Ashes of Love.

It was veiled in roses and ivy, with patios and balconies and staircases sprouting from its alabaster sides. The grounds were encased by woods, but stretched so far that I could barely see the distant line of the forest. So much color, so much sunlight and movement and texture … I could hardly drink it in fast enough. 

…oh. Well. I mean, I guess a lot of trees and flowers and sunlight can also be…interesting…

Above the array of amethyst irises and pale snowdrops and butter-yellow daffodils swaying in the balmy breeze, the faint stench of metal ticked my nostrils.

…even if they’re like, the exact same flowers you have back home and painted all over your house. But good news, the new place appears to be near a leaking nuclear reactor!

Of course it would be magic, because it was spring here. 

That’s much better news! I would definitely prefer the smell of magic to the smell of radiation poisoning.

Now, maybe you’re thinking, wow, Jenny, you’re being so harsh, a lot of fantasy lands out there look like this. The Shire, Wonderland, those places look just like an alternate but slightly sunnier world and you’re not shitting on those books!

Look:

What wretched power did they possess to make their lands so different from ours, to control the seasons and weather as if they owned them?

The fairies in this book are so all-powerful that they can control the weather and make their lands different…and they chose to just be a year-round version of the good part of the rest of the place.

This is what makes me so mad about this book. The wasted potential.

And the fact that it is really starting to Disney up the place. I mean, come on. Read this:

The faerie meandered on ahead, leaping nimbly up the grand marble staircase that led to the giant oak doors in one mighty, fluid movement. 

I know you saw The Beast leaping around the enchanted castle. I know you did. The doors even open for him as if by magic.

He’d planned this entire arrival, no doubt—keeping me unconscious so I didn’t know where I was, didn’t know the way home or what other deadly faerie territories might be lurking between me and the wall.

I mean, of course, he planned the entire arrival. So far, it’s been just going to his house. It’s not like he pretended he had no idea where he was going and surprise, there’s a “WELCOME FEYRE!” banner over the doors or something. There hasn’t been a whole “Be Our Guest” number yet.

While she was unconscious, he also confiscated her knife, so she has no way to fight.

You know what I just realized? Feyre has been unconscious for two days. Wouldn’t she have to really go pee by now?

I glanced over my shoulder toward the still-open gates. If I were to bolt, it would have to be now.

South—all I had to do was go south, and I would eventually make it to the wall.

There is a fine line between a character being strong and smart and a character being arrogant as shit about their own abilities. Feyre consistently crosses that line. How many times has she confidently stated that she knows this or that about the faeries, then later she’s like, oh, shit, I didn’t know that? And here she’s going, well, I’ve been unconscious for two days at least, I have no idea where I am, I’m in a land that is so dangerous to me that I’m sure I’ll be or-worsed within five seconds of crossing the border but I can definitely outrun this dude who can control the weather, especially on his turf and especially while breaking an ancient treaty.

She even tries to get the horse to run. Like, hello, it’s not your horse. The liberties you are taking with this horse, madame. I would like to speak to your supervisor.

Since the horse won’t help her, she decides she’s going to escape on foot.

My knees buckled as I hit the ground, bits of light flashing in my vision. I grasped the saddle and winced as soreness and hunger racked my senses. Now—I had to go now. I made to move, but the world was still spinning and flashing. 

Only a fool would run with no food, no strength.

At least she finally gets it and isn’t going to try to run. That was always an asinine plan.

I took a long, shuddering breath. Food—getting food, then running at the next opportune moment. It sounded like a solid plan. 

Oh, Feyre. No, it doesn’t.

She accepts her fate for a second and goes inside the beast’s house:

Inside, it was even more opulent. Black-and-white checkered marble shone at my feet, flowing to countless doors and a sweeping staircase. A long hall stretched ahead to the giant glass doors at the other end of the house, and through them I glimpsed a second garden, grander than the one out front. No sign of a dungeon—no shouts or pleas rising up from hidden chambers below. No, just the low growl from a nearby room, so deep that it rattled the vases overflowing with fat clusters of hydrangea atop the scattered hall tables. As if in response, an open set of polished wooden doors swung wider to my left. A command to follow.

I wonder if they’ll meet at the top of that grand, sweeping staircase and dance while their teapot friend sings and creepily watches their date with her child.

Also, why would the dungeon be where you could see it right when you walk in? I thought dungeons were supposed to be secret and hidden away so people didn’t know what was going on down there.

So, Feyre is super impressed at this place.

I’d known the High Fae had once built themselves palaces and temples around the world—buildings that my mortal ancestors had destroyed after the War out of spite—but I’d never considered how they might live today, the elegance and wealth they might possess. Never contemplated that the faeries, these feral monsters, might own estates grander than any mortal dwelling.

Weird, because in chapter three you said that the mortals built those palaces for the High Fae, and that after the war the faeries took their magic behind the wall while the mortals fell into ruin and despair or whatever. Did you think these all-powerful beings were living in shanty towns? Once again, we have the story contradicting itself.

Now, we’ve reached the “Be Our Guest” portion of this tale. Feyre walks into a dining hall with a long table piled high with a sumptuous feast, of faerie delights, no doubt.

At least it was familiar, and not some strange faerie delicacy: chicken, bread, peas, fish, asparagus, lamb … it could have been a feast at any mortal manor. 

Again, you’ve got the chance to make this big, magical world for your protagonist to discover and adapt to, but you’re choosing instead to be like, well, thank god we can dodge the “food” portion of the world-building.

Why bother writing fantasy if you don’t feel like actually committing to the fantasy?

This is actually a critique I made of YA Fantasy recently when talking to a fellow reader; so much of what passes for “high fantasy” aimed at a teen audience is just Twilight with elves.

This is just Beauty and the Beast with fairies.

I lingered by the threshold, gazing at the food—all that hot, glorious food—that I couldn’t eat. That was the first rule we were taught as children, usually in songs or chants: If misfortune forced you to keep company with a faerie, you never drank their wine, never ate their food.

The reason for this rule is to avoid getting enslaved and kidnapped to Prythian, which Feyre admits has already pretty much happened, aside from surrendering “body and soul” to their thrall, which she’s gonna avoid by not eating.

Hey, remember when she was like, I’m going to go inside and find food so that I can escape?

Where was she planning to find the food that doesn’t belong to faeries while she’s in their whole fucking land?

That was the first rule they were taught as children but she didn’t remember it when she was planning on going inside and eat? She only just remembered it when she got to the table?

I feel like the editor who acquired and/or edited this one was so dazzled by it that they went, “No notes!”

Reader, there were notes.

The beast plopped into the chair, the wood groaning, and, in a flash of white light, turned into a golden-haired man. 

So, one of my favorite fantasy romances of all time is Goddess of the Rose by P.C. Cast. Now, I don’t like her House of Night books because they are loaded with ableist slurs and tons of misogyny. However, I respect Goddess of the Rose because you know what? She had the courage to write a Beauty and the Beast retelling and go there.

But whatever. Guess Feyre ain’t gonna have handlebars–pardon, elk horns– to hold onto when they end up banging.

Now, back to our continuing inconsistencies.

This beast was not a man, not a lesser faerie. He was one of the High Fae, one of their ruling nobility: beautiful, lethal, and merciless. 

Feyre, who has never seen a faerie except for the one she thought was a wolf, who didn’t know anything about how the treaty actually operated, who seems to know things only when it’s convenient for moving the story along or establishing a fact for the reader but who has no fucking clue about anything when it adds tension, knows on sight that this dude is definitely and for sure a High Fae. See, we the reader needed to know that, so Feyre conveniently is super familiar with what these creatures look like.

Heads up, if you were wondering? This is a bad way to write fantasy. If the reader needs to know something and you’re writing in first-person POV, you’d better have a way for the character to tell the reader or for the reader to deduce this thing themselves. I would have had no trouble with this line about him being High Fae if we’d been told at some point that Feyre had seen drawings of them or there was something about them that she knew and which she can immediately recognize. For example, if the earlier wolf-kill included a thought that it might be High Fae because they’re the only ones who can shape-shift or something like that, I could buy this. Oh, yeah, we know they’re the only ones that shape-shift so this guy is High Fae. I can dig it.

Instead, we’ve got St. Feyre of the Blessed Selective Amnesia just not knowing things because the author didn’t decide early whether or not her character was the leading expert in faerie biology or someone who’d only ever heard folk tales and had no idea what the treaty that supposedly governed every moment of her day actually said. You can meet in the middle, but those are the two ends of the spectrum we’ve been presented with.

He was young—or at least what I could see of his face seemed young. His nose, cheeks, and brows were covered by an exquisite golden mask embedded with emeralds shaped like whorls of leaves.

While the mask detail is indeed cool, can we back up to the he is/seems young thing? It’s another fucking contradiction. Earlier in the book, we hear that these High Fae are centuries old.  She knows he’s not young, and seems doesn’t really fit here. People hate “looked” but damn, “appeared young” or “had a deceptively youthful face,” any of that would have worked.

Unlike the elegance of his mask, the dark green tunic he wore was rather plain, accented only with a leather baldric across his broad chest. It was more for fighting than style, even though he bore no weapons I could detect. Not just one of the High Fae, but … a warrior, too.

A baldric is literally just a belt. It could be attached to a weapon, but they were also used to carry drums and horns and whatnot into battle. If he doesn’t have a weapon attached to it, maybe he’s not a warrior? Maybe he’s just wearing a fucking accessory.

Like, how does she know so much about High Fae fashion that she can look at a single item of clothing and go, “Oh, that’s definitely for fighting, that’s not fancy enough to be for anything else.” Bitch, your cultures have been separated for centuries! It might be a new trend! You don’t fucking know.

And the only thing stopping Feyre from NOT being an insufferable, Claire-Fraser-in-Drums-of-Autumn-level know-it-all is the fucking phrasing. Like, what was stopping Feyre from thinking, “Such a plain baldric looked out of place with his regal attire. Though I could detect no weapon at his side, in my village such a belt would have marked him out as one of the traveling mercenaries,” or something like that. Something that tells us how she knows what she knows, what experience she’s drawing from, rather than setting it up like she’s just pulling all this out of her ass without a moment’s curiosity.

The good news is that while Maas is making absolutely no attempt to do any of that, she is committed to reminding us that we’re too incompetent to be trusted with details we’ve already been given:

If I moved fast, I could be out of the house and sprinting for the gate within seconds. He was undoubtedly faster—but chucking some of those pretty pieces of hallway furniture in his path might slow him down. Though his Fae ears—with their delicate, pointed arches—would pick up any whisper of movement from me.

Thanks, I was wondering if faeries were faster than humans. It’s never been mentioned before. The most infuriating part of this is that while we’re bludgeoned over the head with how fast and lethal the High Fae are and how no escape is possible, Feyre is still constantly thinking about all the ways she could definitely pull off an escape.

I really feel like all the tension in this book is on a constant cycle of the heroine telling us something then contradicting it in her own head at every opportunity. Or, the author telling us something then contradicting it on her protagonist’s behalf.

Here’s another example. When Feyre refuses the High Fae’s offer of food, he realizes it’s because she wants to escape. He says:

“Leave, if you want,” he added with a flash of teeth. “I’m not your jailer. The gates are open—you can live anywhere in Prythian.”

He came to her house, gave her the choice to come live with him–specifically on his lands–because that’s what the super important treaty demands. Now, they’re at his house and he’s like, wtf, why would you think I wanted you to stay here? I’m not the boss of you.

Except he kidnapped her and tied her up and told her she has to stay with him forever. That’s kind of a jailer, friends.

And no doubt be eaten or tormented by a wretched faerie. But while every inch of this place was civilized and clean and beautiful, I had to get out, had to get back. That promise to my mother, cold and vain as she was, was all I had. I made no move toward the food.

“I need food to escape! But I can’t eat this food and everybody knows that! But I’m going to collapse because I’m so dangerously starved so I’ll never be able to escape without eating this food! But I can’t eat this food! Also, I have a vow to my mother that I guess didn’t matter all that much in the last chapter when I said I didn’t care if my family died just so long as it meant more dead faeries! Hey! Are you gonna listen to what I’m telling you or what you read a few pages ago?!”

So the beast is, like, that’s fine by me, whatever, and starts fixing himself a plate. And then another guy comes in:

[…] –another High Fae: red-haired and finely dressed in a tunic of muted silver. He, too, wore a mask. He sketched a bow to the seated male and then crossed his arms. Somehow, he hadn’t spotted me where I was still pressed against the wall. 

Well, he probably didn’t see you because you’re so skinny skinny skinny skinny skinny skinny skinny skinny skinny skinny skinny skinny skinny.

The newcomer asks the not-beast if Andras is dead.

A nod from my captor—savior, whatever he was. 

WHOA that is some rapid-onset Stockholm Syndrome. How is this dude your “savior”? You’ve been preparing to be murdered this whole time. What has he done between taking you captive and now that has changed your opinion of your relationship to him so drastically?

I have to admit, I had a great time last night talking with someone who is currently mired down in Maas’s adult fantasy series, which apparently has all of the exact same problems this series has.

“How?” the stranger demanded, his knuckles white as he gripped his muscled arms.

Way to shoehorn that description in; I totally needed to know this guy was ripped based on him doing something that seems visually bizarre to my mind.

Not-Beast tells the other High Fae that a mortal girl killed Andras with an ash arrow and that the “Treaty’s summons” took him to the girl and he gave her safe haven. The reason they know for sure that this girl somehow killed their friend is specifically because of this “summons,” explained thusly:

“The Treaty’s magic brought me right to her doorstep.”

In other words, she fucked up, the magic of the treaty knows this, and he can find her anywhere. Kind of punches a hole in the escape plan, huh, Feyre?

The stranger whirled with fluid grace. His mask was bronze and fashioned after a fox’s features, concealing all but the lower half of his face—along with most of what looked like a wicked, slashing scar from his brow down to his jaw. It didn’t hide the eye that was missing—or the carved golden orb that had replaced it and moved as though he could use it. It fixed on me.

Mad-Eye Moody, but make him hot.

Since you probably didn’t remember this already, Feyre is skinny.

“You’re joking,” he said quietly. “That scrawny thing brought down Andras with a single ash arrow?”

So scrawny. Just so unbelievably scrawny. Just like, imagine the most pathetically thin person you’ve ever seen. You just really, really, really need to be aware that the heroine is skinny.

But won’t eat.

Can we get a yikes yet?

If not for the thinly veiled eating disorder, at least for this?

I could understand his mask, with that brutal scar and missing eye, but the other High Fae seemed fine. 

She totally supports the dude with the missing eye wearing a mask to disguise his hideousness, I guess, but why the hot one? Then, she figures that the beast/guy (Geast?) must wear his mask out of solidarity for his miserably ruined friend.

How noble. I’m falling for him already.

Up until this point, Feyre has been cowering and trying not to be noticed. Then, the fox faerie (Forxie?) refers to her as “that” while berating Geast and suddenly, Feyre remembers that she’s too stupid to live:

I stepped forward—only a step. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say, but being spoken about that way … I kept my mouth shut, but it was enough.

That’s right. After telling us all about how High Fae are killing machines,  she decides to square up against one because he insulted her.

Feyre just decided to square up like she’s a badass, despite being conveniently too afraid to basically do anything other than walk through a door in this chapter.

Fox Fairy accuses Feyre of relishing her kill when she murdered his friend. It’s the intensely cliched moment of, “Did you enjoy killing my friend?” (direct quote from the text) that tends to show up in these scenarios.

And how does Feyre react?

The golden-haired one said nothing, but his jaw tightened. As they studied me, I reached for a knife that wasn’t there.

SO TOUGH WOW STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER

The character inconsistency here is a mess. I’m sorry, I do not believe this wasn’t a first draft that just got lucky. Seriously, I think this thing landed its deal through marketability alone because it certainly wasn’t the solid craft. I have whiplash from this girl’s characterization. She’s terrified, she’s starving, she’s in mortal danger, she has to be careful and make herself small but also we must believe that she’s such a scrappy little fighter that she’d pull a knife on a High Fae.

Look. She either gets to be tough-as-nails or smart-as-nails. We can’t keep swerving between the two options.

Now, remember the last recap when folks were commenting about how weird it was that she’s so afraid of this Beast dude when he’s not all that scary? Good news! That continues. He scolds Lucien (that’s the Fox Fairy) for being rude to Feyre.

She killed their friend, he showed her mercy. Now, he wants his grieving friend to be cordial to the murderer.

There’s going to be a moment in this book when this fucking Beast reveals that Feyre is some long-lost princess or some shit who was betrothed to Andras and she accidentally killed him or some bullshit, isn’t there? Or like, the Beast is gonna have fallen instantly in love with her because of her bravery or something? Don’t tell me, I don’t want it spoilered. I want to see if I end up being right.

Lucien doesn’t appreciate being scolded, and I get it. I would be pissed if I suddenly met Feyre, too. He mocks her soundly by telling her how beautiful she is an how her hair is like burnished gold, which I wouldn’t roll my eyes at if I didn’t feel almost 100% certain this “mocking” was only included because it says something positive about Feyre, regardless of the situation.

“Her name is Feyre,” said the one in charge—the beast. He must have learned my name at my cottage. Those striking green eyes met mine again and then flicked to the door.

How quickly he went from a potential rape monster to “striking green eyes.”

Because he’s such a terrifying and horrible creature, the Beast summons Alis, a little fairy side character who’s going to help Feyre…get prettied up.

A rotund brown-haired woman in a simple brass bird mask tugged on my arm and inclined her head toward the open door behind us. Her white apron was crisp above her homespun brown dress—a servant. The masks had to be some sort of trend, then.

Right off the bat, I have to address the idea of a “simple” bird mask made out of freaking brass. Ah, the simplicity of wearing a heavy facsimile animal head over your own regular head. I like to do that when I’m lounging around in leggings and a cozy sweater. You know. Just simple.

Now, let’s move on to Mrs. Potts here. Why is there always a kindly fat woman tasked with taking care of heroines? I blame Shakespeare. Always with a fucking nurse character.

Finally, what the fuck does Feyre mean that it “had to be” a trend? What if it’s some deeply held belief? What if it’s protection from magic or some shit like that?

But nope, Feyre knows that it’s just because they’re vapid fashion monsters:

If they cared so much about their clothes, about what even their servants wore, maybe they were shallow and vain enough for me to deceive, despite their master’s warrior clothes.

I still don’t know why she thinks crushed velvet doublets and bejeweled masks and long flowing hair are warrior traits but okay. Let’s just rock with it. The merciful tough guy hunk with the sumptuous garments and, lest we forget, A BEJEWELED MASK, is a killing machine that Feyre was gonna pull a knife on. But the good news is, she’s pretty sure that she’s smarter than this magical, apparently immortal, being.

I say immortal because I just assume. I don’t buy into that, “they can’t be immortal because one died,” bullshit because immortal, to me, means lasting. Not indestructible. So let me head that one off right now. I’ll die on that hill, even for this book.

But yeah, Feyre thinks she’s just going to outsmart them because they’re vain. And shockingly, she doesn’t use this as a chance to slam her sister.

I’d barely made it a few steps before Lucien growled, “That’s the hand the Cauldron thought to deal us? She brought Andras down? We never should have sent him out there—none of them should have been out there. It was a fool’s mission.”

This makes it sound like Andras probably wasn’t that tough. As to the mission, I’m going to assume it was to find Feyre but they just haven’t figured out that they got the right person yet and that’s why she was able to kill the badass fairy.

No spoilers. I love seeing if I can predict this kind of stuff.

“Maybe we should just take a stand—maybe it’s time to say enough. Dump the girl somewhere, kill her, I don’t care—she’s nothing but a burden here. She’d sooner put a knife in your back than talk to you—or any of us.” I kept my breathing calm, my spine locking, and—

It’s not Feyre saying all that. You wouldn’t know it because it’s directly after the dialogue in the paragraph but there was some reference to his growl and him being the one speaking earlier in the paragraph. I still think that requires a break, but whatever. I’m more concerned with the idea that a High Fae thinks Feyre is a threat.

“No,” the other bit out. “Not until we know for certain that there is no other way will we make a move. And as for the girl, she stays. Unharmed. End of discussion. Her life in that hovel was Hell enough.”

Was her life really hell, though? Everyone in her village was struggling. What made her hell unique? What tugged at this dude’s heartstrings, exactly? Because if someone killed my friend, I wouldn’t be like, “Oh, poor thing, your sisters are so mean to you. Come, live in my enchanted castle in a fantasy world where you shall want for nothing.”

But apparently, the Fae are planning something. This is great, because I love when things happen in the books I’m reading. It’s very much preferred over when things don’t happen.

Even though Feyre has told us how tiny and cold and miserable and shitty her home and her life are, she’s like, woe, agony, this guy’s house looks nicer than mine and he’s insulting me, waaaah or whatever. It’s not written that dramatically but it just feels that dramatic because at this point I’m so annoyed.

A hovel—I suppose that’s what our cottage was when compared to this place.

Like, does that not just annoy the fuck out of you, reader? She spent all this time telling us how bleak and horrible their teensy cottage was and now she’s like, well, compared to THIS place, I guess it looks kinda bad. Like, no, no, you made it sound like compared to ANY place, it looks kinda bad.

“Then you’ve got your work cut out for you, old son,” Lucien said. “I’m sure her life will be a fine replacement for Andras’s—maybe she can even train with the others on the border.”

Okay, so the Beast is Lucien’s son? And there are other mortals training at the border?   I’m filing those away in my brain.

There’s a section break, after which we have arrived with Feyre to a fancy bedroom where they pretty her up:

I’ll admit I didn’t fight that hard when Alis and two other servants—also masked—bathed me, cut my hair, and then plucked me until I felt like a chicken being prepared for dinner. For all I knew, I might very well be their next meal.

I’ll let them make me pretty, but I won’t like it! Very much!

Feyre is so terrified of the servants, she doesn’t ask them any questions while they give her this makeover. She’s even afraid of Mrs. Potts, to the point that when Alis gives Feyre a “velvet turquoise dress” (the order of those adjectives makes my head throb, Dear Patron), Feyre begs for her clothes back and “pretends” to be pitiful.

I hadn’t worn a dress in years. I wasn’t about to start, not when escape was my main priority. I wouldn’t be able to move freely in a gown.

Too afraid to ask any questions, super brave enough to hate wearing dresses. Strong Female Character!

We get a description of the bedroom, which Feyre thinks would be tacky if not for the furnishings, which is like…bitch, you scribbled flowers all over your furniture and fucking walls, take a moment away to think about how much you really know about interior decorating.

The gist of this whole scene is that she has been swaddled in silk and riches and maybe she doesn’t have the full scoop on this whole faerie thing.

The few stories I’d heard had been wrong—or five hundred years of separation had muddled them. Yes, I was still prey, still born weak and useless compared to them, but this place was … peaceful. Calm. Unless that was an illusion, too, and the loophole in the Treaty was a lie—a trick to set me at ease before they destroyed me. The High Fae liked to play with their food.

Wow, the stories were so wrong but definitely, they’re still the monsters I thought they were!

She returned with trousers and a tunic that fit me well, both of them rich with color. A bit fancy, but I didn’t complain when I donned the white shirt, nor when I buttoned the dark blue tunic and ran my hands over the scratchy, golden thread embroidered on the lapels. It had to cost a fortune in itself—and it tugged at that useless part of my mind that admired lovely and strange and colorful things.

So, she’s Not Like Other Girls because she wears pants and the usual girls wear skirts. I wanted to point that out because it is very feminist and strong. This is not like other fantasy books where girls are silly and like dresses. She likes pants. So it’s strong. Because it’s pants. She’s got her strong pants on.

I really like the idea of a heroine who loves “lovely and strange and colorful things” but it just seems odd to me that because of this artistic streak, this longing for beauty, she wouldn’t have been one of the first people to sign up for that pretty cult back in the town. This whole chapter would have been so much better if Feyre had found herself drawn to the strangeness and the beauty of this world and had legitimate worries about whether or not she’s being seduced by that beauty or is her life really in danger, etc. instead of just “I should run. But I can’t because it’s hopeless. I’m so afraid and scrappy!”

But no, the inner turmoil we get is that she remembers when her family was rich and now they’re not and they probably are running out of food. Then, it’s back to the makeover, as Alis braids Feyre’s hair.

“You’re hardly more than skin and bones,” she said, her fingers luxurious against my scalp.

Just in case you forgot from the whole thing where she’s been starving, Feyre is really skinny.

“Winter does that to poor mortals,” I said, fighting to keep the sharpness from my tone.

Sharpness. She’s terrified of the bloodthirsty faerie giving her a scalp massage but she’s cool with snarking at her.

Alis agrees with me, by the by. She tells Feyre, hey, nobody is gonna like you because you killed a really great guy. I mean, Alis also basically handwaves Andras’s death like it was his own fault Feyre killed him because obviously, Feyre can’t be responsible for her own actions for any reason. Oh, and Alis doesn’t like Lucien, either.

Then chapter six ends with…Alis finishing Feyre’s hair and opening the door.

Not exactly the hook that would keep me up at night, but let’s rock into chapter seven, shall we?

A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter 5, or “Make Prythian Great Again”

As promised, I’m importing the A Court of Thorns and Roses recaps here from Patreon. These were originally written beginning in August of 2020, so there will be references to upcoming or seasonal events that won’t fit with our current timeline. I am not a time traveler and you’ll never be able to prove that I am. I will also include editors notes like this every now and then as we go, mostly to amuse myself but to give re-read value to those who’ve already been on this awful, awful journey with me.

This chapter kind of bummed me out but also made me realize that for all the stuff that’s driving me bonkers, I’m actually really into the story. Because very, very, very little happens in this chapter and I found myself disappointed as a result. So, on some level, I’m clearly invested in the plot. ed.—This feeling does not last.

The beast takes Feyre into the forest and then we hit the second paragraph:

We entered the line of trees. Darkness beckoned beyond.

But a white mare was patiently waiting—unbound—beside a tree, her coat like fresh snow in the moonlight.

I can’t for the life of me figure out what the “but” is there to do. Nothing about trees or darkness somehow precludes the possibility of a horse being around. Is this a no horse zone? Are horses scared of the dark in this world? Other than that, this is good imagery that could have been made better with just a tiny bit more description about the contrast between the snow-white horse and the looming darkness.

She only lowered her head—as if in respect, of all things—as the beast lumbered up to her.

This was point number one when I realized how into the story I am. I was like, “Ooh! Can he talk to animals?” before I realized that Feyre is criticizing the horse for respecting a faerie. ed. — there is literally nothing Feyre will not criticize in this book.

The beast lets Feyre ride the horse and they set off toward the faerie kingdom or whatever.

Live with him. I could live out the rest of my mortal life on his lands. Perhaps this was merciful—but then, he hadn’t specified in what manner, exactly, I would live. The Treaty forbade faeries from taking us as slaves, but—perhaps that excluded humans who’d murdered faeries.

Oh, now we’re remembering the Treaty, all of a sudden? Because in the last chapter it was so ancient that everyone had forgotten it or whatever. But you know for sure he can’t make you a slave and you trust him, a dread faerie, to honor the treaty when it comes to slavery.

Please, please, please tell me this is not a YA book about a white girl being enslaved.

My throat went dry. I’d killed a faerie. I couldn’t bring myself to feel badly about it. Not with my family left behind me to surely starve; not when it meant one less wicked, awful creature in the world.

LOL! I made a vow to my dying mother that I would take care of our family no matter what but if they die, they die, whatevs.

This really is going to turn into some kind of, “I thought they were bad, but really, we are the bad, horrible, intolerant ones and now that I know that, I will become part of their culture and be better at it than them,” or some such similar bullshit.

Is this gonna be Fern Gully?

Because Feyre knows that ash trees are the only thing that can kill faeries, she’s looking all over for one as they go through the forest. But like…she already told us, I think in chapter one, even, those ash trees are almost totally gone due to that fact?

She thinks about how the forest is creepily still and silent, but she’d prefer whatever animals are lurking out there to this faerie guy:

Whatever was out there had to be tame compared to the beast beside me, despite the horse’s ease around him.

IDK if you can describe him as not being tame. He walks upright, rides a horse, and owns land. We consider squirrels tame if they’ll eat out of our hands.

Lands—he’d said he had lands, but what kind of dwelling? My horse was beautiful and its saddle was crafted of rich leather, which meant he had some sort of contact with civilized life.

Back up, girl, that’s not your horse. It’s his horse. He just put you on it to transport you. You are the luggage. Plus, this dude bursts into her house to avenge his friend’s murder, offers to let her live anyway, and she doesn’t think he’s civilized while she’s thinking about how she’d rather her entire family starve than allow a single faerie to cross the border wall…

Ohhhhhhhh.

Well, we know who Feyre voted for, I guess.

And now, more totally nonsensical world building:

There were few firsthand accounts of Prythian itself. The mortals who went over the wall—either willingly as tributes from the Children of the Blessed or stolen—never came back. I’d learned most of the legends from villagers, though my father had occasionally offered up a milder tale or two on the nights he made an attempt to remember we existed.

Mortals who go into Prythian never come back and there are few firsthand accounts? Correct me if I’m wrong, but if all the mortals who go there never come back…how are there any accounts at all? And we already knew the part about the legends. At this point, I feel like we’re not being trusted to remember world-building points that have been relentlessly hammered on. We’re gonna be in the last chapter of this thing, last page, and it’s gonna be like, “For as long as my people have known, the faeries were bad,” and I’m gonna freak the fuck out.

And then it keeps going, casting doubt on literally everything that’s been established before:

As far as we knew, the High Fae still governed the northern parts of our world— […]

Wait now, “As far as we knew?” We’ve been told over and over again that yes, absolutely, the faeries run shit on the other side of the wall. At what point did this become in any way uncertain?

The rest of the sentence, though, actually tells us what this land is like:

[..] from our enormous island over the narrow sea separating us from the massive continent, across depthless fjords and frozen wastelands and sandblasted deserts, all the way to the great ocean on the other side.

There is just a leeeeeeetle too much George Martin in here. A wall to the north separating the pale, immortal, violent beings from the miserable, poverty-stricken villagers to the immediate south. A huge island with, for some inexplicable reason, every single climate on it, separated by a “narrow sea” from the larger continent. I mean, the narrow sea separating Westeros from Essos is called “The Narrow Sea”. And then there’s the religious cult that still wants to believe in supernatural stuff beyond the wall…

Fantasy is a weird genre, okay? You have the navigate tropes super carefully. You can easily go from “fantasy story about a magical world beyond a wall,” to accidentally ripping off another author. And I just really feel like that’s what’s happening here. It’s less homage or trope, more “this sounds good but I don’t realize that’s because it’s from another person’s really good book.” 

This is the kind of duplication that happens without malice, because the rest of the world-building and plot here are so different, the focus so narrow (nobody is really gonna try to rewrite Game of Thrones from a single, first-person viewpoint on purpose) that the author likely never once connected the two in her mind. It’s an occupational hazard that happens a lot, especially in genres like High Fantasy.

Some faerie territories were empires; some were overseen by kings and queens. Then there were places like Prythian, divided and ruled by seven High Lords—beings of such unyielding power that legend claimed they could level buildings, break apart armies, and butcher you before you could blink.

I’m never going to get tired of being told that they know nothing at all about the faeries right before telling us exactly what’s going on over the wall.

 No one had ever told me why humans chose to linger in our territory, when so little space had been granted to us and we remained in such close proximity to Prythian. Fools—whatever humans had stayed here after the War must have been suicidal fools to live so close.

Or they had their fortunes and property decimated by the horrible war that you already told us about.

Even with the centuries-old Treaty between the mortal and faerie realms, there were rifts in the warded wall separating our lands, holes big enough for those lethal creatures to slip into our territory to amuse themselves with tormenting us.

WE KNOW OH MY GOD WE KNOW PLEASE, SARAH, I BEG YOU, TRUST US NOT TO INJURE OUR MEMORIES BETWEEN PAGES FOR FUUUUUUCK’S SAKE.

I know this has been shelved as YA, but most people I’ve known who’ve read it have said that no, it’s really not YA. I have no idea what it is, but it feels like insultingly introductory Fantasy for an age bracket where a Fantasy reader has already been through the middle-grade classics that are far, far more complex and which underestimate the intelligence of the reader far less.

Live with him, I reminded myself, again and again and again. Live, not die.

 Though I supposed I could also live in a dungeon. He would likely lock me up and forget that I was there, forget that humans needed things like food and water and warmth.

This is a really cool detail. I like it when authors remember that there are going to be practical side concerns because the character doesn’t know what’s going on in the author’s head.

Prowling ahead of me, the beast’s horns spiraled toward the night sky, and tendrils of hot breath curled from his snout.

While I like the imagery, I’m still real stuck on the part where they’re “elk horns.”

She thinks about killing him again, when she gets the opportunity:

We had to make camp at some point; the border of Prythian was days away.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait. We’ve been hearing about how they have to wear these bracelets and put wards on their doors because they live so close to Prythian? I thought they were like, real, real, real close. Either I’ve been grossly misunderstanding the world-building or the author is.

But it was not my own doom I contemplated as I let myself tumble into the dread and rage and despair. 

Uh. That has literally been the whole chapter thus far. Were you here for that?

As we rode on—the only sounds snow crunching beneath paws and hooves—I alternated between a wretched smugness at the thought of my family starving and thus realizing how important I was, […]

What. The fuck. Like, let’s not diagnose characters, but I definitely feel like there is cold self-centeredness akin to several psychological disorders here. 

[…] and a blinding agony at the thought of my father begging in the streets, his ruined leg giving out on him as he stumbled from person to person. Every time I looked at the beast, I could see my father limping through town, pleading for coppers to keep my sisters alive.

Did yous all see the tweet that was like, “What’s something that’s not racist but feels racist to you?” that was going around? I feel like this is the ableist version of this. This feels ableist but maybe isn’t. I don’t know, but I’m mad at it, anyway.

Worse—what Nesta might resort to in order to keep Elain alive. She wouldn’t mind my father’s death. But she would lie and steal and sell anything for Elain’s sake—and her own as well.

You wouldn’t mind your father’s death either. You said so IN THIS CHAPTER. You were like, small price to pay to get to murder a faerie, amiright? just a few pages ago.

But let’s not gloss over the part where suddenly Nesta will do anything to survive. That directly contradicts basically everything we’ve been told about her up until this point. Yes, we know she loves Elain and wants to protect her, but they were both starving and suffering before Feyre left and Nesta wasn’t willing to do anything to survive then.

Feyre asks what kind of faerie the beast is but he ignores her.

I tried again. “Do you have a name?” Or anything to curse him by. 

Yo, the name thing is faeries 101. I don’t even live wherever the hell this is and I know that names are not something to idly toss around with fae.

Anyway, he asks her if she even cares and she decides to stop talking before he changes his mind about killing her. Once again, she imagines escape. At least this time, she remembers she should take her family.

She’s about to ask the beast something else when:

I didn’t have a chance to struggle, to fight back, when a charged, metallic tang stung my nose. Exhaustion slammed down upon me and blackness swallowed me whole.

The “struggle, fight back” part here tripped me up because at first, I thought he hit her or something. But then there’s a section break and Feyre wakes up on the back of the horse and realizes that the beast had used magic to keep her unconscious for the journey.

So, I assume he’s telepathic, then, and just got tired of her internal monologue.

Gritting my teeth, I might have demanded answers from him—might have shouted to where he still lumbered ahead, heedless of me. But then chirping birds flitted past me, and a mild breeze kissed my face. I spied a hedge-bordered metal gate ahead.

I am…confused. Are they already in Prythian? I can’t imagine that a metal gate and a hedge are the only things keeping the faeries out. It sounded like there was some huge barrier that could only be crossed through specific spots that were like, more difficult to get to? I guess? Like holes in the wall or something?

Because again, we’re completely incapable of retaining any memory, apparently, Feyre reminds us that Prythian is two days from her home. She realizes she must have been asleep that entire time.

Here’s the chapter hook:

The gate swung open without porter or sentry, and the beast continued through. Whether I wanted to or not, my horse followed after him.

We never find out if this is the gate to Prythian or not in this chapter. I went ahead to chapter six and yes, they’ve just arrived at the beast’s lands, so they are in Prythian. This means that our heroine has become conscious in the hell-world she’s heard dread tales about her entire childhood and she has absolutely zero reaction to or reflection upon that fact.

Yet, somehow, I still want to see where the story is going. A part of me understands why this series is so popular, while another part of me can’t understand why it’s so mediocre. I feel like maybe it tricks you into seeing its potential and not what’s actually on the page.

What do yous all think?

A Court of Jealousy and Haters: chapter 4, or “The defendant will be remanded into NONSENSE.”

As promised, I’m importing the A Court of Thorns and Roses recaps here from Patreon. These were originally written beginning in August of 2020, so there will be references to upcoming or seasonal events that won’t fit with our current timeline. I am not a time traveler and you’ll never be able to prove that I am. I will also include editors notes like this every now and then as we go, mostly to amuse myself but to give re-read value to those who’ve already been on this awful, awful journey with me.

If you were thinking, “well, now the action is really kicking off! There won’t be any time for Feyre to complain about her sisters now!”

Are you new here? The past posts aren’t archived, friend. Keep up. Of course, she manages to squeeze in more complaints about her sisters.

Chapter three ended with the door blasting off the hinges into the cottage.

I didn’t know how the wooden hilt of my hunting knife had gotten into my hand. The first few moments were a blur of the snarling of a gigantic beast with golden fur, the shrieking of my sisters, the blistering cold cascading into the room, and my father’s terror-stricken face.

It’s not the feared Martax because it has the following characteristics:

large as a horsecat-like bodywolfish headhorns like an elk*

*They are not like an elk. At least, not any elk I’ve ever seen; Maas describes them as “curled horns.” Elk don’t have horns, they have antlers, and they aren’t supposed to curl.

So, it’s a big spooky beast with what I will assume are ram horns because if they were, in fact, antlers such as on an elk’s head? Motherfucker is stuck in the doorway.

Somehow, I wound up in front of my sisters, even as the creature reared onto its hind legs and bellowed through a maw full of fangs: “MURDERERS!”

“Somehow” she ended up there. Hey, let me solve the mystery for you: it’s because you’re heroic and everyone else is a coward in comparison and now the readers all must love you.

MY KINGDOM FOR A CHARACTER WHO IS UNLIKEABLE ON PURPOSE.

Feyre knows immediately that it’s a fairy or faerie, which is a spelling I’m guilty as hell of but which I still cringe at every time, even in my own stupid, stupid writing.

I should have asked the mercenary how she’d killed that faerie.

Am I high? (Yes) Did I or did I not wonder this very same thing? IDK, maybe I didn’t. But I feel like I intended to. Or maybe not.

My sisters screamed, kneeling against the wall of the hearth, my father crouched in front of them. Another body for me to defend.

I’m sorry, weren’t you the one talking about how one time he got beaten up so bad it made you shit your pants? Is it possible he’s reliving a little bit of that trauma now? Or does it not matter because it’s not Feyre’s trauma? Plus, he’s disabled. Is he supposed to throw himself to the beast when you’ve already stepped between your family, brandishing a knife?

“P-please,” my father babbled from behind me, failing to find it in himself to come to my side.

Again, the lack of compassion here is just staggering. He’s disabled. From an incident where people burst into his house and committed horrific violence. But he’s not living up to Feyre’s expectations?

Her father tells the beast that whatever they did, they did it without knowing it was bad. Nesta holds up her anti-fairy bracelet, which we are reminded again is a silly thing to do, and Feyre decides it’s actually smarter to threaten this giant monster with a kitchen knife. She wants to get to the arrow in her quiver that killed the wolf but the knife is her best chance, so she hurls it at the beast, who smacks it away like a mosquito, basically, and snaps his teeth in Feyre’s face.

His eyes were green and flecked with amber. Not animal eyes, not with their shape and coloring.

Wait, were we still under the impression that this is an animal? After it talked? OMG IS THIS WICKED?

The beast tells them that the murder he’s talking about is the wolf Feyre killed.

Would he know if I lied? Faeries couldn’t lie—all mortals knew that—but could they smell the lies on human tongues? We had no chance of escaping this through fighting, but there might be other ways.

Since trying to kill him didn’t work, Feyre decides to ask the beast what he thinks he should get in return for someone accidentally, totally not on purpose, killing the wolf.

The beast let out a bark that could have been a bitter laugh. He pushed off the table to pace in a small circle before the shattered door. The cold was so intense that I shivered. “The payment you must offer is the one demanded by the Treaty between our realms.”

And what’s that payment? Well, Feyre can’t remember. See, even though she knows she was taught about the Treaty that must never be broken, it was when she was a kid and she has no memories of it. To me, this smacks of world-building contradiction. Everything about these people’s lives is ruled by this agreement with the monsters next door. Every moment revolves around not getting killed by fairies…so why would Feyre, who has positioned herself as an expert in such matters to the reader, not have a clue about what happens if the Treaty gets broken?

But she has to be a badass, so she takes responsibility for the murder before finding out what the punishment is going to entail.

And somehow, she turns it into a flex about how skinny she is.

I stared into those jade eyes. “I did.” 

He blinked and glanced at my sisters, then back at me, at my thinness—no doubt seeing only frailness instead. “Surely you lie to save them.”

SURELY you do, for you are so very FRAIL and FAR TOO THIN, Miss Steele. Not like your lazy, greedy sisters who are not as SKINNY as you!

Sorry, I always read these things as humblebrags. It’s the two decades of “subtle” fatphobia in fiction that I’ve endured as an adult that does it.

My father climbed to his feet, grunting at the pain in his leg as he bobbled, but before he could limp toward me, I repeated: “I killed it.”

So, here’s her dad, whom she’s already complained about not protecting her enough or something, standing to face this snarling, violent beast, and she’s like, no! I shall seal my OWN doom!

Granted, if Feyre’s dad told me he killed a caterpillar I would very much doubt it, based on the descriptions provided so far.

Feyre adds the caveat that although she did kill the wolf, she didn’t know it was a fairy and she wouldn’t have killed it if she had.

“Liar,” he snarled. “You knew. You would have been more tempted to slaughter it had you known it was one of my kind.” 

True, true, true. “Can you blame me?”

Wait, what? It’s not at all true that you would have been more tempted to kill it if it were a fairy, Feyre. Faerie, Farrah? You were super worried that the animal might have been a fairy because you didn’t want to kill a fairy and violate the Treaty. There was this long back-and-forth before you shot it, and you had to convince yourself that it was just an animal because you were so afraid of shooting a fairy.

The beast wants to know if the wolf provoked her.

I opened my mouth to say yes, but—“No,” I said, letting out a snarl of my own. “But considering all that your kind has done to us, considering what your kind still likes to do to us, even if I had known beyond a doubt, it was deserved.” Better to die with my chin held high than groveling like a cowering worm.

I am surprised in the extreme that she didn’t end that thought with, “like my shitty, shitty family, whom I am better than in every possible way.”

Is that character growth or characterization oversight?

The firelight shone upon his exposed fangs, and I wondered how they’d feel on my throat, and how loudly my sisters would scream before they, too, died. But I knew—with a sudden, uncoiling clarity—that Nesta would buy Elain time to run. Not my father, whom she resented with her entire steely heart. Not me, because Nesta had always known and hated that she and I were two sides of the same coin, and that I could fight my own battles. But Elain, the flower-grower, the gentle heart … Nesta would go down swinging for her.

So, there is at least some goodness to Nesta. Even if it has to be tempered with, “She’ll only save this ONE person.” I mean. That’s all Donna Noble really asked for, so who are we to expect more?

Finally, Feyre gets around to asking what the punishment is.

His eyes didn’t leave my face as he said, “A life for a life. Any unprovoked attacks on faerie-kind by humans are to be paid only by a human life in exchange.”

Feyre is like, whoops, my bad, because she didn’t know about that part of the Treaty. Which, again, is just weirdly inconsistent with what we know about these people’s lives. That’s a very, very simple clause: kill us, we kill you back. Even if people generally didn’t know all the specific details of the Treaty, that seems like it would be a fairly easy and important one to remember.

“Most of you mortals have chosen to forget that part of the Treaty,” he said, “which makes punishing you far more enjoyable.”

…why? Just because it’s a vaguely sexually-threatening remark that a villain would make? I, and this is just my naive perspective, would like…remind people not to kill my friends, rather than waiting for my friends to die and then torture their killers.

But Feyre tells him fine, kill her, but do it outside where her blood won’t ruin the floor.

“Willing to accept your fate so easily?” When I just stared at him, he said, “For having the nerve to request where I slaughter you, I’ll let you in on a secret, human: Prythian must claim your life in some way, for the life you took from it. So as a representative of the immortal realm, I can either gut you like a swine or… you can cross the wall and live out the remainder of your days in Prythian.”

Wait, is that a secret? Because you said it was in that 500-year-old agreement yous all signed to end that war.

So, in a Rumplestilskenish turn of events, the Beast offers Belle, wait, sorry, no, this unnamed beast offers Feyre a deal: he can kill her now or she can go live in Prythian forever. Which isn’t exactly “the remainder of your days,” so I’m excited to find out exactly what this entails if the author gets around to it and doesn’t contradict it later. 

Feyre’s father, not wanting to see his kid die in front of him, tells her to take the offer.

I didn’t look at him as I said, “Live where? Every inch of Prythian is lethal to us.” I’d be better off dying tonight than living in pure terror across the wall until I met my end in doubtlessly an even more awful way.

This is why Mr. Beast needs to clarify: is it “the remainder of your days” or “forever?” This is like, the first thing I would be asking because the verbiage needs to be real god damn specific with fairies.

“I have lands,” the faerie said quietly–almost reluctantly. “I will grant you permission to live there.”

Her punishment for killing a fairy is…being given land to live on in a magical world.

Okay.

“Why bother?” Perhaps a fool’s question, but–

RIGHT? That’s what I’m saying. I thought this was “a life for a life,” not, “some land and possibly eternal life depending on which wording we’re going with for a life.”

“You murdered my friend,” the beast snarled. “Murdered him, skinned his corpse, sold it at the market, and then said he deserved it, and yet you have the nerve to question my generosity?”

Yeah, because you’re acting like a goofy dipstick. She killed your friend, so the revenge you’re taking is whisking her away from the family she despises? She’s gonna fucking love this, bro.

Feyre points out the obvious plot hole here and that’s, you know, that he didn’t have to mention that he didn’t have to kill her, and he gets offended that humans have “such low opinions” about fairies. Which, you know. I guess? But it sounds like yous fairies are doing a lot of nasty killing.

Oh my god. Oh no. No, no, no. I just realized that this is going to slowly slide into pro-capitalist, pro-colonist, pro-military fantasy in which the evil beings in power are actually the good guys and the oppressed have made all their own problems for themselves. It’s going to happen. I feel it. And it feels slimy.

“Let me make this clear for you, girl: you can either come live at my home in Prythian—offer your life for the wolf’s in that way—or you can walk outside right now and be shredded to ribbons. Your choice.”

Right here is where Feyre should call bullshit. She should be like, “If you were gonna kill me, you would have by now. You seem real damn squeamish about it, so I’m guessing you have no follow-through.”

And THAT is why I will definitely be brutally murdered after taunting a serial killer for his lack of commitment.

Feyre’s father offers the beast gold in exchange for Feyre’s life, and the beast tries to take the shaking, crumbling high ground:

The beast sneered. “How much is your daughter’s life worth to you? Do you think it equates to a sum?”

Technically, you’re the one putting the price on her life, dude. And the sum equals one dead wolf.

Nesta still had Elain held behind her, Elain’s face so pale it matched the snow drifting in from the open door. But Nesta monitored every move the beast made, her brows lowered. She didn’t bother to look at my father—as if she knew his answer already.

What does this mean? I can’t figure out what this answer supposedly is gonna be. Is it gonna be, “IDK, $4.99?” Is Nesta hoping her father will put a price on Feyre’s life? Is she checking to make sure it’s not too expensive? Is Elain gonna start shouting suggestions like she’s in the audience of The Price is Right?

When my father didn’t reply, I dared another step toward the beast, drawing his attention to me. I had to get him out—get him away from my family. From the way he’d brushed away my knife, any hope of escaping lay in somehow sneaking up on him. With his hearing, I doubted I’d get a chance anytime soon, at least until he believed I was docile. If I tried to attack him or fled before then, he would destroy my family for the sheer enjoyment of it. Then he would find me again. I had no choice but to go.

He knows where you live. He can always come back, no matter how long you wait before you flee. I’m not saying “don’t save your family,” just don’t frame it as some kind of strategic move where you’ll escape later because it’s still gonna backfire.

As long as the faeries couldn’t find me again, they couldn’t hold me to the Treaty. Even if it made me a cursed oath-breaker.

They found you the first time. Don’t you think they could find you again? And as I said before, you may recall, this beast thing knows where your family lives.

But in going with him, I would be breaking the most important promise I’d ever made. Surely it trumped an ancient treaty that I hadn’t even signed.

Well, that’s not how Treaties work. They’re kind of a “one person signs for everyone” deal. But also, this is still fulfilling your promise to your mother. You’re keeping your father and sisters from being eaten by a monster.

The beast finds the ash arrow and breaks it and throws it into the fireplace and is basically like, get in, loser, we’re going to Prythian.

The beast paced in the doorway.

HOW?! He’s got elk antlers and he’s the size of a horse. How wide is this door? Is the front of the whole tiny cottage just wide ass open like a dollhouse?

I didn’t want to contemplate where I was going or what he would do with me. Running would be foolish until it was the right time. 

There won’t be a right time if you’re doing this to save your family. He’ll just go back and kill them. I mean, while he’s standing there going, oh, poor me, you think I don’t have any morals just because I’m actively kidnapping you, so I’m not sure he’s 100% honorable. I think it’s reasonable to assume he would take his revenge on your family.

Feyre instructs her father on how to ration out the venison and tells him where she left the money. She also advises him on where to hunt and tells him that her FWB will teach him how to make rabbit snares.

How do her sisters react to the fact that Feyre is leaving?

Elain mouthed my name but kept cowering, kept her head down. So I turned to Nesta, whose face was so similar to my mother’s, so cold and unrelenting. 

Ah. Not bravely enough and just downright mean. But that’s okay. Our selfless heroine has advice about domestic violence:

“Whatever you do,” I said quietly, “don’t marry Tomas Mandray. His father beats his wife, and none of his sons do anything to stop it.” Nesta’s eyes widened, but I added, “Bruises are harder to conceal than poverty.”

I stopped at this part when I was reading it and really thought about whether or not I’d comment on it in this recap. I’m not sure if it’s just me; I feel like I’m hyper-sensitized to stereotypes or stigma around domestic violence in fiction because of all the horrible books we’ve read together, dear patrons. But something about it strikes me as…shaming? Like, suggesting her sister should be ashamed of these hypothetical bruises? Like I said, might just be me, especially since I’ve had such a hard time expressing it in words.

I guess martyrdom isn’t its own reward, because Feyre has to depart with another comment on how callous her sisters are:

 Nesta stiffened but said nothing—both of my sisters said absolutely nothing—as I turned toward the open door.

This is one of those things where they couldn’t win, no matter what. If they cried or begged her not to go, she’d be like, oh, well, you didn’t care about me before, or she’d go, my terrible sisters only want me to stay to be their servant. Characters who get so mired down in self-pity that no one can ever say or do the right thing around them are exhausting to read and, frankly, to write. I should know; I feel like I fall into that trap a lot. But I really, really hope it’s never to this extent. ed.—I was quite mean to myself there; I’ve never written a character as horrible as Feyre, and frankly, I doubt that I could.

“Feyre,” my father said. His fingers trembled as he grasped my gloved hands, but his eyes became clearer and bolder than I’d seen them in years. “You were always too good for here, Feyre. Too good for us, too good for everyone.”

Usually you have to perform three posthumous miracles to obtain sainthood but I guess Feyre’s dad is gonna canonize her right here, huh?

What in the fanfiction? “Too good for everyone?” Did everyone in the village clap? Did you put up your middle finger at the preps who stared at you?

Too good for everyone.

Come on.

Too good for everyone.

“If you ever escape, ever convince them that you’ve paid the debt, don’t return.” 

I hadn’t expected a heart-wrenching good-bye, but I hadn’t imagined this, either. 

He said you were “too good for everyone” and that’s not heart-wrenching enough for you? I’m sorry, this character must be unlikeable on purpose. I haven’t gone poking around on GoodReads so I’m unsure if this is a commonly-held thing among fans, like, “I love the book despite hating Feyre” or something? How could it not be? How can anyone enjoy this character? Did one of you warn me about this and I just forgot?

“Don’t ever come back,” my father said, releasing my hands to shake me by the shoulders. “Feyre.” He stumbled over my name, his throat bobbing. “You go somewhere new—and you make a name for yourself.”

Yeah, Feyre. If you ever escape, make sure to get real famous so they find you. Maybe that’s her dad’s plan with this whole “you’re too good for everyone” speech. He’s like, maybe if I convince her she’s so lofty and above us, we’ll never have to see her again.

I’d never told my father of the promise I’d made my mother, and there was no use explaining it now.

Then, she leaves with the beast. I included that vow line because it comes up again in chapter five.

Elk horns. JFC.

A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter 3 or “Girl, you’re gay.”

As promised, I’m importing the A Court of Thorns and Roses recaps here from Patreon. These were originally written beginning in August of 2020, so there will be references to upcoming or seasonal events that won’t fit with our current timeline. I am not a time traveler and you’ll never be able to prove that I am. I will also include editors notes like this every now and then as we go, mostly to amuse myself but to give re-read value to those who’ve already been on this awful, awful journey with me.

CW: mention of rape in the analysis (not the book itself).

This is one of those things where I’m not sure if the author intended to make their main character gay or what. And disclaimer, I’m using “gay” to mean this female character unknowingly wants to get with the gash and whether that gashthusiam is prix fixe or a la carte is undefined due to this whole thing seeming hilariously unintentional.

But first, I wanna talk about this:

The trampled snow coating the road into our village was speckled with brown and black from passing carts and horses.

Read that again and close your eyes. What did you see?

Now, I don’t know if this works for people who don’t have visual imaginations but for me, that very simple sentence about one specific detail in the scene showed me the entire scene. Even things that weren’t mentioned. When I read that, I also saw the bare, black tree trunks lining the road, the breath in front of the characters’ faces, the endless snow carpeting the forest, all of it. If I end up liking nothing else about this book, my god, I’ll stand in awe of the descriptions.

Feyre and her sisters are walking to the village to sell the hides from the deer and the wolf.

I didn’t bother talking to them, as they hadn’t deigned to speak to me after last night, though Nesta had awoken at dawn to chop wood. Probably because she knew I’d be selling the hides at the market today and would go home with money in my pocket.

So, even though her sister did ultimately do exactly what Feyre asked, she didn’t do it for the proper motives and therefore it must be bitched about.

But lo, there is wordbuilding I must bitch about, so maybe I shouldn’t be getting on my high horse about bitching.

The village is described as “ramshackle” and the houses “made grimmer by the bleakness.” We’ve heard about the poverty in the village, how no one can help anyone else because they’re destitute to the point that a person would kill another person for a rabbit.

Honestly, that would just be goofy. You could kill the person and eat them regardless. They don’t have to have a rabbit.

Anyhow, remember how poor and horrible the village is? 

From a block away, the scent of hot food wafted by—spices that tugged on the edge of my memory, beckoning. Elain let out a low moan behind me. Spices, salt, sugar—rare commodities for most of our village, impossible for us to afford.

If the town is so poor, why are people trying to sell spices and sugar there? Nobody can afford them, so what’s the point? And why cook food people can’t afford to buy and eat? That’s just wasting the food. You’re not making money from it.

On the other hand, Feyre thinks that depending on what she earns, she might be able to buy something from one of the food vendors, though. So maybe it’s like that same twenty-dollars jumping from bank account to bank account on LGBTQA+ Cash App.

They’re almost to the market when they run into:

“May the Immortal Light shine upon thee, sisters,” said the pale-robed young woman directly in our path.

Nesta and Elain clicked their tongues; I stifled a groan. Perfect. Exactly what I needed, to have the Children of the Blessed in town on market day, distracting and riling everyone.

Street preachers! I’m 100% for villainizing proselytizers! This particular brand worships the fairies that want to eat everyone. Or…they “still” want to worship them? But then Feyre says:

Long ago, the High Fae had been our overlords—not gods. And they certainly hadn’t been kind. 

I think I might not be catching onto something here. Is she saying they used to literally worship them as gods (hence the “still” earlier in the paragraph) or that people were so dazzled by the High Fae that it seemed like they worshipped them and now that’s morphed into this cult? Either way, they try to get the girls to listen to them.

It was impressive—truly impressive—to see Nesta go ramrod straight, to square her shoulders and look down her nose at the young acolyte, a queen without a throne. “Go spew your fanatic nonsense to some ninny. You’ll find no converts here.”

Yay! Something Feyre thinks Nesta did right! Even if it does make it sound like the acolyte is the queen without a throne.

I reined in my wince. Perhaps not the best way to deal with them, since they could become a true nuisance if agitated—

LOL, of course Nesta did the wrong thing! Stupid, stupid Nesta!

I’m really hoping that at some point the call to adventure gets Feyre away from her sisters so I don’t have to hear the constant complaining.

Here’s a quick lowdown on these preacher weirdos: they wear silver bells to try and attract fairies, they hate iron (which all the villagers wear to ward off fairies) and they grow their hair super long. So, they stick out as they’re walking around the village, making them an easy target. As some village women walk by, they’ve got words to say.

“Faerie-loving whore,” one of them hurled at the young woman. I couldn’t disagree.

Not “whore”; “whore,” italicized. Emphasized so we can be sure not to miss it. And our heroine is like, can’t disagree with that! Total whore!

You know, all the author had to do there was insert any other non-gendered insult for her heroine to agree with and the misogyny could have been avoided.

The weird thing was, just before I started typing this out, I had the thought, “Can you really hold that against, Feyre, though? She’s not the one who said it.” And then I remembered that I’ve been drunk since Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and that anyone who hasn’t been waking up in the middle of the night to smoke pot and pop Xanax to get through the next four hours or so of nightmares uninterrupted would have followed that thought up with, “yes, but also the author could have not written it.” ed.—I’m going to show this paragraph to my husband, Mr. “They’ll never actually get rid of Roe v. Wade because it’s their only political point” and say, “Yet again, I TOLD YOU THE FUCK SO.”

I’m not really against having female characters use insults like that when they’re angry. I’m really not, because I use problematic, misogynist language all the time and I’m AFAB and assumed to have a gender at birth so it’s been socialized into me and it feels comforting when I am enraged. I think that’s true for many, many people socialized as girls. It’s realistic for people to lash out that way, even if it’s reductive and problematic. But I do feel like it’s language that has to be earned in the moment. This woman is addressing a group described as being made up of women and men. And it’s a religious group, also not necessarily a gendered thing requiring a sexually-charged misogynistic insult. Honestly, the line could even stay; the real issue is our heroine throwing her personal endorsement behind it. That’s not something you really want to pop the top on when you’re only in chapter three, dig? Because we don’t know her well, yet, and what we do know of her isn’t great.

The women goes on to say:

“Don’t you idiots understand what those monsters did to us for all those centuries? What they still do for sport, when they can get away with it? You deserve the end you’ll meet at faerie hands. Fools and whores, all of you.”

Why the whores again? “Fool” was right there! Unless the point is to insinuate that these people want to bang fairies?

The women leave but the fairie worshipers aren’t done with the sisters. One of them tells the girls that her cousin was sent as an offering to Prythian and never came back. Obviously, this means she’s been made into the wife of a high-ranking fairy official or something and lives a life of luxury.

“She was likely eaten,” Nesta said. “That’s why she hasn’t returned.”

Right? That’s what I’m saying, Nesta. Like, if my cousin decided to go swim in a cave full of monster sharks and didn’t come back, I’m gonna assume the monster sharks ate her. Not that she married them and she’s queen of the monster sharks now.

I know I’m not supposed to like Nesta because the author has telegraphed exactly how horrible I should find this character, but I like her a lot more than I like Feyre.

Or worse, I thought, if a High Fae truly was involved in spiriting a human into Prythian.

Oh my god, just say they rape people. I mean it. Enough with the dancing around “or worse.” This is the second time Feyre has referred to there being something “worse” than being eaten. We’re all picking up on the subtle hints. In fantasy fiction, “or worse” when we’re discussing stuff that can happen to female characters is almost always rape. Now, I’ve never been eaten by a spooky creature but I have been raped and I feel like I can comfortably say that the really bad one is the one that involves a spooky creature eating you.

I’d never encountered the cruel, human-looking High Fae who ruled Prythian itself, or the faeries who occupied their lands, with their scales and wings and long, spindly arms that could drag you deep, deep beneath the surface of a forgotten pond. I didn’t know which would be worse to face.

Being eaten. Being eaten would be worse.

This interaction stretches out a bit long for my taste; it smacks of the author wanting each character to get the last word. Eventually, it ends and Feyre sends Nesta and Elain off and tells them to meet her in an hour. Then, our heroine goes off on the special journey of awakening to sell her furs. She’s looking for whoever will buy the hides at the best price when:

And then the unknown: a mountain of a woman sitting on the lip of our broken square fountain, without any cart or stall, but looking like she was holding court nonetheless. The scars and weapons on her marked her easily enough. A mercenary.

This character has yet to say a single word and I already like her more than I like Feyre.

That said, I’m liking Feyre a little more with every breathless description of this butch goddess:

I approached the mercenary, whose thick, dark hair was shorn to her chin. Her tan face seemed hewn of granite, and her black eyes narrowed slightly at the sight of me. Such interesting eyes—not just one shade of black, but … many, with hints of brown that glimmered amongst the shadows.

This is more description than we’ve gotten of the guy Feyre has lackluster maintenance sex with.

I pushed against that useless part of my mind, the instincts that had me thinking about color and light and shape, and kept my shoulders back as she assessed me as a potential threat or employer. The weapons on her—gleaming and wicked—were enough to make me swallow.

I can’t be the only one seeing this. I just can’t be. I mean, in the first place, this is the internet. Yous all slash everything anyway. But Feyre is standing in front of this woman, lost in her glimmering eyes…I’m not reading into things here. This is on the page.

The mercenary does the cliche mercenary tough-guy thing about only working for money and wanting to know what Feyre’s “business with me” is. She even calls Feyre “girl”.

She could have been aged anywhere from twenty-five to thirty, but I supposed I looked like a girl to her in my layers, gangly from hunger.

I don’t understand anything going on in that sentence. How old Feyre looks has no bearing whatsoever on how old the mercenary is. It almost feels like this was meant to be a statement that the mercenary is mistaking Feyre for being much younger but that perception doesn’t have anything to do with the age of the mercenary. I don’t know how an editor didn’t ding this for clarity.

Feyre offers to sell the hides to the mercenary, who accuses her of stealing them.

“No.” I held her stare. “I hunted them myself. I swear it.”

 She ran those dark eyes down me again. “How.” Not a question—a command. Perhaps someone who had encountered others who did not see vows as sacred, words as bonds. And had punished them accordingly.

EVERYONE ELSE IS READING THIS, RIGHT? Feyre is sitting here thinking about this woman commanding and punishing. I know I have a dirty mind but jee and zus.

After Feyre tells the mercenary the story of her hunt, the mercenary says she doesn’t think the pelt looks like it came from a fairy. Then she offers to way, way overpay for the hides.

“I’m assuming those two girls watching from across the square are your sisters. You all have that brassy hair—and that hungry look about you.”

How does Feyre react to this?

“I don’t need your pity.”

Dear Reader, please imagine that my head spun all the way around twice while my rage turned to fire and that fire poured from my open mouth and still burns the world to this day. There was an entire chapter devoted to how her prideful family sucks and won’t do anything to get out of their predicament. Yet here’s Saint Feyre, Patron of Hopeless Cases, arguing that she doesn’t need the money that the woman is offering to pay her.

I pure, to the bottom of my soul, hate Feyre and if I weren’t reading this for a recap, this is where I would DNF because I cannot stand her.

I nodded, my cheeks heating as she reached for the coin purse inside her heavy coat. It was full—and weighed down with at least silver, possibly gold, if the clinking was any indication. Mercenaries tended to be well paid in our territory.

HOW?! How is anyone “well-paid?” All we’ve heard about is how everyone in the village is too poor to afford a ditch to shit in. The next paragraph explains that the town can’t afford an army to watch the wall between their land fairy territory.

But the upper class could afford hired swords, like this woman, to guard their lands bordering the immortal realm.

Now there’s an “upper class” in this town?

I’m finding that the deeper we get into this book, the more I’m having to continually readjust my perception of the setting. There’s a treaty, but they still need an army to protect them from the people they have a treaty with. But they can’t afford an army because everyone in town is starving and wretched. Except for the upper class that hasn’t been mentioned any of the times we’ve been told about how everyone in the village except for them is starving and wretched.

But it doesn’t matter, anyway, because as Feyre explains, nothing will stop the fairies from attacking and breaking the treaty and none of the iron they wear or the wards they use will do anything to save them and everyone knows that.

So…if everyone knows that…why pay mercenaries to do absolutely nothing?

The mercenary pays Feyre:

There was no possible chance that my sisters hadn’t spotted the money—no chance they weren’t already wondering how they might persuade me to give them some.

It probably doesn’t take much persuading. They just need to appeal to your self-righteous sense of perpetual martyrdom.

The mercenary also warns Feyre that she shouldn’t go so far into the woods because there are rumors that “things” are getting through the wall. Just say fairies, you know? We know what you’re talking about. They’re the thing that’s on the other side of the wall that people are afraid of.

A chill spider-walked down my spine.

Love that description. Love everything about it.

Feyre is worried that the fairies are going to attack because that will mean potentially trying to move her whole family with the nothing they have.

Once—long ago and for millennia before that—we had been slaves to High Fae overlords. Once, we had built them glorious, sprawling civilizations from our blood and sweat, built them temples to their feral gods. Once, we had rebelled, across every land and territory. The War had been so bloody, so destructive, that it took six mortal queens crafting the Treaty for the slaughter to cease on both sides and for the wall to be constructed: the North of our world conceded to the High Fae and faeries, who took their magic with them; the South to we cowering mortals, forever forced to scratch out a living from the earth. 

Again, I ask: if everyone is scratching out a living and just trying to get by, who are these rich people? Also, I’m not trying to be a bitch here because most high fantasy is pretty derivative, but this is like if Tinker Bell wrote a mash-up of Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire. A wall to the North that keeps the terrifying killer magic beings from getting all the people? I’m familiar with this.

The mercenary tells Feyre that weird beasts called martax are getting loose and crossing the border and ripping whole villages to shreds.

“Body big as a bear’s, head something like a lion’s—and three rows of teeth sharper than a shark’s. And mean—meaner than all three put together. They left the villagers in literal ribbons, the nobleman said.”

Man-Bear Pig!

I like the visual of the dead villagers left in literal ribbons. It makes it sound like the martax ran through, killed everyone, shredded them up, and wrapped the piles like gifts with pretty bows.

The mercenary again warns Feyre to stay away from the wall. One important point that has yet to be addressed is the part where Feyre is like, nobody stands a chance, fairies can kill you by just looking at you, if you face a fairy you’re for-sure gonna die…yet this mercenary’s job is to fight off fairies? The ones that can’t be killed by anything at all?

It’s the contradictions that lose me, okay?

Feyre asks the mercenary about fairies she’s encountered:

The woman pulled back the sleeve of her heavy jacket, revealing a tanned, muscled forearm flecked with gruesome, twisted scars. The arc of them so similar to—“Didn’t have the brute force or size of a martax,” she said, “but its bite was full of poison. Two months—that’s how long I was down; four months until I had the strength to walk again.” She pulled up the leg of her trousers. Beautiful, I thought, even as the horror of it writhed in my gut. Against her tanned skin, the veins were black—solid black, spiderwebbed, and creeping like frost. “Healer said there was nothing to be done for it—that I’m lucky to be walking with the poison still in my legs. Maybe it’ll kill me one day, maybe it’ll cripple me. But at least I’ll go knowing I killed it first.”

First of all, this is fantasy novel foreplay. If these two don’t hook up, this entire meet-cute was a lie. Second, I remain confused re: the lethality of these fairies. One minute, it’s all “everyone knows nobody can fight a fairy,” and the next it’s, “Look at this sexy mercenary’s sexy scars from fighting fairies.”

Feyre says goodbye and her sisters hurry her away, warning her that mercenaries are dangerous. They admit to Feyre that a mercenary (not the one Feyre was just having an intense sexual awakening with) took money from the sisters once.

“Why didn’t you report him—or tell me?” 

“What could you have done?” Nesta sneered. “Challenged him to a fight with your bow and arrows? And who in this sewer of a town would even care if we reported anything?”

Mmm, Feyre, you really know how to win me over. I absolutely love to hear someone demand to know why a crime wasn’t reported.

Nesta points out that Isaac, Feyre’s barnyard booty call, is watching them. Feyre describes him as the son of “the only well-off farmer in our village” (what happened to the upper class we just read about?) and has this to say about his appearance and attractiveness:

Relatively handsome, soft-spoken, and reserved, but with a sort of darkness running beneath it all that had drawn us to each other, that shared understanding of how wretched our lives were and would always be.

Ah, okay. I understand now why she can’t have a romance with a mercenary. There is a boy and the boy has pain and the pain calls out to the pain only a YA heroine can heal. I’ve ridden this carousel of hell before.

How did they meet? Why, on their way to market, of course! And what did she notice about him right off the bat?

We’d only talked about the eggs he was bringing to market—and I’d admired the variation in colors within the basket he bore—browns and tans and the palest blues and greens.

We just heard more description about eggs than we get about Isaac in this whole chapter.

I mean, compare and contrast here. There’s blushing and stammering and thinking about commanding and punishing with the mercenary, and with Isaac there’s…relatively handsome and eggs.

Feyre reminisces about that first time they’d met and how she’d felt like she wasn’t as alone with him, and how that led into the sex.

I couldn’t say our lovemaking was particularly skilled, but it was still a release, a reprieve, a bit of selfishness.

She admits that while she doesn’t love him, it’s a bummer that he’s getting married because she’s not gonna keep up doing it with a married dude. But he ain’t married yet, so when he gives her the signal, she gives some money to her sisters and heads off for some steamy, off-page barn time.

At this point, a “contraceptive brew” is mentioned; I’m pleased to see birth control options represented in a fantasy novel since the genre usually relies on tropes of like illegitimate heirs and shit.

After a section break, it’s post-dinner and everyone is kind of chilling in the house and getting along. Feyre decides that’s a good time to start some shit, I guess, because she wants to bring up the guy Nesta wants to marry. She’s about to ruin everybody’s evening by opening her mouth when:

But there was a roar that half deafened me, and my sisters screamed as snow burst into the room and an enormous, growling shape appeared in the doorway.

Woot! Cliffhanger!

Keep an eye out for the next recap to come after October 10th. I’m about to finish the second draft of The Daughter, after which I will be running into the woods to write a different book. ed.—Obviously, this note was not for present day readers. And The Daughter was the working title of the book that I ended up calling Sophie instead, so don’t panic, you didn’t miss a whole book.

I hope no sexy mercenaries come to save me from a martax. That would be just terrible.

A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter 2 or “Woe is me.”

As promised, I’m importing the A Court of Thorns and Roses recaps here from Patreon. These were originally written beginning in August of 2020, so there will be references to upcoming or seasonal events that won’t fit with our current timeline. I am not a time traveler and you’ll never be able to prove that I am. I will also include editors notes like this every now and then as we go, mostly to amuse myself but to give re-read value to those who’ve already been on this awful, awful journey with me.

At what point in a book do you usually want to slap a character and tell them to quit whining? To slap all the characters and tell them to quit whining? Because it’s chapter two and from past experience, when I feel this way in chapter two, it’s all downhill from there.

Our heroine, Feyre, has just come out of the forest with a deer wrapped in a wolf-pelt on her shoulders.

Not even the carcass could ward off the deepening chill.

This is not how the cold works. She’s been heavily exerting herself, so she’s going to be hot under her clothes. Face and extremities that are exposed will be cold, but once you get really, really cold, you start to feel super hot. This didn’t read right to me, probably because I’ve read so many books in the past couple of years about doomed cold-weather expeditions. The colder you get, the hotter you get, especially if you’ve been laboring intensely in many layers of clothing. And unless you’re wearing fur, your sweat is probably freezing in your clothes, making you colder and hotter.

But I need to stop reading such grim books, for sure. ed.—But definitely everyone else should read The Terror by Dan Simmons.

The world was awash in hues of dark blue, interrupted only by shafts of buttery light escaping from the shuttered windows of our dilapidated cottage. It was like striding through a living painting— […]

Yet another detail about this fantasy world: they have heard of Thomas Kincaid.

As she approaches their humble cottage, she hears her sisters talking inside.

I didn’t need to discern their words to know they most likely were chattering about some young man or the ribbons they’d spotted in the village when they should have been chopping wood, but I smiled a bit nonetheless.

This was my red flag the first time I tried to read this book. I was like, “Wait, is this one of those ‘I’m not like other girls’ books?” I have to admit, I didn’t even get through this chapter that first attempt. I DNFed and blamed it on myself, thinking I was just suffering through a really bad book hangover.

No, as it turns out, I actively loathe this entire family. Even the dead mom.

As Feyre goes inside, she mentions that there are wards carved into the door frame.

My father had once convinced a passing charlatan to trade the engravings against faerie harm in exchange for one of his wood carvings. There was so little that my father was ever able to do for us that I hadn’t possessed the heart to tell him the engravings were useless … and undoubtedly fake.

We’re at the beginning of this kind of cascade of Feyre being the only smart, reasonable person and everyone else is dumb, dumb, dumb. And it gets old pretty fucking fast. ed.—However, once fuckable male characters enter the story, Feyre becomes much less intelligent.

Feyre enters the house and gives us a great opportunity to discuss solutions to the pesky “how do I describe my protagonist in first person?” problem:

Though she was bundled in a threadbare blanket, her gold-brown hair—the hair all three of us had—was coiled perfectly about her head. Eight years of poverty hadn’t stripped from her the desire to look lovely.

She describes her sister Elain and throws in the hair color of all the sisters in one sentence. That is a hell of a way to knock that off that checklist. Hat tip to that.

Feyre notes that Elain is more concerned about the deer than the blood all over her sister. 

I’d long since given up hope of them actually noticing whether I came back from the woods every evening. At least until they got hungry again. But then again, my mother hadn’t made them swear anything when they stood beside her deathbed.

I’m getting the feeling that Feyre and I aren’t going to be besties. Look, I’m not disputing that her sisters are shitty. I don’t know them. It’s how we arrived at Shitty Sister Junction that I find so jarring. Feyre has been out hunting. Elain knows that. And Feyre has walked into the cottage with approximately 1.25 animals. And I’m kind of like, IDK, if I saw a person carrying a deer and a freshly skinned wolf pelt on their shoulders, I would just assume the blood was the result of…all that. Would that really be callous of me to assume with the information presented?

The thing is, the mother’s vow part is a big theme woven throughout the chapter to explain why Feyre is bothering to take care of her sisters at all. But when presented the way it is throughout the chapter, it starts to feel less like, “I, the heroine of this novel, have iron-clad principles and will never break a vow,” but “I, the heroine of this novel, would like your pity, please.” Feyre can still resent the position such a vow puts her in but the author missed a chance to flesh out more of her character by choosing to go the pity route. How Feyre views this vow says a lot about her character but I’m not sure it’s what the author intends for us to pick up on.

But whatever. Feyre has some real issues with her family. Buckle the fuck up.

“Will it take you long to clean it?” Me. Not her, not the others. I’d never once seen their hands sticky with blood and fur.

Feyre also notes that the only reason she knows how to hunt at all is that other people helped her learn. I’m not sure why that’s a slight against her family; if they didn’t know how to hunt or do things, how were you expecting them to teach you?

It wasn’t that Elain was cruel. She wasn’t like Nesta, who had been born with a sneer on her face. Elain sometimes just … didn’t grasp things. It wasn’t meanness that kept her from offering to help; it simply never occurred to her that she might be capable of getting her hands dirty. 

I don’t want anyone to assume that I’m sticking up for her awful sisters. However, I also believe that, to a point, we train people how to treat us. Throughout this entire scene, Feyre never once asks for help from her family. Here she is thinking, well, my sister isn’t a bad person, it just never occurred to her that she could help…and then blames her for not helping without ever once suggesting the idea. You can’t have your main character complain about how nobody helps her and point out that she knows one of them would probably help her if they thought about it and then have the main character beg for pity from the reader for the whole damn chapter when she never once asks anyone to help her.

One of Elain’s problems, Feyre points out, is that she doesn’t seem to grasp that the family is poor, even eight years after their reversal of fortunes. But despite this, Feyre still buys her sister flower seeds for the garden (grow some fucking food, jackasses) and Elain once bought Feyre some paints so she could Tangled up the house:

It was the only gift she’d ever given me, and our house still bore the marks of it, even if the paint was now fading and chipped: little vines and flowers along the windows and thresholds and edges of things, tiny curls of flame on the stones bordering the hearth. Any spare minutes I’d had that bountiful summer I used to bedeck our house in color, sometimes hiding clever decorations inside drawers, behind the threadbare curtains, underneath the chairs and table.

All I could think of is Rapunzel singing, “I’ll paint the walls some more/I’m sure there’s room somewhere.” Note, this isn’t me saying it’s stolen or copied or anything, just that it made me think of Tangled and as a result, I vomited that thought onto the page for all you wonderful folks.

Feyre’s father comments on what a good job she did bagging the deer. Now, it’s time to meet the other sister:

From beside my father, Nesta snorted. Not surprising. Any bit of praise for anyone—me, Elain, other villagers—usually resulted in her dismissal.

With the introduction of Nesta, we get some background on what happened to Schitt’s Creek this family. Feyre notes that Nesta has hated their father ever since he messed up some business investment and creditors had come and driven them out of their manor. So, now we know that they were super-duper rich and now they’re penniless.

Their father, we learn, has hopes of rebuilding his fortune. I guess the way we have to look at this now is that Father is Johnny Rose, Nesta is David, Elain is Alexis, and Feyre is one of Moira’s wigs because she’s doing all the damn work.

Feyre explains that they can eat half the meat that week, save the other half, and that she’ll take the hides to market. And then, CRASH! HERE COMES THE KOOL-AID MAN ONLY HE’S NOT FILLED WITH KOOL-AID HE’S FILLED WITH LAZY ABLEISM AS CHARACTERIZATION! Come with me, on a shitty, shitty journey.

My father’s ruined leg was stretched out before him, as close to the fire’s heat as it could get. The cold, or the rain, or a change in temperature always aggravated the vicious, twisted wounds around his knee. His simply carved cane was propped up against his chair—a cane he’d made for himself … and that Nesta was sometimes prone to leaving far out of his reach.

 He could find work if he wasn’t so ashamed, Nesta always said when I hissed about it. She hated him for the injury, too—for not fighting back when that creditor and his thugs had burst into the cottage and smashed his knee again and again.

Now, on an earlier page there was a throw-away line about her father’s “limping presence,” and now we’ve got this character going oh, it’s terrible that this horrible bitch Nesta moves daddy’s cane so he can’t get around and she blames him for being injured in this horrible, violent attack, right? We’re supposed to be outraged at Nesta here, especially when Feyre adds this detail:

Nesta and Elain had fled into the bedroom, barricading the door. I had stayed, begging and weeping through every scream of my father, every crunch of bone. I’d soiled myself—and then vomited right on the stones before the hearth. Only then did the men leave. We never saw them again.

CLEARLY FEYRE IS THE REAL VICTIM OF THE ATTACK ON HER FATHER! The other sisters selfishly ran away from their father’s attackers…eight years ago…when they were…children (which we find out a bit later in this chapter).

Anyway, it’s clearly Nesta who blames their father for his injury and not Feyre. I mean, sure, Feyre does complain about the fact that they had to use a lot of their money to, you know, pay for his medical bills. And she also says people only bought his wood carvings because they pitied him. Oh, and this gem:

Five years ago, when the money was well and truly gone, when my father still couldn’t—wouldn’t—move much about, he hadn’t argued when I announced that I was going hunting.

That’s right! Poor, long-suffering Feyre is forced to care for her lazy, disabled dad who just doesn’t care enough to even try to overcome his disability. I mean:

He hadn’t bothered to attempt to stand from his seat by the fire, hadn’t bothered to look up from his wood carving. He just let me walk into those deadly, eerie woods that even the most seasoned hunters were wary of.

I mean, he didn’t attempt to stand and walk as if healed by a televangelist? A disabled person didn’t even try to not be disabled for your benefit. Poor you, Feyre. Poor, poor you.

He’d become a little more aware now—sometimes offered signs of gratitude, sometimes hobbled all the way into town to sell his carvings—but not much.

A dude with a mangled leg, who relies on a mobility aid he is sometimes intentionally denied, doesn’t walk “all the way into town” to make money? Well, at least the useless cripple is being grateful.

Feyre, again, I have this feeling that you and I aren’t going to be BFFs.

Elain and Nesta begin fighting over the hides that Feyre intended to sell.

I kept quiet, knowing better than to get in the middle of one of their arguments, but I glanced at Nesta’s still-shiny pair by the door. Beside hers, my too-small boots were falling apart at the seams, held together only by fraying laces.

Try this, Feyre: “If you want a cloak or boots, you can help me do shit around the house.” I’m sorry, but I absolutely cannot get behind a character this spineless. I’m supposed to believe she’s this tough, brave person, but she can’t even say no to her freaking sisters? What are they going to do? Skin the deer and make their own cloak? Go into town and buy new boots on their own?

At least Elain gives us a primer for how to pronounce the heroine’s name:

She drew out the two syllables of my name—fay-ruh—into the most hideous whine I’d ever endured, and Nesta loudly clicked her tongue before ordering her to shut up.

I guess I was mentally mispronouncing her name. She definitely needs it to be pronounced in a hideous whine.

Feyre’s dad starts looking at the wolf pelt and I pick a nit:

His fingers, still smooth and gentlemanly, […]

Okay, but he’s been a woodcarver for eight years.

Feyre’s dad is concerned about the wolf pelt, saying she took a huge risk. I think the underlying implication is that her dad knew it could have been a fairy? But Feyre tells him that she didn’t have a choice.

What I really wanted to say was: You don’t even bother to attempt to leave the house most days. Were it not for me, we would starve. Were it not for me, we’d be dead.

Wow, this is totally not the type of shit that runs through a disabled person’s head constantly! We don’t ever sit around worrying that our relatives think we’re lazy and resent us constantly for not doing enough! This is super fun to read!

Because we really need to understand that beneath her spinelessness and disgust for the disabled, Feyre is the true victim of the entire situation, Nesta makes fun of how Feyre smells and calls her an “ignorant peasant,” hurting Feyre’s feelings.

I didn’t let the sting and ache show. I’d been too young to learn more than the basics of manners and reading and writing when our family had fallen into misfortune, and she’d never let me forget it.

So, Feyre had been too young to have learned a whole bunch of manners and graces, but we’re supposed to, IDK, hate? Dislike? Blame? Nesta and Elain, who would have had to have been quite young, themselves, for running and hiding from violent intruders rather than nobly standing their ground and shitting their pants. Feyre even mentions that Nesta is three years older than her, so it’s not like there’s this huge ass gap between them where Nesta is so much older.

Feyre asks her sister to put more wood on the fire but there is none; her sisters didn’t chop the wood, as she predicted. Nesta refuses to chop wood because it will ruin her beautiful hands or whatever. Feyre tells her that if she doesn’t get up at dawn and chop more wood, they won’t have a way to cook breakfast. Then she goes upstairs to the room she shares with her sisters and thinks about all the hard work she did painting their dresser drawers.

I’d done it to brighten the otherwise dark room. They’d never commented on it. I don’t know why I’d ever expected them to.

Is there literally nothing our sainted, selfless Feyre won’t do for her beloved, ungrateful sisters? Like, IDK, did they ask you to do this? A gift is a gift, not a contract. You chose to do this thing to make the room look better not just for them, but for you. Grow up.

After a section break, the family is eating dinner and Feyre is thinking about how she’s going to take the stuff to the market and they’re not going to give her a fair price because GOD FORBID FEYRE HAVE ONE THOUGHT THAT ISN’T FULL-ON SELF-PITY MODE.

Seriously, what editor picked up this book and was so gripped by the characters that they just had to keep reading and then offer a contract? When I was an editor, this would have been a revise and resubmit. Because while I’ll stand by unlikeable characters, ableist, self-martyring whiners who make it a point to denigrate other women for caring about how they look do not make for the compelling read the author thinks it does.

Of course, I have yet to have a fantasy series take the world by storm, so maybe I’ve been writing them all wrong.

And here, we hit kind of a big inconsistency. Upstairs in their bedroom, Feyre notes that their bed is the only rich people thing they have left. It’s huge and it was a wedding present for her parents, right? Now, in this scene where the family is eating dinner, Feyre says this about their eating utensils:

[…]the fork was part of a shabby set my father had salvaged from the servants’ quarters while the creditors ransacked our manor home.

If they were only able to grab mismatched silver as they fled the creditors…how did they bring the bed along?

But we’re onto other things:

My mother. Imperious and cold with her children, joyous and dazzling among the peerage who frequented our former estate, doting on my father—the one person whom she truly loved and respected. But she also had truly loved parties—so much so that she didn’t have time to do anything with me at all save contemplate how my budding abilities to sketch and paint might secure me a future husband. Had she lived long enough to see our wealth crumble, she would have been shattered by it—more so than my father. Perhaps it was a merciful thing that she died.

Let’s sift through Feyre’s grievances with her mother and take some useful stuff away from this paragraph. This helps us establish the timeline, somewhat by telling us that their mother had died before they lost their fortune. This is important to note, as the chapter goes on.

But holy shit, cold as fucking ice, Feyre. It was merciful that your mother died because she couldn’t handle being poor? WTF.

This next part throws me for a loop:

Every time I looked toward a horizon or wondered if I should just walk and walk and never look back, I’d hear that promise I made eleven years ago as she wasted away on her deathbed. Stay together, and look after them.

This makes very little sense to me, in terms of deathbed vows. She doesn’t care about her family but she’s desperate for them to stay together, despite their total lack of hardship at the time?

And this is a vow Feyre can’t break, because…reasons.

But I’d sworn it to her, and then she’d died, and in our miserable human world—shielded only by the promise made by the High Fae five centuries ago—in our world where we’d forgotten the names of our gods, a promise was law; a promise was currency; a promise was your bond.

And who, exactly, is going to hold your reputation accountable here? And did your mother also say that you weren’t allowed to ask your family to help survive in case you lost your fortune?

Surely, there must be a reason that she dropped this burden on her youngest child, making her suffer for her entire life? Had she been so far gone at that point that she just didn’t know who Feyre was?

Or maybe impending death had given her some clarity about the true nature of her children, her husband.

Oh, that makes sense. It’s because she knew, in her last moments, that Feyre was The Best One.

Of course, that’s why. Of course.

And I love that we’re blaming Disabled Dad for his “true nature,” which is to be lazy and useless?

Over dinner, Nesta complains about how everyone is a peasant except her or something because the more we hate Nesta, the more we love Feyre, right? That’s how it works when you write female protagonists? Every other female has to be the super fucking worst?

I took a sip from my cup of hot water—we couldn’t even afford tea these days—as Nesta continued her story to Elain.

 You’ve been starving for eight years and you never thought to forage for leaves? I feel like you’re making a lot of your own problems at this point.

Nesta reveals that she’s had a marriage proposal from…the son of a woodcutter.

My father shifted in his seat, blinking, and though I knew it was foolish to react to her taunts, I said, “You can’t chop wood for us, but you want to marry a woodcutter’s son?”

IDK, Feyre. That actually sounds like the perfect solution for someone who doesn’t want to chop wood.

Oh, wait, sorry. I’m supposed to hate everything about Nesta. Yeah, fuck Nesta and her woodcutter boyfriend.

Instead of pointing out that thing I said earlier about how it makes total sense to marry someone who does a job you don’t want to do and therefore you can reap the benefits of not having to do that thing, Nesta insults Feyre’s paintings.

She sneered at the pillar of foxglove I’d painted along the edge of the table—the colors too dark and too blue, with none of the white freckling inside the trumpets, but I’d made do, even if it had killed me not to have white paint, to make something so flawed and lasting.

OH MY GOD IS THERE NOTHING SHE WILL NOT DOUSE IN SELF-PITY. She hates her sister but values her opinion so much that in the next paragraph she’s like, guess I’ll just scrape it off since it sucks.

Anyway, Feyre announces that there’s no way Nesta is going to marry this woodcutter’s son because he’s…not worthy of Nesta?

I have developed an actual headache doing this recap. I think it’s a combination of the eye rolls and trying to understand what this chapter was meant to accomplish besides making me actively loathe the heroine.

Feyre’s argument against this potential betrothal is that the woodcutter’s family isn’t any better off than they are and Nesta will be just another mouth to feed. So, it’s no longer a matter of Feyre watching out for her family but also inserting herself into the business of the whole damn town.

How poor are the woodcutters?

I’d seen the gleam of desperate hunger in his eyes when he spotted me sporting a brace of rabbits. I’d never killed another human, but that day, my hunting knife had felt like a weight at my side.

Feyre, willing to potentially kill a fairy and endanger her entire village for the benefit of her family = good

Tomas the woodcutter’s son, willing to kill one human being for the benefit of his family = irredeemably terrible

I know some of you said you really liked this book. I…I need to know why.

“We’re in love,” Nesta declared, and Elain nodded her agreement. I almost laughed—when had they gone from mooning over aristos to making doe-eyes at peasants?

First, they’re too snobby. Now, they’re not snobby enough. This is never going to be tiring.

“You’re just jealous. I heard them saying how Isaac is going to marry some Greenfield village girl for a handsome dowry.” 

So had I; Isaac had ranted about it the last time we’d met.

I mean, obviously the guy Feyre’s interested in doesn’t want to marry someone else. Just the guy Nesta’s interested in, right?

Also, anyone from Michigan cracked up at the idea of Isaac marrying a girl from Greenfield Village? Her dowry is just a bunch of train-flattened pennies.

Their fight gets even more personal so we can see just how awful and cruel Nesta is, and the sisters storm off.  Feyre tells her father he should “talk some sense” into Nesta, noting that Tomas only wants the proverbial one thing from her.

Her father says that she should just let Nesta hang on to hope for “a better world,” which leads Feyre to feel more self-pity over the flowers she painted on the table that nobody appreciates.

When I looked at my father, my gaze was hard. “There is no such thing.”

I’m pretty sure that this chapter was supposed to make us go, wow, what a horrible life, I hope things turn around for Feyre, but I can’t cheer for a character who’s…

Well, who’s Feyre, frankly.