Abigail Barnette's Blog, page 6

The Week In Video!

I’ve been doing a lot more over on my YouTube channel these days! If you’re not there for the Buffy Watch-Along, my react video to my first time ever watching Bridgerton, or Jealous Haters AV Club (We’re reading E.L. James’s The Missus), you’ve got catching up to do!

Here are the most recent installments of those series. You’ll have to be signed in to watch most of the Bridgerton reacts, due to age restriction (for reasons that are obvious if you are a Bridgerton watcher). Some of The Missus are also 18+, just a warning.

2024 Book Releases and ARC Opportunities

Hello, friends! Abigail Barnette has a busy 2024 ahead! Here’s the release schedule. It’s a doozy.

February:

The Princes of Pleasure and Torment (Fablemere Fae #1), exclusively on Radish (premiere date TBD)The Vampire’s Willing Captive (Fablemere #2) Kindle Vella, Ream, Patreon (premieres Feb. 13)The Ogre’s Fairytale Bride (Fablemere #1), ebook and paperback (Feb. 29)

June:

The Mage’s Reluctant Assistant (Fablemere #3) Kindle Vella, Ream, Patreon (premieres June 11)

July

The Vampire’s Willing Captive (Fablemere #2) ebook and paperback (July 9)Rise Of The Alpha God (Taken By The Alpha King #2), ebook and paperback (July 16)

October

Alpha Queen Ascending (Taken By The Alpha King #3), ebook and paperback (Oct. 7)Fablemere #4 (Title TBD), Kindle Vella, Ream, Patreon (premieres Oct. 10)

November

The Mage’s Reluctant Assistant (Fablemere #3) ebook and paperback (Nov. 11)

December

Her Brother’s Billionaire Best Friend (Her Billionaire #1), ebook and paperback (Dec. 6)

Release Date TBD:

The Princes of Pleasure and Torment (Fablemere Fae #1), ebook and paperback

As you see… I’m going to be drowning in book and serial releases. As my publishing schedule increases, so too does my need to streamline the heck out of my promotions. That’s why instead of putting out ARC calls for individual books, I’m establishing an ARC team. If you review books, especially if you review my books, please consider submitting for a position on the team. You’ll receive an email reminder and get the books ahead of time (four to six weeks before the release date) in your preferred format, and there’s never an expectation of a positive review or a pre-release review. Someone will check periodically and make sure reviews are being posted, but that person isn’t me, as I don’t read them. Plus, you’ll have a chance to opt out of receiving the ARCs if your schedule is too hectic or you’re just plain not interested in the book.

To sign up, fill out this form. At the moment, I’ve only got room for thirty on my team, so I’ll be selecting people who have an established pattern of reviewing books (anybody’s, not just mine). The first ARCs will go out February 1st, and the first title will be The Ogre’s Fairytale Bride.

Thanks everybody for continuing to support my passion of providing quality, fun smut to the world!

A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter 4 or “The Defendant Will Be Remanded Into NONSENSE.”

It has come to my attention that I never reposted chapter four of the ACOTAR recaps here. While this is EXTREMELY on brand for me and my attention to detail, I simply cannot let you all miss the wonder and glory that is… ELK HORNS. Happy New Year, and may Sarah J. Maas never darken our door again in the decades to come.

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 brave 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.

“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.

2023: The Year of Hard Things

From about December 1st on, I’ve been wondering what I could possibly write about in a year-end post. Without reflection on the past year, things feel unfinished. But I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t think of one accomplishment or achievement for the entire year.

And then I was like, ah. That is mental illness trying to trick me.

I actually did a lot of things in 2023. And they were hard things. And they were hard things that were stacked up and up, stretching into the metaphorical sky, beyond the limits of what I thought I was capable of (and above what I ever could have been capable of just three years ago).

Yes, I’m being dramatic, but let me break it down month-by-month.

January

I turned in the second 30k words of the second season of Her Brother’s Billionaire Best Friend for the Yonder app.While also rehearsing to play Bea in Something Rotten!.Just two months after a car accident that left me without a functioning right arm.And I survived the one year deathiversary of my best friend.

February

I turned in the third 30k words of the second season of Her Brother’s Billionaire Best Friend for the Yonder app.I played Bea in Something Rotten!And weathered a snowstorm that ruined our opening night.I went ice skating for the first time in almost twenty-five years. It was like riding a bicycle.I took my youngest kid to her first hockey game.

March

I had a super painful surgery to repair my non-functioning arm.48 hours later, I refused all pain relief except ibuprofen and ice packs so that I could get back to work.Yeah, I was back to work two days after my surgery that needed a year to heal, because I am stubborn.I turned in season four of Taken By The Alpha King to Radish.

April

I decided to make the most of my recovery and start reacting to Bridgerton episodes on YouTube (and discovered my love of video as a format for creation)I began gruelling physical therapy for my still-shitty arm.I was hired to direct a production of my late best friend’s favorite musical, The Music Man.I turned in the first 30k words of the final season of Her Brother’s Billionaire Best Friend on the Yonder app.Our family decided that we would move to Kalamazoo.

May

The Music Man went into production, casting, and rehearsals.I went on my first audition post-surgery, for Big Fish (and didn’t get cast).I turned in the second 30k words of the final season of Her Brother’s Billionaire Best Friend on the Yonder app.I turned in season five of Taken By The Alpha King on Radish.Taken By The Alpha King seasons 1-3 released in paperback and e-book.After fifty years of living in the family lakehouse, Baba decided it was time to move into senior housing.More physical therapy.

June

I turned in the conclusion to Her Brother’s Billionaire Best Friend.Rehearsals continued for The Music Man.I rode a float in the Kalamazoo Doo-Dah! parade to publicize The Music Man.I had the honor of taking one of my cast members to their first ever Pride celebration.I roller skated (AMA) for the first time since my surgery.While it was desperately painful to do so, I missed my annual writing retreat for the first time in eleven years.We started an apartment search.We found (and secured) the perfect townhouse and began packing for our August move.I started recapping The Missus on YouTube.Hey, guess who was still in physical therapy!

July

Baba moved and we said goodbye to the lake house, the central magnet for family celebrations, with a final, subdued July 4th.While having a quiet, reflective moment in the peaceful lake, I scraped my foot on a rock. Fuck you, too, lake.I swallowed my hatred of participation and rode the float in another parade.The Music Man, despite being a beautiful production praised by audiences, absolutely fucking flopped. The theater broke even, but my heart was broken. Still, it was a great tribute to Jill, and she would have loved it.We continued to pack for our August move.And I was still in physical therapy, which was beginning to wear me down.

August

I started writing The Ogre’s Fairytale Bride and developing the world of Fablemere.Our move was delayed until September.That scrape I got in July? Caused cellulitis that I was too busy to get checked out in July. Fuck you, too, lake.I was hired as an accessibility and inclusion coordinator for a production of Matilda, Jr..Grey’s Anatomy came into my life at the best possible time, because things were about to get shitty for me.Guess who was still in physical therapy!

September

Our move was delayed twice, before being pushed back to October.I began to lose my hair due to stress.After hearing about my Fablemere project, Radish contracted me for a dark romantasy serial set within the world before The Ogre’s Fairytale Bride was even finished.I started a rewatch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on my YouTube channel, since the multiple Hollywood strikes temporarily paused my Bridgerton reacts.Physical therapy ended and I began to grapple emotionally with the reality that my arm will never be the same as it was before the accident.The Something Rotten! cast reunited to perform “A Musical” at the Theater Kalamazoo party in Bronson Park. I was one of the very few cast members who wasn’t in that number, so I had to learn it.Then the event was rained out in the most impressive flash-flood way possible, cementing Something Rotten! as the most cursed show in existence.The cellulitis finally went away, but the yeast infection caused by an endless parade of antibiotics lived on for two interminable weeks.

October

After living off paper plates for two months, and with all of our stuff packed up (some of it in a storage facility), Edward Rose & Sons canceled our move entirely after they changed their minds about allowing our previously approved emotional support animals. We received this news on move-in day as we pulled into the driveway with the truck.We decided that moving was not in the cards for us, as we were all too exhausted from the stress to try again.I was so destroyed by the entire moving debacle that I resigned from my position on Matilda, Jr..I had to start wearing a wig or wide headbands to cover up my bald spots.The Ogre’s Fairytale Bride began posting on Ream, Vella, and Patreon.I started the impossible task of unpacking my entire house after all that was left to do was clean out and dispose of large items.

November

I auditioned for (and wasn’t cast in) The Lion in Winter.I scored tickets to Patti LuPone at the Gilmore Piano Festival. Front row, so I’ll have to be on my best behavior.I committed to a February writing retreat on a whim, based solely on the fact that I know like, one person who’s going to be there.It’s on Hilton Head Island, so I began researching how to be bitten by a shark, a bucket list item of mine.We were still unpacking.My youngest child turned fifteen.I suffered a moderate mental health setback after a real rectal prolapse of a person confronted me publicly with a written statement about how I don’t smile enough (read: mask my emotions to appear neurotypical enough).

December

I turned in The Princes of Pleasure and Torment, a Fablemere Faeries story, to Radish.In a manic state, I wrote 60k words in ten days on various projects.I should have used that manic state to unpack, because I still haven’t finished.We managed to decorate for Christmas. We just decorated around the boxes.I recovered from my episode and came back stronger than ever.I was nominated for two BroadwayWorld Regional Awards, one for acting and one for directing, and The Music Man was nominated for Best Musical.I went roller skating at the rink for the first time since my surgery, and only the second time since I got in my accident on the way home from the roller rink.And yesterday, my eldest child turned twenty-one. He celebrated with donuts.

The TL;DR of it was that I had a supporting lead in a musical, directed a musical, weathered a major surgery and a canceled move, a major change in my family, faced numerous mental and physical setbacks, yet still wrote six full-length novels while producing online content.

I wrote earlier this year about “the grind,” and my perception of myself as lazy and worthless. Since then, I’ve adopted a new attitude: I can do and achieve big things. Hard things. I can spend months turning grief into collaborative art, and have the people who worked with me walk away having had a positive experience. I am a writer, even if I take a day off. And while I honestly could work harder at marketing and building my audience and rebranding and staying fresh…

I like where I am. I like what I do. I like writing what I want, when I want. I like making fun of bad books (or being pleasantly surprised by decent ones, like Modelland). I like making YouTube videos and being silly on TikTok and Bluesky. I’m happy with this. I’m happy with the me I was in 2023 and what I achieved. I don’t need to strive for greatness. To me, greatness very much looks like creating things I enjoy, for readers I enjoy, and half-watching Grey’s Anatomy while playing Fall Guys in my bed.

Will I get a massive traditional publishing deal with heavy marketing and become the next genre fiction darling by being comfortable with myself? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean I’m lazy. I’ve given myself permission to no longer want something that has burned me out countless times in the past, in an industry devoid of ethics, where the worst of the worst make big wins. Letting go of that dream that writers dream by default freed me to truly enjoy my work again. To see it as an escape, rather than something I want to escape from. I no longer fantasize about being a grocery store cashier.

And you know what? I don’t feel like a failure when I walk into a bookstore anymore. Bookstores are fun again, rather than some symbol of my inability to make it in traditional publishing. That’s probably why I’ve done so much reading this year, too.

That was the lesson I learned in 2023: I granted myself permission to not want. And in 2024, I’m giving myself permission to just be enough.

Best and Worst books of 2023

I did more reading in 2023 than I’ve done in years. It astonishes me how much I’ve been reading. I hope this trend continues, because it was a bummer when I only had the brain capacity to force myself through the absolute garbage that I read for sporking purposes. I read more fantasy and romance than any other genre, but there was non-fiction and horror sprinkled in, as well. Here are the top five and the bottom five, presented with rationale and content warnings. If you’ve read these books and think of content warnings I missed, please add them in the comments.

THE BEST

1. The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin When I finished this book, I immediately recommended it to a friend as “The new Dune.” It’s that deep, rich, and complex in its worldbuilding. The writing thrusts you directly into the story and trusts you to learn the new settings and societies without spoon-feeding you. The story follows three women: a bereaved mother searching for her surviving child, an officer of a magical bureaucracy whose simple mission uncovers horrific secrets, and a young girl in training at a harsh and violent boarding school. It’s the first in a trilogy that I can’t wait to finish, with a third act twist that made me pull my car over while listening to the audiobook. The cast of characters also features diverse racial, sexual, and gender representation. If you haven’t read it yet, read it. CW: violence, multiple child deaths, child abuse, CSA (implied, not depicted), domestic abuse, forced breeding, corrective rape

2. Gideon The Ninth, Tamsyn Muir I put off reading this book for way too long, discouraged by comparisons in tone to Ready, Player One and its reputation as “a Tumblr book.” It’s so much more. While the book’s cover quote describes it as being about lesbian necromancers in space, that take is so simplified that future printings should absolutely scrub it. This is not, as I expected it to be, a book trying to hit every trope on the trendy book checklist. It’s its own thing, in the most David S. Pumpkins way possible. Gideon, a stubborn, chaotic warrior, is enlisted to protect Harrowhark, a callously violent necromancer, as she embarks on what can only be described as a scientific magic murder mystery tournament for political gain. If you like your fantasy novels to have a heavy dose of science fiction, inventive insults, and a creepier version of Catholicism, this is for sure a book you’ll enjoy. CW: gore, violence

3. Redacted due to the St. Martin’s Press boycott It breaks my heart that I can’t talk about this book, because I truly loved it. However, St. Martins Press has yet to provide sufficient apology for their employee’s racist statements on social media, and has not addressed the possibility that this employee, whose position includes granting ARC access to influencers, has discriminated against reviewers when distributing those ARCs. As such, I cannot in good conscience recommend or review any of their books at this time.

4. Vampires of El Norte, Isabel Cañas The plot is simple: boy and girl grow up together. Girl is attacked by a creature and dies. Boy lives a bleak, tortured existence, while a supernatural mystery unravels against the backdrop of a family’s fight to protect their land and way of life from violent colonization by the United States. I’m so afraid to give any delicious morsel of this book away, because I want you to read it, but I want you to go in with as blank a slate as possible, like I did, because it will put your brain in a chokehold. CW: gore, violence, war, colonization

5. The Woman In Me, Britney Spears If you watched the Jealous Patrons AV Club special report I did on this book, you already know my feelings. Despite the conversational tone of the prose, this is a devastatingly difficult read, and one that needs to be added to the canon of feminist literature. Do not pick this up expecting juicy celebrity gossip (although there is plenty to be found) and unrelatable anecdotes about the shallow inconveniences of superstardom. Spears walks us through her tumultuous childhood with an alcoholic father and a driven stage mom, the relentless sexualization of her teen years, a lifetime of manipulation by men, and her eventual imprisonment through medical malpractice and legal maneuvering. She points out in excruciating detail how little has changed for women since the days of lobotomies and institutionalization, even for the most famous and wealthy. CW: abortion, drug abuse, alcoholism, emotional abuse, exploitation, misogyny… this entire book is its own content warning.

THE WORST

1. The Haunted Forest Tour, James A. Moore and Jeff Strand This was my second-fastest DNF of 2023, coming in at a meager 17%. “But Jenny,” you may ask, “how can you say a book is bad if you only read 17%?” I went into this book hoping for a really fun monster horror. After a forest suddenly sprouts up in New Mexico—and by “suddenly,” I mean fast enough for trees to impale the citizens of the town it consumes—, it quickly becomes a tourist attraction owing to the inexplicable abominations living within it. The prologue hyped me up with its Stephen King-esque tone, but the story quickly became crowded with new character after new character piled onto the tour bus, complete with their individual backstories. Maybe the pace could have been forgiven, but not the wildly offensive fat hate that was apparently integral to the story. It was the character of Neal Whistler that made me DNF and add both authors to my NEVER AGAIN list. We first meet Neal on page forty-two, as he is tantalized by a half-snake woman and her great breasts outside the window of the tram. It’s important to the authors to point out that he is thirty-four and a virgin, owing to the “ugly truth” of his “fifty-four inch waistline.” In order to truly grasp the essence of the character, we must hear, within paragraphs of his first appearance, about how he was humiliated and rejected by a girl in high school, the time his fat ass blew out the seat of his pants at work, and how he planned to “become a better man” through dieting. Neal survives until page fifty-eight, when he stubbornly refuses to sit down in the face of an impending collision and his “obese” body and “immense weight” cause him to human cannonball through the bus, cracking seats and injuring other passengers until he is finally pronounced dead by someone checking the pulse in his “flabby” wrist on page sixty-four. Both of these gaping, infected anal fistulas masquerading as authors can get in an incinerator and turn it the fuck on. CW: Gore, misogyny, and the authors have a real fucking problem with fat people that they need to write about in their journals and not published fiction.

2. Choosing Theo, Victoria Aveline It’s possible I was set up for disappointment by the constant recommendation of this book as “Like Ice Planet Barbarians, but better!” I loved Ice Planet Barbarians (read my original review here), so I was expecting to be blown away. What I got was a reverse-The Handmaid’s Tale about a human woman stranded on a disappointingly Earth-like planet (but with futuristic gizmos and a supposedly feminist society, so you know it’s space) where men are forced into a breeding program. This book fails on every level that Ice Planet Barbarians succeeds. It is not “Like Ice Planet Barbarians, but better!” It’s “Like Ice Planet Barbarians, but without consent!” The narrative tries hard to portray a society where women have their pick of sexy men who are forced to have sex with them and shower them in luxury as somehow empowering, but my queer self remains unconvinced. There is no room for queer or transgender people in the world Aveline created, and the utter lack of consent and agency given to the men of the planet isn’t more acceptable just because it’s not happening to women. CW: rampant heteronormativity, sexualization of rape culture

3. Pucking Around, Emily Rath Emily Rath has gotten a lot of undeserved heat for what went down between BookTok and the Seattle Kraken, but that didn’t get a chance to influence my view of the book, as I read it before the controversy erupted. This book holds the distinction of not only being my fastest DNF of 2023 (at the author’s note), but also the only book I DNFed twice. The first DNF was because I was in a bad mood, and seeing an author’s note about how I should read a prequel novella before starting the supposedly “stand alone” novel made me furious. When I gave it another chance, I learned I should have followed my instinct. The sluttiness of “puck bunnies” (women who want to have sex with hockey players) is pointed out at every available opportunity, which is surprisingly frequent considering that the heroine is the only female character I remember existing at all in the story. Does our heroine want to sleep with hockey players? Yes, but that doesn’t make her a “puck bunny” because she’s not like other girls. She’s a doctor. Does it matter that the multiple hockey players she fucks are her patients? No, of course not. Medical ethics don’t apply to quirky heroines in “funny” situations. And yeah, maybe one of her partners isn’t into the whole polyamory thing, but it’s totally cool to coerce someone into that situation if you really, really can’t choose between the hot hockey players you’re having sex with (and who are also your patients and also you’re not like those other sluts who have sex with multiple hockey players). CW: insulting polyamory rep, misogyny, internalized misogyny, a dash of homophobia, some big consent issues regarding polyamory

4. The Necromancer’s Bride, Brianna Hale I really enjoyed this one, actually. Until I got to the end and found an excerpt for the author’s dark romance featuring an ex-Nazi hero, which completely killed the vibe and made me hate the book I just read by default. Get in the trash, Brianna. You belong there. CW: Author thinks it’s hot to fuck Nazis.

Honorable Mentions I Highly Suggest Because They Were Super Fun And Interesting

1. Hi, Honey, I’m Homo, Matt Baume If you watch Baume’s highly entertaining YouTube video essays about the queer history of American sitcoms, chances are you’ll recognize a lot of this material. But Baume has more room to expound on those topics in book form, and his writing style matches the tone of his YouTube videos, making this a fun and informative read that will change the way you watch television classics. CW: real world and fictional homophobia and transphobia, including examinations of storylines involving the deaths of queer characters.

2. The Fae’s Two Alphas, Jem Zero If you like Kimberly Lemming’s books, you’ll love Zero’s polyam romance about a half-fae trans man working with his childhood wolf-shifter friend and a surly shifter mage to regain entry to the fae realm—and the magic that he used to transition. This is cozy and fun, despite the dysphoric element, with hot sex scenes and believable, tropey romance. Plus, it’s set in Michigan, which makes it an extra winner. CW: dysphoria, forced detransition

There you have it. My bests and worsts of 2023. I think it’s a great sign that I only outright loathed only four books. What did you read in 2023? Leave your recommendations and warnings in the comments!

Plagiarism (terms and conditions apply)

If you are not one of the (at the time of writing) 8.4 million viewers who’ve seen HBomberguy’s magnum opus, Plagiarism and You(Tube), I highly recommend it. You can watch it here. It’s almost four hours long, but every moment is riveting. While the documentary is focused on recapping and contextualizing plagiarism scandals involving YouTubers, the opening described a plagiarism case in the writing world. And since that’s where I’m from, I found it incredibly interesting.

HBomberguy (real name Harris Brewis) talks about a case in which writers Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova successfully settled a plagiarism lawsuit against Paramount Television for lifting ideas wholesale. After Paramount rejected a TV pitch that Ellison and Bova wrote, the company produced a shockingly similar concept.

To reiterate: Writers approach producers. Producers read material. Producers make a show just like that material, but fail to pay and credit the writers who had the idea. Writers sue, producers settle. In other words, producers don’t want to go to court.

Over ideas.

Years ago, when Fifty Shades of Grey came out, it was proven to be Twilight fanfiction. There was absolutely no way to deny it. In an interview with Deadline‘s Mike Fleming Jr., James’s agent, Valerie Hoskins, described the book’s fanfic origins:

“This did start as Twilight fan fiction, inspired by Stephenie Meyer’s wonderful series of books. Originally it was written as fan fiction, then Erika decided to take it down after there were some comments about the racy nature of the material. She took it down and thought, I’d always wanted to write. I’ve got a couple unpublished novels here. I will rewrite this thing, and create these iconic characters, Christian and Anna. If you read the books, they are nothing like Twilight now. It’s very 21st Century, don’t you think?”

Yeah, unfortunately, it is very 21st century. The published version of Fifty Shades of Grey bears a staggering 89% similarity to the original fanfic, Master of the Universe, so the characters weren’t “created” by James. They were Bella and Edward from the Twilight series. The fanfic is patently Twilight, minus vampires, with very little new material added or old material reworked for publication as a novel. The blatant copying of Meyer’s work has been pointed out by numerous sources (including my own) and is openly discussed within the industry.

Yet, James and authors like her, who shamelessly pick over the work of others without bothering to obscure the origins of what they’ve stolen, are defended by some in the industry. “It can’t be plagiarism,” they insist, “because plagiarism means word-for-word.”

That didn’t seem to be a strong enough defense for Paramount Television’s legal team, or they wouldn’t have settled with Bova and Ellison. If they’d been confident in the argument, “Your honor, we only stole the idea. We didn’t copy them word for word,” they would have done so. But they clearly didn’t feel the law was on their side.

Why, then, is public opinion rarely on the side of people who face the same form of plagiarism? And it is plagiarism, regardless of what armchair legal “experts” on social media might say. The Oxford definition of plagiarism isn’t “word-for-word copying.” It includes ideas. That definition must build at least a probable defense in court, or else Paramount Television would have paid Bova and Ellison in hearty jerking-off hand motions.

“There’s no such thing as a new idea!” plagiarist apologists say, even when two books, like Kim Richardson’s The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek and JoJo Moyes’s The Giver of Stars, feature more than one uncannily similar detail or plot point. Sure, Moyes inserted a scene with a horseback librarian getting attacked by the town vagrant, but it’s a historically inspired novel. Yes, Richardson wrote a nearly identical scene in her book, which was published first, by a company owned by the same company that Moyes writes for. There are no new ideas! And it’s a historical novel. The fact that the scene isn’t based on a historical incident that both authors might have uncovered in their research doesn’t matter, because there are no new stories. I mean, “horseback librarian attacked by town vagrant” is such a common motif throughout all of western literature that you’re almost required to include it in all of your stories. Because there simply aren’t new ones. We’re fresh out.

That’s why it’s okay to take a popular book and simply rewrite it, swapping out one type of character for another. Maybe instead of a vampire, the love interest is a billionaire with a tormented past. Maybe instead of surgeons in an exciting hospital environment, your story is a cast of lawyers at a high-pressure firm. You don’t have to change any of the beats. Why would you? They’re already written. Why reinvent the wheel, especially when you’ll be defended by other authors who either don’t like to rock the boat or who have based their entire careers on this exact same “not plagiarism, technically” mentality?

What would be indefensible, of course, would be to steal word-for-word. That is the only definition of plagiarism currently accepted by the publishing world, after all. Nobody would ever defend someone like, for example, Mark Dawson, who was recently exposed as a serial “borrower” of sentences and paragraphs from uncited sources. I mean, nobody except for all of the people in the comments saying things like:

While I agree with everyone that this doesn’t look great, the scope is tiny. We’re talking about single sentences. Is that truly egregious?

There are only so many ways a sentence can be written, and many many many millions of people writing them. Did you also, as part of your experiment, choose a few books by other authors, and input random sentences from their books into google, and see if there were any matches?

Some people boldly admitted to plagiarizing:

There are some phrases and words that just pop. I write those phrases down because they resonated with me. For example, there is a zombie book series and the first book is titled “Rot and Ruin.” and I LOVED that phrase as a description of the end of the world zombie apocalypse. I would use the phrase “rot and ruin” without blinking. 

While “rot and ruin” isn’t something I’d consider actionable plagiarism, what else is that writer jotting down for future use? And doesn’t it become plagiarism the moment you see someone else’s words and say, “Yes, I think I’ll have that for myself?” There’s a wide gulf between, “Wow, that sentence is so evocative, I’m going to also use it,” and “I accidentally forgot I read this good sentence and thought I came up with it on my own.” If you’re writing down pieces of other people’s work to use later, then every time you sit down to write you’re doing so with the intent to plagiarize.

In a now-deleted thread, one Redditor insisted that it isn’t plagiarism at all to find a sentence or paragraph that you like in someone else’s work and use it for your own. Then, that Redditor argued with numerous academic professionals that “their” definition of plagiarism, including the definition directly copy/pasted from a dictionary, wasn’t really plagiarism simply because he didn’t like it.

I truly, deeply regret not screenshotting that thread, and only didn’t because I believed that there was no way someone so phenomenally pig-headed would ever retreat via deletion. Lesson learned.

But Mark Dawson is a well-known figure in indie publishing. He’s made a fortune and amassed a huge following teaching other indie authors how to get rich from self-publishing. As with most indie authors who’ve never achieved mainstream success but insist they have all the answers, Dawson’s course is much more popular than his literary catalog. But those who’ve paid him hundreds of dollars to teach them what he can’t even do for himself refuse to stop supporting him. After all, he’s helping their career, somehow. And they’ve invested in him. They’ve spent money on him. They’ve recommended him to other writers. To admit that he’s a fraud and a plagiarist would be admitting that they were duped.

The target of plagiarism often invalidates the accusation, as well, as in the recent case of Donna Dickens. In December of this year, Dickens alleged that an entire article she had written for ScreenRant had been scrubbed from the site and reposted in 2022 with another writer’s byline. And when I reached out to ask if I could include those allegations in this post, she gave me permission with the caveat that I should be careful about doxxing and harassment that might come my way. Dickens posted the now-infamous “Fake Rome” video to TikTok in 2021, which leads me to wonder if ScreenRant didn’t disguise the article to cover their past association with a controversial figure. If that’s the case… cool story, still plagiarism. But ultimately, no one will care because in the social internet hivemind, Dickens doesn’t deserve to be defended.

The definition of what constitutes plagiarism will always change depending on who the victim is. Kim Richardson wasn’t plagiarized by JoJo Moyes, because Moyes is a very popular New York Times Bestseller with a movie adaptation and Richardson is not. E.L. James is not a plagiarist because she only lifted another author’s characters and story beats, not whole sentences. Mark Dawson isn’t a plagiarist because he only stole sentences and paragraphs, not… Well, it doesn’t matter. He makes a lot of money and sells courses on how to make money. ScreenRant isn’t in the business of plagiarizing because fuck you, that writer made a conspiracy video and deserves every bad thing. Here’s her home address.

There’s always a reason why it’s okay for some people to plagiarize and others to be plagiarized without recourse, and that reason usually has to do with audience response to the person making the allegation. Did you see a scene you wrote show up in someone else’s book, with a few tweaks here and explicit sex added in? You’re jealous. Did you read a book and recognize the plot, characters, themes, or story beats from another book? Well, you’re just a reader. You don’t understand the industry. And besides, that isn’t Kylo and Rey. They’re on Earth, working at restaurant. You’re confused, probably because the author made it clear to everyone that the book is a Reylo AU fanfic and the cover clearly features a faceless cartoon man who is unmistakably Adam Driver. Okay, yes, this over here is an Aladdin fanfic that has been widely hyped on the author’s social media as being absolutely, one-hundred-percent based on Disney’s movie, including characters that don’t exist in any other version of that story, but the author’s Beauty and the Beast retelling changed Gaston’s name by a single letter, so obviously everyone is overreacting. That’s normal when you, gosh, simply just don’t understand the way the business works, or you’re just a jealous hater.

None of that is plagiarism. Plagiarism is when someone without a parasocial army to scream down allegations does those things. If you have a big enough following, it’s just fun with online friends that happens to net a huge advance and massive marketing campaign. It’s Girl Boss empowering (if women are involved) or a deliberate dodge around the gatekeepers (when men do it). And yes, there is an indie author out there peddling her Reylo/You’ve Got Mail crossover fanfic and yes, reviewers have pointed out that the author used whole lines of dialogue from the movie in her book, but who am I to point that out? A misogynist. That’s who. A person who hates fanfic. A hater who wants to uphold all the problematic barriers to traditional publishing. A traitor to all author-kind.

The definition of plagiarism seems to be flexible and evolving at a rapid pace. That evolution is dependent on who is doing the plagiarizing, how many copies they move, what their online following is like, and how quickly they’ll mobilize into a silencing army. Even though James Somerton lost an estimated 70k followers and scrubbed his entire channel of content after Brewis’s video, he somehow still has over 200k followers. Illuminaughtii, another YouTuber called out in Brewis’s video, boasts a patently ridiculous 1.27M followers and continues to post multiple, probably plagiarized, videos every week. Her latest posted three days ago (at the time of writing), complete with sponsorship ads, albeit with the comments turned off.

We like to pretend that plagiarism is a serious offense. A career-ruining offense. Something that one couldn’t be granted a pass for or possibly recover from. But it simply isn’t. For every HBomberguy video calling out plagiarism (okay, let’s be honest, he’s the only one producing four hour documentaries about plagiarism), there are ten successful plagiarists who will continue to plagiarize while their supporters make excuses for them. “I’m a college professor, I think I would know what plagiarism is! I would absolutely bring the hammer down on any student doing what this particular author/creator is doing, but in this case, I enjoy their work, so it’s not plagiarism!” “I’m a former lawyer, I know it’s not plagiarism because I don’t know the difference between plagiarism and copyright.” “I’m a publishing professional and we would never publish a book that was plagiarized (unless both writers were in-house, of course).”

While I enjoyed HBomberguy’s video, I couldn’t help but become intensely sad. Because I know it’s a wasted effort. Every single attempt to bring a plagiarist to justice is a wasted effort, if that plagiarism is profitable. And with the internet deepening the parasocial bonds between authors and readers, every novelist is one popular TikTok influencer away from never having to consider ethics in their career ever again.

All I Want For Christmas Is A BroadwayWorld Regional Award

Earlier this month, I was nominated for a staggering (to me, at least) amount of BroadwayWorld Regional awards. The categories are as follows:

Best Direction of a Musical: Jenny Trout, The Music Man, Center Stage TheaterBest Supporting Performer in a Musical: Jenny Trout, Something Rotten, Center Stage TheaterBest Musical: The Music Man, Center Stage Theater

Plus my Harold Hill and Marian Paroo, Steve Brubaker and Kristine Schomisch, are nominated in the Best Performer in a Musical.

And I want votes! Because I did a great job!

So, here’s my giantly big, big, big ask: vote for me. It’s a huge ask, because BroadwayWorld made it a pain in the ass to vote. You enter your email, then there are about twenty categories you have to click through (you don’t have to vote for all of them, but if you feel like voting for Center Stage Theater in any of the other categories, you can do that, too, I won’t stop you!) and they send you a follow up email to confirm your vote. You really, really, really have to want to vote. So, if you’ve always thought to yourself, gosh, I’d really like to vote in an internet contest for a stranger who constantly overshares about their mental health on this blog, well guess what? The time is now!

If you want proof that I deserve the hell out of Best Supporting Performer, check out about twenty-seconds of my overall performance here. Voting closes super duper soon, so if you want to toss those votes my way, use this link and know that I am grateful for your time and super appreciate you!

Stay tuned this week for an update about ALL THE DING DANG PLAGIARISM SCANDALS HAPPENING.

Back from hiatus!

Hey there, friendos! Now that I’m not in the manic state that caused me to write a whopping 60,000 words already in December, I can actually focus on all my projects equally again! That’s such a good feeling.

To update everybody on what happened after this post, I received a formal apology from the executive arm of the organization. And I’m not getting fired for not smiling enough! That was honestly one of my biggest fears: someone would somehow make sense of the allegation that I am hostile and threatening due to not smiling constantly and I would be punished for it. I believe that was what the individual intended, but as it turns out, everyone was just as confused as I was. No one knew how to handle things in the moment, and everybody froze.

But it still took a lot of time for me to tell my brain that I wasn’t failing anyone or doing anything wrong (and that I’m allowed to dislike whoever I want), so I’m glad I took time off and just sat down and wrote my little head off to escape everything. Oh, and went to just a shit-ton of hockey games. Go K-Wings!

So, we’re back in full swing. I posted a new The Missus video over on YouTube (see it here!) and Modelland will start posting again this weekend. Which I know will be super convenient for everybody, because absolutely nothing is happening this weekend for anybody at all. But it will still be there when you’re done stuffing your stockings and doing all your ho-ho-hoing. Buffy and Bridgerton vids are next, and while we’re on the subject of YouTube, I’ve got thoughts about HBomberguy’s epic plagiarism documentary.

Coming soon, I’ll be posting some end-of-year stuff, including my favorite reads of 2023 (at least, those I can talk about outside of the St. Martins boycott and some of the unfortunate political opinions authors were discovered to have), as well as my DNFs of 2023, and what Trout Nation is going to be like in the new year.

New year, new me for six weeks, baby!

And get your 2024 calendars ready, because I have some appearances lined up in the midwest. That’s right, I’m finally ready to go out in public again.

Oh, and I’ll have four books out this year, that I know of at the moment. It could be more. Stay tuned.

As always, thanks for sticking with my and my weird brain. I’m always legitimately stunned to know that people care about what I write and make and do.

A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR, chapter 46, or “The end! But still, so much end.”

I’m shamelessly plugging my new Fantasy Romance serial in the intro to an unrelated post. Join the new Patreon tier or my Ream page , or read it on Kindle Vella.

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.

I honestly never thought this book would be over. And reading this chapter didn’t make me any more confident that it would. ed.—This is the same feeling I had while posting these recaps, to be honest, and copy/pasting requires much less work. It still felt like a prison sentence.

If you were wondering, this super hot, BookTok-spicy-guaranteed book delivers with another incredibly vague sex scene. I am weary, friends. So weary. Of hearing about how sexy a book is and how omg you can’t read it in public because it’s basically pornography, and then it’s… well, what we have in this chapter. An entire state in this country has banned sale of a book in this series, even to adults, because it’s so obscene. ed.—How did that pan out, by the way? I don’t support book bans for obscenity, but I might have agreed with them if they’d refused to sell it out of respect for the written word.

I’m pretty sure I might be out of a job, possibly in prison soon, if Maas is such a boundary-pushing sex maniac.

So, let’s finish damaging ourselves with this nightmare of unstoppably scandalous fairy sex orgies.

Everything was black, and warm—and thick.

Heads up, Maas knows the book is coming to an end here, so she has to pack in as many em-dashes as possible. There are two in the first paragraph alone.

You know, I’m going to keep a count as we go.

I was swimming, kicking for the surface, where Tamlin was waiting, where life was waiting.

Where all my precious em-dashes were waiting.

Feyre wakes up “lying on the cold floor,” which seems kind of mean. Why didn’t they move her somewhere else? She has Breaking Dawn, part 2 eyesight now, giving her the ability to see a chandelier more clearly (interesting choice, considering the first thing Bella sees when she becomes a vampire in Breaking Dawn is a lightbulb) and hear how people’s voices are echoing off the crystals. She’s still in the throne room.

Em-dash Count: 5. That’s all just on the first page.

I … I truly wasn’t dead. Meaning I had … I had killed those … I had …

What, are we trying to hit an ellipses quota now? ed.—Every time I have to use an ellipses or em-dash to indicate an interruption or a character who is out of breath, I hate myself and everything that has led me to this point.

I groaned as I braced my hands against the floor, readying myself to stand, but— the sight of my skin stopped me cold. It gleamed with a strange light, and my fingers seemed longer where I’d laid them flat on the marble. I pushed to my feet. I felt— felt strong, and fast and sleek. And—

And I’d become High Fae.

Not to beleaguer the Breaking Dawn comparison, but when you read the scene of Bella waking as a vampire to this scene of Feyre waking as High Fae, wow does this scene seem grossly lacking. Meyer took pages upon pages to explain Bella’s new senses, down to dust motes looking like galaxies and air tasting like things. 

Maas is like, there we go. A paragraph will do.

I mean, I loved the Twilight books at the time they came out but man oh friggin’ man, when Stephenie Meyer is a better writer than you are…

I went rigid as I sensed Tamlin standing behind me, smelled that rain and spring meadow scent of him, richer than I’d ever noticed. I couldn’t turn around to look at him—I couldn’t … couldn’t move. A High Fae—immortal. What had they done?

You literally saw them doing all of it through the convenient device of Rhysand’s stationary viewing.

By the way, we’re up to Em-dash Count: 11 by the bottom of this page.

I could hear Tamlin holding his breath—hear as he loosed it. Hear the breathing, the whispering and weeping and quiet celebrating of everyone in that hall, still watching us—watching me—some chanting praise for the glorious power of their High Lords.

Honestly, the further we go along with this chapter, the more I admire Stephenie Meyer for her skill in writing Bella’s transformation. This is just like, “Welp, my hearing is better and crystals look real neat now. Moving along.”

Tamlin tells her that the only way they could save her was by turning her into a High Fae. Uh-huh. We’ve seen all sorts of healing magic and everyone got all of their powers back, but she had to become a fairy.

I think she had to become a fairy because Maas was a Twilight fan, to be perfectly frank.

There, beneath Clare’s decayed body, was Amarantha, her mouth gaping as the sword protruded from her brow. Her throat gone—and blood now soaked the front of her gown.

Her throat gone, huh? We’re just not using verbs in that part of the sentence, then? ed.—Now that I’m reading that sentence after a year away from it, I’m realizing that the issue here isn’t the lack of verb, but the fact that “Her throat gone” belongs in the previous sentence. That’s what makes it so clunky. That, and the em-dash to tell us what the reader was probably already picturing.

Amarantha was dead. They were free. I was free. Tamlin was—

Amarantha was dead. And I had killed those two High Fae; I had—

I shook my head slowly. “Are you—”

Em-dash Count: 17

“Feyre,” Tamlin said, and he cupped my chin between his fingers, gently lifting my face. I saw that familiar chin first, then the mouth, and then—

Yes, Feyre. That is the correct order of a face from the bottom up. Good job.

Turns out, Tamlin is hot under the mask. Who could have guessed?

What I had done to get to this moment, to be standing here … I shoved against the thought again. In a minute, in an hour, in a day, I would think about that, force myself to face it.

I assume that after this book, she never thinks about Clare Beddor or the two High Fae ever again.

I put a hand on Tamlin’s heart, and a steady beat echoed into my bones.

Okay, so the heart thing was part of the curse. What a stupid part of a stupid curse. What the hell did having a stone heart add to his torment? How did it affect him if he was able to go on living, anyway?

Em-dash Count: 19.

After a section break, Feyre is sitting on a bed while Tamlin tends to her wounds and heals them up for her. Feyre muses on all the things that happened since the throne room, things we don’t see even though they seem like they could be important to later books in the series.

The Attor and the nastier faeries had disappeared instantly, along with Lucien’s brothers, which was a clever move, as Lucien wasn’t the only faerie with a score to settle. No sign of Rhysand, either. Some faeries had fled, while others had burst into celebration, and others just stood and paced—eyes distant, faces pale. As if they, too, didn’t quite feel like this was real.

It’s not that I want this book to be longer, but wouldn’t all of this have been more engaging if we’d seen it happen?

One by one, crowding him, weeping and laughing with joy, the High Fae and faeries of the Spring Court knelt or embraced or kissed Tamlin, thanking him—thanking me.

“Crowding” and “one by one” don’t work like that. Feyre points out that she stands back and doesn’t respond to everyone thanking them because she’s haunted by the fact that she killed those two fairies.

Meanwhile, I’m haunted by the fact that this book has a clear “be nice enough to your oppressors and they’ll totally welcome you as one of their own and make you better than the icky thing you were that made them want to oppress you” narrative.

Then there had been quick meetings in the frenzied throne room—quick, tense meetings with the High Lords Tamlin was allied with to sort out next steps; then with Lucien and some Spring Court High Fae who introduced themselves as Tamlin’s sentries.

…since when does he have more sentries than just Lucien? We didn’t hear about any sentries at the manor. We didn’t see them. Alis said there were less than a dozen of them left when Tamlin quit sending them over the wall… where were they when Tamlin and Lucien were trying to hold the “blight” at bay and patrolling the lands themselves?

You know what? I don’t have to care. Because once this book is over, I’m having my memory erased. ed.—Still working on that. Let me know if you get ahold of an Eternal Sunshine machine.

The meetings were hard for Feyre to sit through because all of her senses are heightened now, and everything is grating on them. Same, Feyre. Same.

Anyway, that’s how she ended up in the bedroom she’s now in. Tamlin took her there when he noticed she was overwhelmed.

Tamlin is touching her bare leg and Feyre thinks:

This—this was what I had murdered those faeries for. Their deaths had not been in vain, and yet … 

Their deaths weren’t in vain, see, because now Feyre can get horny with Tamlin again! But at least now, Feyre is being intellectually honest with herself and the reader. When she was actively murdering, she was trying to rationalize that she was going to free all these poor enslaved people who desperately needed her to be their hero. Now, she’s like, ooh, he’s handsome and touching my bare leg, this is why I killed people.

The blood on me had been gone when I’d awoken—as if becoming an immortal, as if surviving, somehow earned me the right to wash their blood off me.

Okay, but in your defense, Feyre, they had to die, or we wouldn’t get to read about your horniness!

Em-dash Count: 27.

He gave me that half-smile. Had he been human, he might have been in his late twenties. But he wasn’t human—and neither was I.

How could she not tell this back when he had a mask on? Did she think the lower part of his face and the rest of his body looked young but he would take off the mask and the top half of his face would be seventy? And why do we need to know this here? We already know that Tamlin is centuries upon centuries old. Why did we need this information right now, in the middle of a conversation they’re having that keeps getting broken up by weird information and superfluous description?

It was one of my smallest concerns. I should be begging for his forgiveness, begging the families and friends of those faeries for their forgiveness. I should be on my knees, weeping with shame for all that I had done—

I’m not sure if we should build her a cross to climb up on or a cauldron to boil herself with. That’s why worldbuilding is so important: people need to know what to think when they’re rolling their eyes at your overwrought martyr-savior.

If I could ever bring myself to paint again, I would never be able to stop seeing those faces instead of the colors and light.

Oh look, it’s George W. Bush’s failed redemption arc.

Em-dash count: 30.

Tamlin touches her arm and the tattoo that’s there, and he promises that he’ll find a way out of the bargain for her.

He opened his mouth, and I knew what he would say—the subject he would try to broach.

I couldn’t talk about it, about them—not yet. So I breathed “Later” and hooked my feet around his legs, drawing him closer.

Since he just mentioned the tattoo, I assumed that he was going to ask if she had to sleep with Rhysand, but then we get to “about them,” so Feyre thought he would ask about the fairies she killed? If so, it’s a little weird that she went from woe, torment, my soul, I should be begging for forgiveness to nah, let’s do it within a few paragraphs.

Em-dash count: 36.

Tamlin kisses her.

It was soft, tentative—nothing like the wild, hard kisses we’d shared in the hall of the throne room.

We never saw them kiss in the throne room. This is the first time it’s been mentioned. It means nothing to the reader. ed.—It’s only just now occurring to me that it this references the secret kissing that Rhysand interrupts.

Now, it’s time for the sex.

Well, now it’s time for words that imply sex. Not really a sex scene.

He let out a low growl, and the sound of it sent a wildfire blazing through me, pooling and burning in my core. I let it burn through that hole in my chest, my soul. Let it raze through the wave of black that was starting to press around me, let it consume the phantom blood I could still feel on my hands. I gave myself to that fire, to him, as his hands roved across me, unbuttoning as he went.

Then she traces his face and kisses it all over while he runs his hands up and down her sides.

He eased me onto the bed, murmuring my name against my neck, the shell of my ear, the tips of my fingers. I urged him—faster, harder. HIs mouth explored the curve of my breast, the inside of my thigh.

A kiss for each day we’d spent apart, a kiss for every wound and terror, a kiss for the ink etched into my flesh, and for all the days we would be together after this. Days, perhaps, that I no longer deserved. But I gave myself again to that fire, threw myself into it, into him, and let myself burn.

And that’s… it. Like, it’s poetic, and I’m not suggesting every book has to be super explicit. My issue is that I was informed by the hype machine that this would be super explicit, that it was the naughtiest thing since Fifty Shades, that it was Fifty Shades but with fairies. I truly worry for people who read this book and then went on to read other fantasy romance from BookTok only to find it was all minotaur handjobs and now they don’t feel welcome at their bible study group.

Em-dash Count: 41.

After a section break (and a muscle relaxer for me so STRAP THE FUCK IN), Feyre wakes up.

I left Tamlin sleeping in the bed, his body heavy with exhaustion.

You’re the first-person narrator, Feyre. You can’t possibly know how Tamlin’s body feels because you’re not in Tamlin’s body. Unless you are, and you’re seeing all this through his eyes.

I knew who summoned me long before I opened the door to the hall and padded down it, stumbling and teetering every now and then as I adjusted to my new body, its new balance and rhythms.

I do like that Feyre isn’t instantly as graceful and powerful as all the other fairies.

There. I said something nice.

Feyre finds Rhysand standing on a balcony in full sunlight, and Feyre is blinded by it because she hasn’t seen light in three months. When her eyes adjust, she describes yet another thing she couldn’t possibly see.

A land of violet snowcapped mountains greeted me, but the rock of this mountain was brown and bare—not even a blade of grass or a crystal of ice gleamed on it.

Feyre. You cannot possibly see a whole mountain you are standing on. You just can’t. It is impossible. There is no way it can be accomplished.

Feyre asks Rhysand what he wants but she can’t bring herself to be unpleasant to him.

Not as I remembered how he’d fought, again and again, to attack Amarantha, to save me.

Feyre. He was trying to save HIMSELF. He was clear as a vat of Windex on that point when you discussed it in your late-night jail chat.

Rhysand just wants to say goodbye to her since they’ll never see each other again. And even though this would be a good time to keep her fucking trap shut and just be thankful that he forgot about their bargain, Feyre reminds him of it. And then he’s like, “‘How could I forget?'” and I’m like, “Because your author is trying to make this parting fraught with emotion and she can’t due to parameters she set earlier in the book, so she had to make you forget.”

I stared at the nose I’d seen bleeding only hours before, the violet eyes that had been so filled with pain. “Why?” I asked.

He knew what I meant, and shrugged.

Can you clue me into what you meant, Feyre? I assume she’s asking why he defended her, judging by his answer and the thing about his bloody nose, but going by the dialogue in their conversation, that doesn’t necessarily follow.

“Because when the legends get written, I didn’t want to be remembered for standing on the sidelines. […]”

Oof. Bad news about chapter forty-five, buddy.

Rhysand tells Feyre that he also didn’t want her to die alone, and she thinks about the fairy who lost his wings and died at Tamlin’s house. Then they talk about how Rhysand is going to get home, and about his wings, which are out.

“You never told me you loved the wings—or the flying.” No, he’d made his shape-shifting seem … base, useless, boring.

He shrugged. “Everything I love has always had a tendency to be taken from me. I tell very few about the wings. Or the flying.”

WOW YOUS GUYS I THINK HE MIGHT LOVE FEYRE I WONDER WHERE THIS IS GOING.

He asks Feyre what it’s like for her to be High Fae now. She tells him, with as many em-dashes as unnecessary.

“I’m an immortal—who has been mortal. This body … ” I looked down at my hand, so clean and shining—a mockery of what I’d done. “This body is different, but this” —I put my hand on my chest, my heart—”this is still human. Maybe it always will be. But it would have been easier to live with it …” My throat welled.

So… does that mean she’s vomiting?

“Easier to live with what I did if my heart had changed, too. Maybe I wouldn’t care so much; maybe I could convince myself their deaths weren’t in vain. […]”

You just said in the previous scene that their deaths weren’t in vain because you got to fuck your boyfriend.

Rhysand begins to fade away but stops when this happens:

His eyes locked on mine, wide and wild, and his nostrils flared. Shock—pure shock flashed across his features at whatever he saw on my face, and he stumbled back a step. Actually stumbled.

“What is—” I began.

He disappared—simply disappeared, not a shadow in sight—into the crisp air.

She’s pregnant isn’t she? That’s my bet. She’s pregnant. ed.—No, even more ridiculous. According to people who read the next book, he sees that she’s his fated mate or whatever.

Let’s check in on the em-dashes.

Em-dash Count: 56.

After a section break, Tamlin and Feyre have left Under The Mountain, and the High Lords destroy the whole place and seal it up.

I still didn’t have words to ask what they’d done with those two faeries.

IDK, try, “What did they do with those two faeries?”

Interestingly enough, while Feyre is obsessed with the bodies of those fairies, she doesn’t even mention Clare’s body. We hear about what happened to Amarantha’s body in the same paragraph as the line above, but she does not consider how Clare’s remains were disposed of, because Clare is now superfluous as Feyre has fairies and not a random human to martyr herself over.

Standing on the hill above the ridge in the ravine on top of a glacier beside the meadow in the clearing deep within the forest, they see Alis chasing her boys through a field. Feyre and Tamlin stand there in an embrace until the sun goes down and Lucien yells out to them to tell them it’s time for dinner.

Alas, a dinner scene that we will not get to see. I know there have been so few chances to enjoy dinner at the manor. You’ll have to read on into book two, I guess.

I stepped out of Tamlin’s arms and kissed him softly. Tomorrow—there would be tomorrow, and an eternity, to face what I had done, to face what I shredded into pieces inside myself while Under the Mountain. But for now … for today …

“Let’s go home,” I said, and took his hand.

And that’s it. Oh my god, that’s it. Thank you Jesus, Mary, and all the saints. Bless the Cauldron we are done.

Em-dash count: 65.

That’s just for THIS ONE CHAPTER.

But it’s over. It’s finally over. Let’s head to the Jealous Patrons Book Club Book Club for my final wrap-up.

ed.—Surprise! Here’s the wrap up post from Jealous Patrons Book Club Book Club:

So, how do we feel about this book?

People often say that you shouldn’t judge an author by the books they write. A lot of times, they’ll pull the Stephen King card as an argument. “Do you think he’s REALLY out there DRESSING UP LIKE A CLOWN and MURDERING CHILDREN?”

And I point out that two of his biggest hits have been about white male writers. One becomes unhinged by constant interruptions to his writing routine and tries to murder his family with a cricket bat. The other is captured by an obsessed fan and has his legs chopped off with an ax. Sure, King isn’t going to try to bash his wife’s brains in because a particularly grueling Maine winter makes him go bonkers. Still, it’s ridiculous to suggest that writers are removed documentarians recounting the comings and goings of fictional characters faithfully and without real-world bias.

This brings me to the toxic relationship between Feyre and Sarah J. Maas.

Feyre is described as looking exactly like her author. Feyre had a childhood of wealth and privilege in the magical world of Prythian before her family’s downfall; Maas was raised in New York’s wealthy Upper West Side. Feyre is unpleasant and selfish, a description that doesn’t stray too far from whispered rumors about her author, who has had several high-profile falling-outs with friends she once praised in her pages-long acknowledgments sections as essential support for getting these books out there.

So, is it any wonder that Feyre, a hard-scrabble Polly Pureheart who will do whatever it takes to survive, doesn’t ring true as a character throughout the novel? When Feyre is hunting and providing for her family, she centers herself. Oh no, she is tasked with caring for her family, who does nothing to help her, despite all the ways the individual members have chipped in. Woe, Feyre is put upon, and no one understands her art, which she has painted on every surface, including one of the few pieces of furniture she’s meant to be sharing with her siblings, without any regard for the others who live in the home. She resents her father’s disability (it’s widely believed that Maas has some incredibly ableist tendencies of her own after a particularly nasty comment about Leigh Bardugo was attributed to Maas by the YA fantasy fandom at large), and she resents that her sisters aren’t as resilient as she is. From the very first page, the author paints us a clear story: Feyre is good because Feyre suffers, and no one else does. If they do suffer, their suffering only makes Feyre suffer more.

Her father was beaten until he could never walk right again; this causes Feyre suffering, more suffering than her father, because Feyre had to witness the beating.

Nesta is depressed and despondent because all hope of a good marriage and a comfortable life has been snatched away from her; this causes Feyre suffering, more suffering than her sister, because her sister does not hunt and did not witness their father being beaten.

The youngest sister, whose name I have forgotten (Elf? Ingrind? Elspeth? Eiflemay?), still has hope; this causes Feyre suffering because she must witness that hope.

As the book drags on, that theme continues. A fairy dies in front of Feyre, but it’s Feyre’s suffering we’re supposed to be the most concerned with. Tamlin and Lucien grieve the loss, but it’s presented to the reader through the effect it has on Feyre, and how wounded she is by her inability to heal that grief. How that inability tortures her.

Nearly all of Feyre’s suffering is presented as a reaction to the suffering of others. It’s clear that the intended effect was to make Feyre seem selfless and caring. For that to work, it must be written by someone who understands that selflessness can’t center one’s self. It wasn’t. And yes, I’m judging the author here: an author who made their main character an avatar for their own involvement in the story and then framed everything that happened to other characters as affecting, grieving, or tormenting their avatar more than the characters who actually experienced these hardships.

This book was written by someone who does not realize they are not the main character of the universe.

Again, the acknowledgments section is more than ample proof of this mindset. When looking for words to describe her relationship with her once best friend, Susan Dennard, Maas provides a list of no less than fourteen fictional duos, none of which bear resemblance to each other in any cohesive way other than “this person and this person rely on each other in their stories,” provides a list of the duo’s “inside jokes” and says their friendship was written in the stars like a prophecy. The entire paragraph about her friend is solely about how that friendship compares to fiction and which fictional characters Maas sees in herself.

Another friend, Alex Bracken, is mentioned in the context of an extremely privileged journey: “There are moments when it still feels like we’re fresh out of college with our first book deals, wondering what is next for us […]”. This paints a portrait of Maas’s struggles in the industry: none.

But still, she goes on to list all the people who believed in this little book, who helped her “write all those riddles and limericks” (good god, it took more than one person to come up with all that nonsense? And that was the result we got?), the agent who “changed my life forever with one phone call,” as if she’d previously wallowed in the depths of her Upper West Side beginnings, Hamilton college degree, and three whole agent rejections and had been miraculously lifted from that pit by this phone call.

Throughout the acknowledgments, Maas spins a story of the little book that could, inventing obstacles and fears that ACOTAR would never see the light of day, despite the fact that she’d begun to write it just a year before her first published novel was contracted. It was published three years after her first novel hit #2 on the New York Times best-seller list. The narrative of Maas as an underdog is thick and patently false.

So, why wouldn’t Feyre approach the world in the same way: Feyre, the underdog, the survivor, who goes through such enormous hardships as having to go live in a palace where her every wish is granted while her once-poor family is showered with riches. Feyre, who constantly creates her own problems and puts herself into danger, but who is ultimately saved again and again, Feyre who is so beloved by all for the scenes of Mel-Gibson-in-the-Leathal-Weapon-franchise-level of physical torment she endures that her one-time oppressors grant her the gift of immortality.

If Feyre is wrong, it’s someone else’s fault. It’s not Feyre’s fault that her plan to trap a dangerous fairy goes awry and she almost dies. It’s Lucien’s fault for not protecting her, for not preventing her from going. When Feyre goes to Calanmai, it’s not her fault, but the fault of the fairies and their magic for drawing her there.

The only time Feyre is held even partially responsible for her actions is when those actions can be used to elicit sympathy for Feyre from the reader. Yes, Feyre gave Clare Beddor’s name and caused the entire family to be slaughtered and Clare to be tortured to death, but it’s not Feyre’s fault. She was forced to endanger an innocent person because she needed to protect her family. She was forced to kill those fairies in the throne room and her grief is so great she can’t bring herself to face the families of those fairies later. She even goes on to justify those killings as not being “in vain” because she… gets to have sex again with her fairy boyfriend.

The industry rumors about Maas aren’t so hard to believe once someone has read A Court of Thorns and Roses. That it appeals to so many readers, who see Feyre as a strong, kick-ass hero and likeable heroine is unsettling in the extreme. A reader who can enjoy this book without seeing Feyre as narcissistic and immature is either unable to see these qualities as unacceptable, or is burdened with so much patience and optimism that it’s made them colorblind to red flags.

Which bring us to the narrative of oppression and acceptance. Feyre begins the book hating fairies, and ends as their savior and one of them. The insinuation is that the poor shouldn’t hate the wealthy, but pity them for the hardships they face in their struggles for more wealth and more power. When Feyre returns from Prythian to find her family is no longer in desperate straits, she finds the human world flippant and unimportant, and longs to return to the world of her oppressors, where they have real problems, real dangers, real fears. Only after she has given up everything, including her life, has she proven herself useful and worthy to the affluent and powerful, and she is welcomed into their circle. The hidden lesson in ACOTAR is: sacrifice yourself for your oppressors and they’ll give you your dreams. 

This has never worked in real life. It will never work in real life. But Maas, with her privileged background, spins that false narrative of the American Lie—we’re all just temporarily embarrassed millionaires—into a romantic modern fairytale, then tries to apply that story to herself as she thanks a host of equally privileged industry insiders.

A Court of Thorns and Roses isn’t the worst book we’ve read together, and Maas is not the worst author whose work has been featured. But (at the risk of angering the gods and cursing us all) Feyre is certainly the worst heroine, so far.

A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter 45 or “Breaking Dawn”

I’m shamelessly plugging my new Fantasy Romance serial in the intro to an unrelated post. Join the new Patreon tier or my Ream page , or read it on Kindle Vella.

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 is going to be a super short recap because the chapter is super short, and frankly, that’s good because only two things happen in it. I love a chapter that’s short and has two things happen in it, especially in a book where all the chapters are too long and have half a thing happen in them.

So, Feyre is seeing herself “through eyes that weren’t mine,” and since we know she has this link with Rhysand and since she saw herself through his eyes briefly in the previous chapter, we know she’s seeing herself laying there dead because Rhysand is seeing her laying there dead with her neck broken.

Feel free to insert Billy Crystal from The Princess Bride saying, “mostly dead.”

Tears shone in Lucien’s remaining eye as he raised his hands and removed the fox mask.

Feyre said the magic word, and now the masks can come off. The curse is broken.

Tamlin’s still-masked face twisted into something truly Lupine as he raised his eyes to the queen and snarled. Fangs lengthened.

Back up. I must have missed something here. I thought the mask came off when he was in beast mode. I also, for some reason, keep assuming that beast mode is part of the curse. Possibly because I spent the last eight weeks in Beauty and the Beast. ed.—The musical. I did not, unfortunately, become briefly part of a fairytale world. Or because it was described as part of the imaginary blight Tamlin made up. Either way, I wasn’t super clear on how beast mode worked before but now I’m extra confused.

Amarantha backed away—away from my corpse.

Look. I’ll allow this one. Would I have written it differently? Yup. I also wouldn’t have written ACOTAR if given the choice. But if I had, I would have just said, “Amarantha backed away from my corpse.” But Maas seems to believe that em-dashes make things more visceral. In a scene like this? Fine. Have the damn em-dash, and don’t say I never gave you anything.

The queen was blasted back, thrown against the far wall, and Tamlin let out a roar that shook the mountain as he launched himself at her. He shifted into his beast form faster than I could see—fur and claws and pound upon pound of lethal muscle.

Wait, didn’t his face just go beast mode, and she saw it? Also, I have a question (that will probably never be answered) about Feyre’s sight here. Did he change so fast that Rhysand couldn’t see it happen? What kind of eyesight do fairies have? Is it better than mortal eyesight? I need to know so that I can tell just how fast this transformation is that can’t be seen but was seen just two paragraphs ago.

She had no sooner hit the wall than he gripped her by the neck, and the stones cracked as he shoved her against it with a clawed paw.

In the last chapter, there was also a lot of people getting slammed into shit so hard the walls/floor/etc cracked. I’m starting to worry about the structural integrity of this underground chamber.

Amarantha fights back, but Tamlin has magic shielding abilities, I guess? And when the Attor and the goblin-type fairies loyal to Amarantha try to protect her, the other fairies in the throne room attack them. Lucien throws a sword to Tamlin:

Tamlin caught it in a massive paw. Amarantha’s scream was cut short as he drove the sword through her head and into the stone beneath.

And then closed his powerful jaws around her throat—and ripped it out.

Hey, here’s a question: if Tamlin is so much more powerful than Amarantha, why didn’t he kill her before she could curse him? She’d already stolen some of his power, right? I mean, she gathered all the High Lords and took a bunch of their power, but Feyre breaking the curse didn’t have anything to do with restoring that power to the High Lords of Prythian. It was just about breaking the curse over Tamlin and the Spring Court. Feyre figuring out the riddle does nothing for the fact that Amarantha stole all that power before she cursed Tamlin, so it stands to reason that now that the curse is broken, Tamlin is just operating at the amount of power he had after Amarantha stole the rest of it, right?

Oh, Jenny. Don’t be silly. Sarah wants the story to go this way, so it will go this way, regardless of what she wrote before.

It wasn’t until I was again staring down at my own broken body that I realized whose eyes I’d been seeing through.

It’s Rhysand; we already guessed that. And it’s super convenient that, in the middle of a battle for the freedom of Prythian, Rhysand is just standing there watching and doing nothing so that we can see what’s happening in the scene.

Yeah, that little “seeing through someone else’s eyes” device doesn’t work super well when it requires that person to wield immense power yet not participate in a giant battle for the freedom of their people.

Tamlin falls to his knees in his hot guy form.

He scooped up my limp, broken body, cradling me to his chest. He hadn’t removed his mask, but I saw the tears that fell onto my filthy tunic, and I heard the shuddering sobs that broke from him as he rocked me, stroking my hair.

“No,” someone breathed—Lucien, his sword dangling from his hand. Indeed, there were many High Fae and faeries who watched with damp eyes as Tamlin held me.

The people who were participating every night as she was drugged and forced to dance for them in a sexually provocative manner, who had placed bets that she would die and who laughed and enjoyed seeing her hurt are all now suddenly weeping. Why?

Because the author believes everyone should be weeping for Feyre. Because she’s the Mary-est to ever Sue. No one is allowed to dislike her (except for the whore fairy who tried to steal her boyfriend), and everyone should weep when she dies.

And I get it. They’re happy they’re free from Amarantha, and they’re grateful. But Feyre only freed the Spring Court. Tamlin is the one who freed all of them.

But Tamlin isn’t the author’s avatar in this world. WHOOPS, WHO SAID THAT? WHO IN THIS ROOM DARED TO IMPLY THAT ALL OF MAAS’S MAIN CHARACTERS ARE HER BUT WITH SPECIAL POWERS?!

Now, Feyre is dead. Book over, right? But there’s a whole series. So she has to be saved. And the first person to do anything about it is Lucien’s dad, who I guess no longer has a fucking problem with humans or whatever?

Tamlin glanced up only when the High Lord opened his fingers and tipped over his hand. A glittering spark fell upon me. It flared and vanished as it touched my chest.

One by one, the High Lords come forward and put their little drops of light on Feyre’s chest. Every single High Lord. It’s like the slowest, talkiest bukkake video.

Rhysand stepped forward, bringing my shred of soul with him, and I found Tamlin starting at me—at us. “For what she gave,” Rhysand said, extending a hand, “we’ll bestow what our predecessors have granted to few before.” He paused. “This makes us even,” he added, and I felt the twinkle of his humor as he opened his hand and let the seed of light fall on me.

Again, it was Tamlin who did the hard work. But the only important part of this book is making sure Feyre is the center of all the attention, all the time.

I’ve said many times (and I’m sticking to it) that I’m not reading the rest of the series. But I strongly feel that this will do what a lot of other, similar fantasy not-YA-but-definitely-targeted-to-online-YA-fandoms series do: the heroine becomes more powerful, is revealed to have more specialness, finds out she’s the chosen one more than once, etc. There are some super amateurish books out there where the authors just pile power upon destiny upon “turns out you’re not human, you’re a [fantastical creature]” over and over until all possible conflict is rendered utterly useless in the face of the all-powerful being they’ve made their main character into, but the reader is still supposed to feel that everything is high stakes because the plot never wraps up.

So yeah, anyway, then Tamlin puts his light on her chest and kisses her and says he loves her, and the chapter ends.

And guess what? I thought there were forty-seven chapters.

There are only forty-six.

WE ARE ALMOST DONE!