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A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter 26 or, “This shit is gay, dude.”

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.

You’re never gonna guess what’s happening at Casa de Failure:

The next day, Lucien joined us for lunch […]

Oh wow, this is a huge change! Usually, they’re at breakfa—

[…] —which was breakfast for all of us.

God damnit.

The table is still small, by the way. They kept that change after Feyre pointed out that the long table for three people was silly. She’s changing lives, yo.

Feyre asks Lucien where he was the night before and he’s like, oh, I was out patroling…SEXY PATROLING WHERE I HAD SEX WHILE PATROLING. The he points out that Feyre and Tamlin didn’t get home until after dawn.

I glanced at Tamlin, biting my lip.

There it is.

Tamlin’s gaze now roved my face as if searching for any tinge of regret, of fear. Ridiculous.

It’s ridiculous for Tamlin to be worried that he’s overstepped his bounds, especially after we know what he did on Calanmai?

Which Feyre points out:

“You bit my neck on Fire Night,” I said under my breath. “If I can face you after that, a few kisses are nothing.”

He braced his forearms on the table as he leaned closer to me. “Nothing?” His eyes flicked to my lips. Lucien shifted in his seat, muttering to the Cauldron to spare him, but I ignored him.

Feyre repeats that yeah, the kisses were “nothing” but:

He could have had me right there, on top of that table. I wanted his broad hands running over my bare skin, wanted his teeth scraping against my neck, wanted his mouth all over me.

“I’m trying to eat,” Lucien said, and I blinked, the air whooshing out of me.

Wouldn’t it be awful if Lucien could read minds? Not because Feyre would get embarrassed or anything. Just if you had to hear Feyre’s every inane bullshit thought. It would make sense why he didn’t want to be around her throughout the book. ed.—telepaths are my number one fear.

“But now that I have your attention, Tamlin,” he snapped, though the High Lord was looking at me again—devouring me with his eyes. I could hardly sit still, could hardly stand the clothes scratching my too-hot skin. WIth some effort, Tamlin glanced back at his emissary.

Lucien actually has some important news that he needs Tamlin to focus up and de-hornify for. A contact Lucien has at the Winter Court has sent him some super disturbing news: two dozen fae children have been killed by the blight.

My contact says other courts are being hit hard—though the Night Court, of course, manages to remain unscathed. But the blight seems to be sending its wickedness this way—farther south with every attack.

I can’t wait for the super not obvious at all twist that the Night Court is behind the blight. I know I’m going to just be bowled the fuck over when that inevitably happens.

“The blight can…can truly kill people?” I managed to say.

No, it killed fairies. Keep up.

Younglings. It had killed children, like some storm of darkness and death.

So did Anakin but Darth Vader was cool as hell so you win some, you lose some.

And if offspring were as rare as Alis had claimed, the loss of so many would be more devastating than I could imagine.

1. Why are you doubting what Alis told you by calling it a “claim”?

2. Twenty-four kids dying all at once is devastating anyway. Unless you’re in the United States and then it’s just the normal weekly school shooting.

The “he” in this next excerpt is Tamlin, btw.

“The Blight is capable of hurting us in ways you—” He shot to his feet so quickly that his chair flipped over. He unsheathed his claws and snarled at the open doorway, canines long and gleaming.

The house, usually full of the whispering skirts and chatter of servants, had gone silent.

The bad kind of silent that means something bad is coming. Tamlin tells Lucien to put Feyre next to the window and the curtains.

I snatched one of the knives off the table and let Lucien lead me to the window, where he pushed me against the velvet drapes. I wanted to ask why he didn’t bother hiding me behind them, but the fox-masked faerie just pressed his back into me, pinning me between him and the wall.

We are well, WELL past referring to Lucien as “the fox-masked faerie,” okay? He’s a significant character in this book and we’re over halfway through it. There’s no reason that “he” wouldn’t work there. We’d still know who it was.

If you, too, are wondering why he doesn’t hide her behind the curtains, it’s because they use magic to hide her by making her seem like she’s an invisible part of Lucien.

I don’t see why the curtains wouldn’t be added camouflage, but it would make it pretty difficult for Feyre to describe the scene. It’s not my responsibility, I guess. I’m not the person who decided to mention the curtains and explain them away.

ed.— Note that Feyre grabbed a knife from the table. This is because she is very tough and brave and Not Like Other Girls.

But someone was coming, someone awful enough to frighten them—someone who would want to hurt me if they knew I was here.

So, there’s all this suspense building while Feyre is remembering all the monsters she’s seen so far and these footsteps are approaching and Tamlin and Lucien are trying to act casual.

And then he appeared.

No mask. He, like the Attor, belonged to something else. Someone else.

And worse … I’d met him before. He’d saved me from those three fairies on Fire Night.

I love it when the conflict makes an appearance.

He was exactly as I remembered him, with his fine, rich clothing cloaked in tendrils of night: an ebony tunic brocaded with gold and silver, dark pants, and black boots that went to his knees.

But Feyre. There’s a question we need answered about this guy.

I’d never dared to paint him—and now I knew I would never have the nerve to.

And now that we know that, we can move on comfortably. ed.—My guess is that after Maas retconned his race, Feyre decided she probably could paint him, after all.

This faerie guy is Rhysand, and he and Tamlin haven’t seen each other for forty-nine years because I guess they didn’t run into each other at that party a couple months ago, and he insults Lucien by telling him that a fox mask is appropriate for him.

“Go to Hell, Rhys,” Lucien snapped.

Again, no concept of any religion that would make “go to hell” make sense. But I’m a little more hung up on what’s so bad about foxes that you wouldn’t want to be compared to one. Foxes are cool as hell. 

Rhysand makes a remark about the “present” he left, which obviously is the head from the garden, though they don’t explicitly mention it. It’s just, you know. It’s the last thing anyone nefariously left for them. Then he monologues to conveniently recap some stuff we already knew and a couple things we didn’t.

“But a nice reminder of the fun days, wasn’t it?” Rhysand clicked his tongue and surveyed the room. “Almost half a century holed up in a country estate. I don’t know how you managed it. But,” he said, facing Tamlin again, “you’re such a stubborn bastard that this must have seemed like a paradise compared to Under the Mountain. I suppose it is. I’m surprised, though: forty-nine years, and no attempts to save yourself or your lands. Even now that things are getting interesting again.

So, Tamlin hasn’t tried to save his land from the blight? You might be thinking, well, this is a bad guy so he’s just taunting. But…

“There’s nothing to be done,” conceded Tamlin, his voice low.

Despite everything about the blight and trying to figure out how to stop it, Tamlin hasn’t actually been doing anything at all? You’d think Feyre would have a lot of thoughts and opinions on this, right?

She doesn’t.

In her defense, shit does get distractingly homoerotic:

Rhysand approached Tamlin, each movement smooth as silk. His voice dropped into a whisper—and erotic caress of sound that brought heat to my cheeks.

He taunts Tamlin some more and:

Lucien interrupted, “What do you know about anything? You’re just Amarantha’s whore.”

“Her whore I might be, but not without my reasons.”

IDK, seems like all “whores” have a reason. For example, it’s their job.

“Little Lucien. You certainly gave them something to talk about when you switched to Spring. Such a sad thing, to see your lovely mother in perpetual mourning over losing you.”

“Hey, Jenny?” I hear you ask. “This whole little scene here…it isn’t just a character showing up and running through a bunch of shit we’ve already been told, right?”

And I pat you on the head, trying to disguise my tears. “It’s okay, little buddy. It’s gonna be okay.”

But it’s not gonna be okay. It’s just going to go on and on, so we can watch this Rhysand guy posture and create accidental homosexual tension. Like when he asks Lucien:

Rhysand laughed—a lover’s laugh, low and soft and intimate. “Is that any way to speak to a High Lord of Prythian?”

I’m thinking maybe Maas is a straight person. Not just because of all the “woe is me, it’s so hard to be a straight white lady” vibes Feyre gives off, but because I see straight authors write some of the gayest shit without meaning to all the time. And to a straight reader, this would seem totally straight because obviously Feyre means he sounds like a lover to make the reader know he’s sexy, not because he’d be flirting with the other male characters. That would be absurd.

And then here I am, queer off my ass, wondering how “a lover’s laugh” leads to this:

My heart stopped dead. That was why the fairies had run off on Fire Night. To cross him would have been suicide.

I’m sitting here reading this and going, “Why, would he fuck them to death?” and not even registering that she means it’s because he’s a High Lord. Especially when the follow up is:

And from the way darkness seemed to ripple from him, from those violet eyes that burned like stars …

I looked like the crying laughing emoji for like eight whole minutes reading this. But then I turned into that heavily crying sadface, the one that has like, faucet eyes, when I realized that there is no way Feyre isn’t gonna fuck this guy. I don’t care if she gets married to Tamlin and they bone down six times a day every single day until they die mid-coitus at age 107, FEYRE IS GONNA FUCK THIS RHYSAND GUY. ed.—from what I understand, this is now the main plot of the entire series.

Rhysand asks Tamlin if he shouldn’t discipline Lucien for being rude to his better and then Rhysand makes some remarks about liking to watch people grovel. There are literally pages of cliches, one stacked on top of the other, as these three guys banter and do their little power plays.

Rhysand—he’d been the one to send that head. As a gift.

It took Feyre this long to figure this out? She didn’t get it the moment he mentions coming to check on how his gift went over? That just breezed past her and two whole pages of insults that could be put in a hat with other fantasy novel and movie lines and it would be impossible to tell them apart went by before she made that connection? I literally thought it hadn’t been explicitly mentioned because it was that obvious.

The Night Court is mentioned and Feyre makes another brilliant connection:

Was the Night Court where this woman—this Amarantha—was located, too?

Wait a second. Hang on. Didn’t we know this already? Or was it a conclusion I just made because it’s been obvious from the second they started talking about SHE and HER that she’s a member of the Night Court and that the Night Court is probably in that mountain Feyre saw on the mural? I could swear we knew this already.

Anyway, speaking of the evil woman (and skipping over yet another mention of how hot Rhysand is and how Feyre would never be able to paint him. No, I’m not kidding):

Rhysand meandered toward the door. “She’s already preparing for you. Given your current state, I think I can safely report that you’ve already been broken and will reconsider her offer.”

FINALLY. The plot advances. I feel like if you made a graph out of this plot, it would be all plateaus. I can’t wait for Feyre to spend like ten chapters in a row wondering what this specific remark meant before someone shows up and delivers a new piece of information.

Sometimes, I think authors spread things out too thin because they’re intentionally aiming for a long series. And like, what better way to do that then only occasionally presenting information and then filling chapter after chapter of the POV character wondering something but never seeking answers.

The High Lord of the Night Court […]

The Honorable Judge Harry Stone.

[…] ran a finger along the back of my chair—a casual gesture.

Imagine how interesting it would have been if they’d glamoured Feyre while she was still sitting at the table. She would have been right in the middle of the action, holding still, forcing herself not to react the very same way she’s reacting in this scene. And then he would run his finger along the back of the chair…

Missed opportunity.

Rhysand notices that there are three plates on the table (good job not disappearing the food like we know you can, Tamlin) and asks where the third person went. When Tamlin says they left right before Rhysand arrived, Rhysand ain’t buying it.

“You dare glamour me?” he growled, his violet eyes burning as they bore into my own. Lucien just pressed me harder into the wall.

Because when I think violet, I think of flame-related verbs. Ever since I picked that violet last spring and got third-degree purple burns. Violet eyes are storms. Everybody who’s ever read romance knows this. Get your shit together, Sarah.

Tamlin’s chair groaned as it was shoved back. He rose, claws at the ready, deadlier than any of the knives strapped to him.

Then why does he need the knives?

Rhysand’s face became a mask of calm fury as he stared and stared at me. “I remember you,” he purred. “It seems like you ignored my warning to stay out of trouble.” He turned to Tamlin. “Who, pray tell, is your guest?”

Lucien says he’s bethrothed to Feyre, which IMO, seems like maybe it should raise more questions or even be something illegal, considering the war and treaty and animosity and all that. But we kinda gloss right past it.

The sunlight didn’t gleam on the metallic threads of his tunic, as if it balked from the darkness pulsing from him.

From now on, I’m just going to imagine Rhysand as a fully erect penis wearing fancy little clothes. Like, so hard that he’s purple and visibly pulsing.

When Lucien pulls a knife on Rhysand:

Rhysand’s venom-coated smile grew. “You draw blood from me, Lucien, and you’ll learn how quickly Amarantha’s whore can make the entire Autumn Court bleed. Especially its darling lady.”

Question: Rysand is a High Lord. That’s like, the guy that rules that whole court, right? This is the impression I have from all the stuff we learned about Lucien and Tamlin and how they became High Lords. So, if Rhysand is a High Lord, why do they keep saying he’s a “whore” to this Amarantha person? Isn’t he the ruler of the place? Is she his wife or whatever? Why is he letting her control his whole court?

This is something that gets revealed in a later book, isn’t it? It doesn’t happen in this one, does it? I feel like, deep, deep in my heart, I am never going to know. Because there is no way I’m doing another of these.

Rhysand says some shit about Feyre being mortal trash and how Lucien’s mom is going to be disappointed that he’s hooking up with a mortal, and Tamlin is like, okay, that’s enough, take a hike, dude. Feyre wonders how bad a fight between two High Lords could be and that’s why things haven’t gotten physical yet.

Or perhaps, if Rhysand was indeed this woman’s lover, the retaliation from hurting him would be too great.

I didn’t realize this was a mystery. He straight up agreed like, yeah, I’m her “whore.”

Rhysand gets between Lucien and Tamlin to corner Feyre.

“If you were wise, you would be screaming and running from this place, from these people. It’s a wonder that you’re still here, actually.” My confusion must have been written across my face, for Rhysand laughed loudly. “Oh, she doesn’t know, does she?”

Why is she confused by the statement that she, as a human, should be running from High Lords? It was the entire focus of the first half of this book until she got horny over one.

Anyway, I guess Tamlin is actually the bad guy? That’s the prediction I’m making.

Rhysand grabs Feyre’s head and gets into her mind.

She has the most delicious thoughts about you, Tamlin,” he said. “She’s wondered about the feeling of your fingers on her thighs—between them, too.” He chuckled. Even as he said my most private thoughts, even as I burned with outrage and shame, I trembled at the grip still on my mind. Rhysand turned to the High Lord. “I’m curious: Why did she wonder if it would feel good to have you bite her breast the way you bit her neck?”

Why are you looking at those thoughts and not like, scanning for something useful, like figuring out how much this mortal chick knows about the Blight and why she’s there and stuff?

Oh…because this book is known as the horny fairy book. So the horny must come first.

If it’s any consolation,” Rhys confided to him, “she would have been the one for you—and you might have gotten away with it. A bit late, though. She’s more stubborn than you are.”

Okay, so Tamlin needed her for something. Since we know this is a retelling of “Beauty and the Beast,” we can pretty much assume that Feyre was the one who would fall in love with Tamlin and break his curse.

Instead:

“Amarantha will enjoy breaking her,” Rhysand observed to Tamlin. “Almost as much as she’ll enjoy watching you as she shatters her bit by bit.”

I can’t wait to see this violation of Feyre’s mind and all these threats get explained away so Feyre can fuck this dude.

Because she WILL fuck this dude.There has been way too much focus on his eye color for her to not fuck him. ed.—I’m pretty sure I might be psychic.

Tamlin was frozen, his arms—his claws—hanging limply at his side. I’d never seen him look like that. “Please” was all that Tamlin said.

“Please what? Rhysand said—gently, coaxingly. Like a lover.

I have read gay erotica that is less gay than this.

The “please” is Tamlin asking Rhysand not to tell Amarantha about Feyre. In a very not-homoerotic turn of events, this happens:

Rhysand pointed at the ground, and his smile became vicious. “Beg, and I’ll consider not telling Amarantha.”

Tamlin dropped to his knees and bowed his head.

“Lower.”

Tamlin pressed his forehead to the floor, his hands sliding along the floor toward Rhysand’s boots.

I am so hard right now.

Rhysand tells Lucien he has to kneel and beg, too, so now this shit is looking like a tarot card and Rhysand won’t even commit to not telling. The whole point of this was just to, idk, show the readers how important Feyre is to these two hot guys? 

Rhysand asks Feyre for her name.

Giving him my name—and my family name—would lead only to more pain and suffering. He might very well find my family and drag them into Prythian to torment, just to amuse himself. But he could steal my name from my mind if I hestiated too long.

Not to beat a dead Bogge here, but why didn’t he get her name when he was probing her mind?

Keeping my mind blank and calm, I blurted the first name that came to mind, a village friend of my sisters’ whom I’d never spoken to and whose face I couldn’t recall. “Clare Beddor.” My voice was nothing more than a gasp.

WHOA. Back up the Go Fuck Yourself Truck. You realize that your family is in danger if you give your real name. So, you give the real name of someone you know? What the fuck?! When this guy goes to find Clare Beddor’s family, what then? He’s not going to know that he’s not torturing your family, you fucking cashew! He’s going to torture the Beddor family! What is wrong with you?!

Just when I think Feyre can’t get any more selfish and reckless, she’s like, hold my fairy wine I’m not supposed to be drinking.

Rhysand tells Tamlin that he’ll see him “under the mountain,” and:

Then Rhysand vanished into nothing—as if he’d stepped through a rip in the world—leaving us alone in horrible, trembling silence.

Am I the only one wondering why the hell he didn’t just do that when he got there? Did he do all the strolling for drama? For the theater of it all?

Maybe Feyre isn’t going to sleep with him. If you catch my drift.

A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter 25 or “The Chapter That Didn’t Matter”

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.

Hi there! It’s me, your friendly neighborhood liar. Wasn’t it like, yesterday that I said I wasn’t going to post this week? Turns out, grief is really boring. I needed something to entertain me and damnit, ripping the shit out of this book is the balm I needed. ed.—When I went to copy this post text, this opening punched straight through my ribcage. I worked on this recap the week of my best friend’s funeral. While I had Covid. Covid that I got from my best friend’s funeral. Because 2022 was my lucky year (although, arguably less lucky for my BFF).

But also, this was my bad, folks. I could have delivered this to you before Christmas like I had originally intended but I looked at the length of the chapter and thought, wow, no, there’s no way I can cram all that into a post and get it done in three days. This one is going to take a lot of time, I’ll do it after the holiday break.

I could have probably jizzed this one out in twenty minutes because nothing important happens at all and things that do happen are just watered down repetition from things we saw at Calanmai. No new information at all is given to the reader in this chapter and it advances the plot…not at all. So please forgive me if this recap seems truncated. I just don’t have much to work with.

Tamlin was called away to one of the borders hours after I found that head–where and why he wouldn’t tell me.

The why is clearly the head Feyre found, but don’t worry; she’s got that omniscience she keeps insisting that she has while never once using it to behave in any way one could ever perceive as knowing anything at all. She puts it to use by surmising:

But I sensed enough from what he didn’t say: the blight was indeed crawling from other courts, directly toward ours.

Wow, did you sense that, Feyre? You’re so perceptive. I mean, this is a plot point the reader has been roundly bashed in the face with like a red-hot frying pan over and over again and you’ve been involved in numerous conversations where you’ve been told this very information by others but WOW. You sensed that.

In other news, earlier today I sensed that it was nine o’clock directly after my alarm went off.

I’m that shockingly perceptive. It’s almost supernatural.

Feyre notes that this is the first time Tamlin stays away from the manor all night long, but sends Lucien back to tell her, hey, I’m still alive. And Feyre thinks oh no, my heart is going to be broken because something is going to happen to him.

But seeing that head … the games these courts played, with people’s lives as tokens on a board … it was an effort to keep food down whenever I thought about it.

I didn’t exactly get the impression that the world Feyre came from was some kind of utopian paradise of fairness where the weak and the mighty stood on equal ground. Severed heads and aristocrats playing games with the lives of others sounds a lot like all aristocracy everywhere so…did Feyre not notice that the lowly are indispensable to the privileged before it was happening to the hot guy she wants to bone?

Or until it directly threatens her.

That said, we could also consider the fact that now that Feyre doesn’t have to fight for survival, she’s able to pay closer attention to injustice.

That part certainly checks out.

Feyre wakes up to see that bonfires and maypoles are being set up on “the distant hills” which at this point I assume get closer to the house when necessary for Feyre to see them and then slowly inch away when she’s not looking. If you’ve gotten this far in the book and have any sort of clue as to where the hills and forest and glade and ravine and game park and bullshit are, you might be a fucking wizard and you need to maybe see a doctor about it.

She asks Alis (who is an urisk, which is just the more majgykkal term for a brownie)  what’s going on.

“Summer Solstice. The main celebration used to be at the Summer Court, but … things are different. So now we have one here, too. You’re going.”

Awesome, another party. Gosh, I hope something dangerous happens there that Feyre can be rescued from.

But we still have that pesky problem of the whole “every court has a season” thing that was established in an earlier part of the book that Maas forgot or just got tired of.

Summer–in the weeks that I’d been painting and dining with Tamlin and wandering the court lands at his side, summer had come.

What the fuck is the em-dash for? Is there a prize for “most em-dashes in a single novel” or something? And this is coming from someone who routinely over-uses em-dashes. Like, if I’m noticing it? It’s bad. ed.—And this style, since it’s sold very well, has now crept into a lot of Romantasy/Fantasy Romance/Romantic Fantasy. Wait, I worded that wrong. Let’s try again: And this style, since it’s sold well—very well—has now crept into a lot of Romantasy/Fantasy/Romantic Fantasy—crept into it insidiously.

Okay, so, passage of time established. It’s been weeks since Fire Night. But are you serious? Summer has come? In the Spring Court, where it’s always spring?

I know we covered this when the last party popped up and we learned that every court that only has one season celebrates every seasonal festival on the wheel of the year, but this is gonna be a greatest hits post because (and this will probably not come as a shock to you) it’s full of stuff that didn’t make sense the last time we read about one of their parties.

The difference this time is that Feyre is invited, which made me assume well, she definitely will not be going and probably she’ll have some huge argument about not wanting to go and lock herself in her room, where she will sulk about not being at the party she said she didn’t want to go to.

No, it’s so much more infuriating than that.

Feyre wonders what’s up with her family back home:

If it was the solstice, then there would be a small gathering in the village center–nothing religious, of course, though the Children of the Blessed might wander in to try to convert the young people; just some shared food, donated ale from the solitary tavern, and maybe some line dances.

Doin’ the boot-scootin’ boogiiiiiiiieee. Doesn’t matter that during the Fire Night stuff, Feyre explicitly stated that humans don’t celebrate holidays. That was then. This is now. Sarah has changed her mind and you will marvel at her skill as one of the greatest fantasy authors of our age because there are zero standards for popular books anymore. As long as you can cultivate a rabid mob of extremely online fans who have never heard of books with sex scenes in them, that’s all you need.

And definitely, it’s totally normal to be allergic to the period key, so much so that you will employ em-dashes and semi-colons where they’re not needed. Because the above excerpt needs punctuation. It’s not optional. Those sentences are objectively wrong. Those sentences should be used by English teachers on fifth-grade grammar tests. Wanna see how it should go?

If it was the solstice, then there would be a small gathering in the village center; nothing religious, of course, though the Children of the Blessed might wander in to try to convert the young people. Just some shared food, donated ale from the solitary tavern, and maybe some line dances.

There’s a sentence fragment in there, but trust me: it’s better than the mess it was. And I know, deep, deep down in my heart that a copy editor gave that note and it was ignored.

Perhaps it was petty and selfish, given the returning blight, but I also quietly hoped that the solstice didn’t require the same rites as Fire Night. I didn’t let myself think too much about what I would do if Tamlin had a flock of beautiful faeries lined up for him.

You would whine, Feyre. You would whine and complain and I would have to read about it, wishing desperately all the while that there was some way to enter the world of fiction and slap the entire silly shit out of you.

And yes, it’s petty and selfish to be mad that this dude who wanted to bang you was compelled by magic to bang someone else. Like, he literally only wanted to do her because of the magic but he really wanted you, so who is the party that’s worse off here? You hadn’t declared your love or anything. Plus, he was fucking to save his planet or whatever was happening at that time. Raising magic.

Whatever. Poor Feyre. I’ll just say poor Feyre the way I’m supposed to and get us from this pity party to the actual party.

Tamlin gets back from his scary overnight trip but Feyre doesn’t get a chance to see him.

Relief sent my chest caving, but as I rushed to find them, Alis yanked me upstairs. She stripped off my paint splattered clothes and insisted I change into a flowing, cornflower-blue chiffon gown. She left my hair unbound but wove a garland of pink, white, and blue wildflowers around the crown of my head.

Why is she having to insist, Feyre? You’ve been invited to a celebration. Were you planning to go in your paint clothes?

You might be thinking, “Ugh, do we have to hear about Alis dressing her? Why can’t the dress just get described later?” And that’s fair. But you must be aware that this is not just about the dress. It’s also about reminding us how hot Feyre is.

I might have felt childish with it on, but in the months I’d been there, my sharp bones and skeletal form had filled out. A woman’s body. I ran my hands over the sweeping, soft curves of my waist and hips. I had never thought I would feel anything but muscle and bone.

You heard it here: women, you should not have perceptible bones or muscle. Curves only, and they must, I repeat, MUST, be in all the right places. Otherwise, you don’t have a woman’s body. Just a normal human body, positively infested with bones.

“Cauldron boil me,” Lucien whistled as I came down the stairs. “She looks positively Fae.”

Feyre doesn’t even bother to listen to Lucien because she’s busy doing an occular pat-down of Tamlin. She’s wanting to make sure he’s not covered in blood or wounds because in Feyre’s mind, Lucien would for sure compliment her gorgeous, womanly body and fancy dress (that had to be insisted upon because she is not like other girls) in a situation where Tamlin might be horribly mutilated.

Flames. On the sides of my face.

Then Tamlin tells her she looks lovely and this is her response:

I squared my shoulders, disinclined to let him see how much his words or voice or well-being impacted me. Not yet. “I’m surprised I’m even allowed to participate tonight.”

Oh my fucking god. Oh my god. I get it. Her heart could get broken, etc. But that’s an element that’s only just now been introduced, was touched on incredibly briefly, but is somehow big enough that it has set Feyre’s behavior toward Tamlin and Lucien back to chapter fucking four.

This is one of the worst books I have ever read in my life after multiple DNFs. Just…it’s just terrible.

Also, fuck you, Feyre. You don’t get to be offended because someone doesn’t involve you in their culture stuff, especially when you’ve been a total asshole about their race and shit. God, this is just infuriating. Just… ARRRRRGH.

They explain that the solstice is all about things being neutral and everyone chillaxing.

“So there’s singing and dancing and excessive drinking,” Lucien chimed in, falling into step beside me. “And dallying,” he added with a wicked grin. 

Indeed, every brush of Tamlin’s body against mine made it harder to avoid the urge to lean into him entirely, to smell him and touch him and taste him. Whether he noticed the heat singeing my neck and face, or heard my uneven heartbeat, he revealed nothing, holding my arm tighter as we walked out of the garden and into the fields beyond.

Feyre’s horny and we’re all gonna suffer for it. I don’t know why, but anything horny or sexual that happens to characters I deeply loathe just seems silly and disgusting to me. It makes doing any of our book club selections real ding-dang difficult in that aspect.

The manor has once again shifted topography, I think. I thought the hills were outside the garden, then the game park, then the forest with the valleys and such. But the important thing to note here is that Feyre is horny for Tamlin and we’re all gonna fucking suffer.

The sun was beginning its final descent when we reached the plateau on which the festivities were to be held.

NOW THERE’S A FUCKING PLATEAU?! SINCE WHEN? SINCE WHEN? SINCE WHEN?

Remember when Feyre went to Calanmai and the faeiries were looking at her and she was looking at them? That happens again, except now she can see them as more than smears of color. Tamlin growls at anybody who tries to get near her because nothing is sexier than a guy who shows off his girlfriend and puts her in danger so he can be possessive and protective.

This is where I’m really gonna start to sum up, because it’s just like, block paragraph after block paragraph describing the party while nothing of note really happens there. There’s food, music, and the tone is different from the other celebration.

Light and joyous, the mirthful sister to the bloodthirsty Fire Night.

Hey, real quick, does anybody remember Fire Night being about bloodthirst? I thought it was about the metaphorical kind of boning thirst. I guess it’s violent for Feyre to not be the only one to bang Tamlin.

Lucien and Tamlin have brought Feyre to this party with all these fae who are supposed to be so dangerous to her and that’s why Tamlin put a spell on her to hide her, and then they…leave her alone. They just go off and do other things.

Obviously, Feyre talks about all the things she’s going to paint. Only this time, she doesn’t immediately think about how she can’t paint them so…growth, I guess?

And speaking of things that happen ad nauseam throughout this chapter:

I was pouring myself a goblet of golden sparkling wine when Lucien finally appeared behind me, peering over my shoulder. “I wouldn’t drink that if I were you.”

What do you think she’s going to do? Text ofcourseshefuckingdrinksit to vote now.

“Faerie wine at the solstice,” Lucien hinted.

Will Feyre take the hint? Tune in next time to The Obvious Show, sponsored by Maas.

“I’m serious,” Lucien said as I lifted the glass to my lips, brows raised. “Remember the last time you ignored my warning?”

Which time?

Feyre reminds him that he’d also told her that “witchberries” were okay to eat and like, come on, dude. They’re called witchberries. WTF about that name sounds like those are totally cool plants to eat? But they made her trip hard and Lucien thought it was hilarious. Yup, one of the two men holding Feyre prisoner dosed her with psychedelics and it’s funny side banter.

We already know that Feyre is gonna drink the drink (if you immediately heard “drink the drink” as Bob Hoskins arguing with a cartoon rabbit, congrats on making it to your forties), but why?

Today–just for today–I would indeed let my hair down. Today, let caution be damned. Forget the blight hovering at the edges of the court, threatening my High Lord and his lands.

I just want to point out that Tamlin brought her to a party and now she can’t find him but she’s all my High Lord, like there is a ring on her finger. Settle down, ma’am. Settle down.

“Well, I mean it this time,” Lucien said, and I shifted my goblet out of his reach. “Tam would gut me if he caught you drinking that.”

“Always looking after your best interests,” I said, and pointedly chugged the contents of the glass.

Let me be absolutely, 100%, cut-crystal clear here: IF A FAIRY TELLS YOU NOT TO EAT SOMETHING, YOU SHOULD LISTEN.

Look, I could share my incredibly spooky experience in the woods last year, which sounds even more whoody-doody than my alien abduction and haunted house story, but suffice to say that usually, they’re trying to get you to eat food, not the other way around. ed.—Patrons expressed interest in my whoody-doody spooky woods fairy experience story. If you’re all still interested, let me know, I’ll post it for Halloween.

If they say not to eat it, don’t eat it.

Did you not watch Pan’s Labyrinth, Feyre?

The wine makes her next-level drunk. It strips away the glamour that I thought the butterfly kisses moment already stripped away and she grabs another glass of the faerie wine and chugs it. 

In the ensuing and instant catastrophic drunkenness, there are a few bright moments of Maas’s talent for elegant description that make me furious about her lack of concern for consistency, characterization, and overall storytelling.

Like:

With each step, I savored the dampness of the grass beneath my bare feet. I didn’t remember when I’d lost my shoes.

Is that not the most elegant way to describe, “so hammered she lost her fucking shoes?”

The sky was an eddy of molten amethyst, sapphire, and ruby, all bleeding into a final pool of onyx.

Come on, it’s ridiculous for someone to write such a perfect description of the black of the sky but be so shit-awful at every other part of writing.

Feyre goes out to the dance floor and Lucien is having to babysit her:

“Do you want me to kill myself trying to keep you from impaling your mortal hide on another rock?”

This is not something that the reader saw happening and Feyre just says, “What,” and there’s no follow-up of like, I was so caught up in the music and the dancing that I didn’t notice it happening. Writing tip: if you’re going to try to hint that something has happened and the character wasn’t privy to it, don’t be that specific or at least word it in such a way that a reader doesn’t scroll back to make sure they haven’t missed something.

Lucien tries to drag her away from the dancing because:

I wanted to be in the music, wanted to ride its speed and weave between its notes.

Wasted. These moments of good writing are wasted on this book.

While she’s dancing and evading Lucien, Feyre finds Tamlin. He’s playing the fiddle in the band and he’s all sweaty and sexy and muscular. Lucien runs up like, hey, sorry she got away from me, and Tamlin is like, it’s okay, you can take off. And then Tamlin tells Feyre to dance and she really throws herself into it which, again…

DON’T DANCE IF A FAIRY TELLS YOU TO.

This is like, fairytale survival 101, okay? You don’t eat things fairies give you and you damn sure don’t listen to their music and dance with them. This is how you get stolen or like, cursed to dance forever.

I sashayed over to him, my faerie lord, my protector and warrior, my friend, and danced before him.

Sashay is not a word anybody needs to be using unless they’re on RuPaul’s Drag Race. It’s just too camp.

Tamlin kneels in front of Feyre to play a solo.

Music just for me–a gift.

DON’T TAKE GIFTS FROM FAIRIES ESPECIALLY NOT MUSIC SEE ABOVE.

He played on, his fingers fast and hard upon the strings of his fiddle. My body slithering like a snake, I tipped my head back to the heavens and let Tamlin’s music fill all of me.

Is this… is this the porn part? I keep being told that this is fairy porn.

Tamlin stops fiddling and dances with Feyre, and there’s more stuff about his touch burning her, etc.

I didn’t want it to end–I never wanted to leave this hilltop.

I thought it was a pla– You know what? Nevermind.

Tamlin tells her that time goes faster when you’re drunk on fairy wine and like, idk how to tell you this, Tam, but that’s every wine. It’s called blacking out, or as Dave Attel described it, “time traveling.”

Don’t look up that bit, it’s extremely offensive.

I’m still skipping a lot here, by the way. We’re at page seven of this party, which is ten and a half pages long. That’s twice the page count devoted to the severed head incident. The Attor only featured on four pages. That fairy whose wings got chopped off? He got seven pages to die.

Feyre going to a party that introduces no new plot information at all? TEN PAGES.

Tamlin takes Feyre away from the party, to a meadow that’s probably on the top of a mountain located in the depths of a canyon in the middle of the sea, so she can see will-o’-the-wisps and hear them sing. Then he asks her to dance with him in the meadow because every single YA book must have a meadow scene, so sayeth article VII of the Twilight Code. ed.—What did I just say two recaps ago?

I was as unburdened as a piece of dandelion fluff, and he was the wind that stirred me about the world.

Potential. Just down the drain.

There’s more about his hot skin and their bodies touching and how they’re staring into each other’s eyes and this time, brace yourselves, this time there’s more kissing but with consent.

“I’m thinking I might kiss you,” he said, quietly, intently.

“Then do it.” I blushed at my own boldness.

Here’s why I’m not mad that he’s kissing her when she’s been drinking: the fact that she blushes and acknowledges her inhibition here is proof enough to me that she’s not super drunk anymore. She spent a lot of time at the party scene talking about how the wine made her “free,” so seeing her no longer feeling that lack of inhibition implies to me that she is capable of consent. Your mileage may vary and let’s be honest: probably that’s not on purpose.

But it made me feel a lot better about the kissing stuff, which doesn’t get a chance to get PG-13 before Tamlin takes her to a different topographical feature to watch the sunrise together.

“My father once told me that I should let my sisters imagine a better life–a better world. And I told him that there was no such thing.” I ran my thumb over his mouth, marveling, and shook my head. “I never understood–because I couldn’t … couldn’t believe that it was even possible.” I swallowed, lowering my hand. “Until now.”

I didn’t realize the world could be better until I got kidnapped really demonstrates how low the bar was, huh? But at least, now she’s admitting that things are better for her in Prythian than they were at home.

I let the dawn creep inside me, let it grow with each movement of his lips and brush of his tongue against mine. Tears pricked beneath my closed eyes.

It was the happiest moment of my life.

That’s the end of the chapter. Does it seem like I left out the part where the plot advances? Did I make it sound like this chapter was just more Tamlin/Feyre PWP fluff eating up the pages of this already bloated book? That’s because that’s all it was. At this point, I’ve skimmed ahead to see when we get back to the fantasy plot of this alleged high fantasy novel and I can say with confidence that this chapter could have been scrapped entirely, as the previous celebration sequence actually served a purpose and introduced important elements to the book whereas this one, at least as far as I could tell from the next few chapters, does not. There’s kissing and romance, and that’s fine, but the kissing and romance could have easily been worked into the glamour-removal scene. Plus, when we get to the next chapter, I’ll explain why this one felt miss-timed and Maas passed up a huge opportunity for a “big reveal” moment. ed.—Man, I sure hope I remembered to do that.

A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter 24 or “A Chapter of Night Court and Racism”

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.

CW: Racism, Slavery

As someone who has written their fair share of racist fantasy tropes, I think I’m uniquely positioned to recognize them in the work of others. And this shit is looking real, real familiar to me.

Strap the fuck in.

First of all:

It wasn’t the dawn that awoke me, but rather a buzzing noise.

Yes, we’re starting another chapter off with Feyre waking up, having her breakfast, and taking a bath. Because none of us are intelligent enough to assume that she’s eating or bathing or waking unless it’s explicitly mentioned.

She’s expecting Alis but instead there’s a fairy “with skin made from tree bark” who brought breakfast.

Her bird mask was familiar. But I would have remembered a faerie with skin like that. Would have painted it already.

Look, Feyre would have remembered if she saw brown skin before because if there’s one thing they don’t have in Prythian, it’s anybody darker than a sourdough starter. ed.—Maas eventually retconned several characters in this series as being men of color; fans insist that they have been described so throughout the series. One of these characters is the pale man she met at Calanmai. The other is Lucien, described as “tan,” the same way the canonically white characters are described as “tan.” I pointed this out to a Maas fan on Facebook; her response was that the author may not have ever encountered BIPOC people in real life (and there was no way we could prove that she had) and therefore felt uncomfortable writing “diversely.”

The author was born and raised in New York City. The fandom is complicit in SJM’s racism.

Two things to note about the painting comment: This is the first time I can remember that Feyre has seen something in Prythian and thought she would be able to paint it. And it just so happens to be brown skin. Usually, she feels she can’t paint things because they’re so beautiful. But brown skin? No problem.

Why would that be, ma’am? Care to comment?

Also, the way it’s phrased and the fact that the skin is wood made me briefly think she meant she would have literally painted on the fairy.

The thing is, the treebark-skinned fairy is Alis.

It was impossible. The Alis I knew was fair and plump and looked like a High Fae.

The Alis I knew was white!

Then Feyre makes the connection that all the fairies she’s seen so far have been glamoured and she’s now seeing them the way they truly look.

Because I’d been a cowering human, that’s why. Because Tamlin knew I would have locked myself in this room and never come out if I’d seen them all for their true selves.

That’s a pretty loaded statement, Feyre. Tamlin knew that if you saw people who looked different from you, you’d freak out? I mean, he was taking you into the fairy world, so it’s not like you weren’t expecting to see fairies.

And if he meant to protect her from freaking out about creatures…why did he show up at her house in full-on beast form?

Also: if he knew this about her, why didn’t he remove the glamour before Calanmai, when he wanted her to be scared enough to stay in her room? Without the glamour, maybe she would have been too freaked out by the creatures to leave the house.

Things only got worse when I made my way downstairs to find the High Lord.

How did things get worse, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you, dear Patron: she can suddenly see that there are more fairies in the castle than she previously believed, and not all of them look like Tamlin and Lucien.

I was almost shaking by the time I reached the dining room. Lucien, mercifully, appeared like Lucien. I didn’t ask whether that was because Tamlin had informed him to put up a better glamour or because he didn’t bother trying to be something he wasn’t.

Like present in the story?

I’d almost yelped when I looked out my bedroom window and spotted all the faeries in the garden. Many of them–all with insect masks–pruned the hedges and tended the flowers. Those faeries had been the strangest of all, with their iridescent, buzzing wings sprouting from their backs. And, of course, then there was the green-and-brown skin, and their unnaturally long limbs, and—

DARLING COME QUICKLY THE HELP IS SPOILING MY VIEW WITH THEIR DARK SKIN CALL THE SERVICE I WANT THEM FIRED.

I’m sorry, it’s just so weird to me that she wrote this like, “AND, OF COURSE,” before mentioning their skin color. like, OF COURSE the thing that’s freaky about them is their green and brown skin. Now, to be fair, if she’d said pink and purple or translucent, I wouldn’t think anything about it, but now we’re at two different mentions of brown skin freaking out the heroine. And the idea that here’s this blonde white lady “almost shaking” as she realizes there are brown-skinned people around is just hilariously bad. Just so, so bad.

Tamlin tells Feyre that all these fairies have been around the whole time, she just couldn’t see them. Which makes Feyre all freaked out because that meant they saw her trying to escape the night the puca was there.

I thought I’d been so stealthy. Meanwhile, I’d been tiptoeing past faeries who had probably laughed their heads off at the blind human following an illusion.

I read that sentence and immediately followed it with a mental clip of Janis from Mean Girls saying “unfriendly Black hotties.”

“But I could see the naga–and the puca, and the Suriel. And–and that faerie whose wings were … ripped off,” I said, wincing inwardly. “Why didn’t the glamour apply to them?”

Editor: Why could Feyre see some of the fairies and not the other ones?

Maas, probably: Because it would be detrimental to the story and I don’t want to have to scroll up in my Word document.

“They’re not members of my court,” Tamlin said, “so my glamour didn’t keep a hold on them. […]”

A likely story.

“I see,” I lied, not quite seeing at all.

Look, it’s very, very simple: if the author needs you to see a fairy, you see a fairy. If you don’t, Tamlin deus ex machinas them away.

Lucien is sitting there at the dining room table picking his nails with a dagger. It’s a good thing Feyre’s really at second breakfast since she always eats in her room. Someone cleaning their nails where I eat would make me lose my appetite.

Maybe they’re finished eating and it’s not rude. Maybe Lucien and Tamlin just sit quietly in the dining room and wait for Feyre to make an appearance. This and “the border” seem to be the only places these dudes go.

Anyway, Feyre mentions that she hasn’t seen Lucien around much, which of course prompts Lucien to make a remark about her kissing Tamlin and…leave.

I imagine Lucien’s daily schedule goes something like “sit quietly in the dining room, existing only to be present every time Feyre enters the room. Make a shitty remark to Feyre. Cease existing until the narrative demands my presence again.”

Feyre asks Tamlin if she’d see the Attor if it came back.

“You said it didn’t see me at that time, and it certainly doesn’t seem like a member of your court,” I ventured. “Why?”

Editor: Why couldn’t the Attor sense her presence if Tamlin’s spells don’t work on fairies from outside his court?

“Because I threw a glamour over you when we entered the garden,” he said simply. The Attor couldn’t see, hear, or smell you.”

Maas, probably: Because magic. Stop questioning my deftly woven plot.

Hey, guess what I did? I went back to that scene in the garden, where Tamlin allegedly “threw a glamour over” her.

You know what didn’t happen?

She didn’t “taste the metallic tang of magic” or whatever she always did when a spell happened before that.

BUT THIS IS ALL VERY PLANNED OUT AND TIGHTLY WRITTEN YOUS ALL. MASTERFUL.

Tamlin tells Feyre that he’s worked overtime trying to keep other creatures in Prythian from seeing her, but the blight is getting worse and soon they’re gonna be overrun with monsters he can’t do anything about. He tells her that if she sees anybody looking at her funny, to let him know.

This was for my own safety, not his amusement.

I assume you’ll be ignoring him, then?

He didn’t want me hurt–he didn’t want to punish them for hurting me. even if the naga hadn’t been part of his court, had it hurt him to kill them?

No, killing is super cool and barely bothers anyone. You know, like how it barely skimmed your fucking conscience when you learned that you murdered Tamlin’s friend?

Tamlin tells Feyre that she’ll be safe in his territory. Which has not been the case at all, so far. She’s almost died like six times and all of those incidents happened in your territory. But why not? We’ll go with Feyre being safe and just hope that’s not true because I wish nothing but the worst for her.

Since she’s falling in love with him, Feyre is like, oh, it’s not my safety I worry about and then laments the fact that he won’t let her help with the blight. Which, if you will recall, is a problem in Prythian related to magic and which magic users can’t even figure out, but Feyre would be able to fix it no problem, I’m sure.

There’s a section break and:

The next morning, I found a head in the garden.

Wait. Hang on. Did you wake up? Did you take a bath? Did Alis bring you breakfast? I’m all confused now because I did not see these actions take place explicitly on the page. How did you even get to the garden? Are there Sparknotes for this?! Never since House of Leaves has a book so flummoxed and perturbed me with its inaccessible, incomprehensible events.

That line about the head would have been an incredible chapter opening. Much better than “I woke up and took a bath and had a conversation with a servant that meant absolutely nothing and went nowhere but you have to throw in a Bechdel test so White Feminists will rave about your book online.”

Somebody has straight-up previously on Hannibaled a fairy’s head onto the beak of a heron statue.

The stone was soaked in enough blood to suggest that the head had been fresh when someone had impaled it on the heron’s upraised bill.

 More CSI: Prythian going on here.

Feyre had planned to paint in the garden but sudden head obviously unsettles her and she drops all her stuff.

I didn’t know where I went as I stared at that still-screaming head, the brown eyes bulging, the teeth broken and bloody.

I would have gone with “silently screaming head” because, you know, magic and stuff could very easily mean the head is outright screaming. In which case, finding it wouldn’t be such a startling surprise, maybe? ed.—I still occasionally think of this scene and question whether I would rather find a screaming head, so the sound would alert me to spooky goings-on and I wouldn’t be caught by surprise, or just a regular head, which would be unsettling and sudden but not otherworldly. I still haven’t decided.

Tamlin is right behind her, because that’s what Tamlin does. He just randomly appears whenever Feyre runs into some plot.

Neither Tamlin nor Lucien recognize the fairy, at least, and Lucien gets closer to investigate.

“They branded him behind the ear with a sigil,” Lucien said, swearing. “A mountain with three stars—”

NXIM?

“Night Court,” Tamlin said too quietly.

Oh, that’s much funnier.

If you’re not a million years old, you might be unaware that there was once upon a time a show called Night Court, it was beloved, and it had very distinctive theme music. And every time I see the words “night” and “court” anywhere near each other, I think about John Larroquette.

Is he Canadian? I bet he’s Canadian. ed.—He’s not Canadian.

Feyre is all like, why would someone leave a head in your garden? and Tamlin goes:

“The Night Court does what it wants,” Tamlin said. “They live by their own codes, their own corrupt morals.”

How dare you speak ill of wise-acre Mel Torme aficionado and legendary close-up magician the Honorable Judge Harry Stone!

That’s a little tv humor from the ’80s kids for you, folks.

But what a weird answer, huh? Like, why did these people leave a decapitated head in your fountain? IDK, they do what they want. Cool, that’s a very normal thing to say.

I don’t want to make it seem like Lucien and Tamlin don’t care about this development. They do, and Lucien in particular doesn’t like the Night Court. He calls them sadists and says they probably left the head on the fountain to be funny.

And then he takes the head down and there is some amazing description:

[…] I cringed at the thick, wet sounds of flesh and bone on stone as he yanked the head off.

Did you hear that? I heard it. And somehow, felt the resistance of it pulling off the heron’s beak.

Lucien’s theory is that the head was left on the fountain to prove that not only could the Night Court get onto the property, that close to the house, but then pull off killing somebody close enough to get this huge amount of blood everywhere.

But like…

What about all the fairy gardeners? Why didn’t they find the head? And how did nobody see the attack? Just pages ago, we learned that those garden fairies are present even at night. It’s how they would have seen Feyre trying to sneak out to the puca thing.

I guess Lucien isn’t the only fairy that conveniently vanishes when the story calls for it.

Tamlin tells Feyre:

“You’re still safe here. This was just their idea of a prank.”

And she’s like, does this have anything to do with the blight?

“Only in that they know the blight is again awakening—and want us to know they’re circling the Spring Court like vultures, should our wards fall further.”

Sarah. Either this head is a warning/message or a prank. You can’t have the same character who is brushing off the idea that they’re in danger then announcing that these people want to attack them.

This would have been a good place to get out of Feyre’s head a little and let us see Lucien and Tamlin talk it out, with Lucien arguing for his stance that it’s a message and Tamlin believing that it was just a prank. We could have seen more of their relationship and gotten more of Lucien’s character, since he’s either going to end up the love interest or the villain by the end of this thing.

There’s gonna be a twist coming, I can feel it. But no spoilers.

There’s no reason a first-person POV character can’t sit back and observe a conversation without participating in it. In this book, we could have used a lot more of that. Instead, every single time something comes up that would expand on characterization or worldbuilding, Feyre just stands there and asks questions so people explain everything directly to her, and they only ever talk about these things in terms of whether or not the events will impact her. It’s almost like nobody in the book is allowed to interact with other characters when Feyre is in the scene. She is the conduit through with all must flow.

That’s not realistic in terms of how life goes in general. There are times when we’re not the center of the universe and we have to stand by awkwardly while other people reveal who they are through actions that don’t directly involve us.

I didn’t have the heart to say that their masks made it fairly clear that nothing could be done against the blight.

I don’t remember whether or not the blight was the cause of the masks in the first place, but either way “didn’t have the heart” is a strange way to describe not actively insulting someone.

Lucien makes a remark about hoping the blight will take care of the Night Court (’80s sax in the distance), too, and Tamlin tells him to get rid of the head. Feyre has her own clean-up to do, as her painting supplies are all over the ground. Tamlin kneels down like he’s gonna help her, but he holds her hands instead.

“You’re still safe,” he said again. The Suriel’s command echoed through my mind. Stay with the High Lord, human. You will be safe.

Yeah, but safety makes for a fucking boring fantasy adventure story, doesn’t it? But my bets are still on the “high lord” in question being Lucien, based on all the little hints tossed in so far about his background.

My knees shook as I rose. Faerie politics, faerie courts … “Their idea of jokes must have been even more horrible when we were enslaved to you all.” They must have tortured us whenever they liked—must have done such unspeakable, awful things to their human pets.

Okay, let me pick this apart a little.

It took me a long time, as a white American person, to understand that even though slavery existed in other parts of the world throughout history and that yes, even some white people were slaves in various times and cultures (not your Irish-American great-grandfather so keep that ahistorical nonsense outta here), the enslavement of Black people in my country is far too recent for me to be playing with the concept of slavery in fiction. Maybe not everyone feels that way, but it’s a personal line that caused me to toss out a horror novel I’d written and set in ancient Rome.

Regardless of personal lines, it’s still super weird to write a fantasy novel in which:

there do not appear to be any Black peoplethere are brown-skinned people the heroine finds unsettlingthe heroine is a white womanand she’s carrying generational trauma about enslavement

I can’t possibly be the first blogger to notice how uncomfortable that is.

It’s also very strange that this woman who grew up in a culture with a legacy of enslavement is only just now thinking about what slavery would have meant for the people who were enslaved.

Especially since I’m pretty sure she already mentioned this in one of the early chapters. But Maas doesn’t scroll up and she’s not gonna start.

It’s also very weird to be writing a book in which the person from the enslaved race is falling in love with an enslaver and that dynamic is not only playing out between two white characters but is only playing out to be waved away:

A shadow flickered in his eyes. “Some days, I’m very glad I was still a child when my father sent his slaves south of the wall. What I witnessed then was bad enough.”

Some days you’re glad slavery ended? Other days, you kinda miss it? Why just “some days” and why didn’t an editor catch that?

I did not think five centuries would be enough to cleanse the stain of the horrors that my people had endured. I should have let it go—should have, but couldn’t.

Here is our white heroine, written by our white American author, using the same metaphor frequently employed to describe slavery in the U.S., and basically saying that the heroine knows better than to hold the enslavers accountable even in a simple conversation because it’s not polite.

IDK, maybe it was all the stuff about how brown skin is bizarre earlier in the chapter that’s making me react this way to this section but it certainly reads like Feyre knows that it’s good manners to forgive and forget slavery.

“Do you remember if they were happy to leave?”

Yeah, no, this is becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

“Yes. Yet they had never known freedom, or known the seasons as you do. They didn’t know what to do in the mortal world. But yes—most of them were very, very happy to leave.”

Wow, way to accidentally include pro-slavery talking points from the nineteenth century in your twenty-first-century fantasy novel.

No wonder he’d been so awkward with me, had no idea what to do with me, when I’d first arrived. “You’re not your father, Tamlin. Or your brothers.” He glanced away, and I added, “You never made me feel like a prisoner—never made me feel like little more than chattel.”

Yup, there’s our white heroine, telling an enslaver it’s okay because he’s one of the good ones.

Like.

What in the Tumbr is happening here and why didn’t this book get absolutely blasted for this shit when it came out? It’s not like it was published in the ’90s or the ’00s. This book is like five years old.

And for someone who never felt like a prisoner, Feyre sure tried to escape a lot. Usually, you don’t have to try to escape when you don’t feel like a prisoner.

Feyre decides that since he’s so traumatized by his father enslaving people, she won’t ask him any more questions, and the chapter ends with:

Still, I couldn’t bring myself to paint that day.

This is a weird way to end the chapter when literally nothing in the conversation about slavery suggested she would be able to paint now that they’d discussed it.

Like I said, I wrote some really racist fantasy novels (that I would love to be able to rework and fix but alas, they are owned by Harlequin), so maybe I’m just overly sensitive to this or overly critical of this book in general. But something in me just thinks, you know, maybe white American people shouldn’t write about slavery in their books where Black people don’t seem to exist.

Maybe we shouldn’t be using slavery as a plot device, at all.

Edward Rose and Sons: How Not To Run A Business aka Go fuck yourselves to death and then in hell continue to fuck yourselves to death, and then when the Messiah comes and frees everyone in hell, continue to fuck yourselves to death over and over again in h

It was going to be the nicest place we ever lived. Three bedrooms, two-and-a-half baths. Wood laminate floors, stainless steel appliances, a fully finished basement. It was going to be.

It was going to be in August. Our application, including the paperwork for our ESAs, was approved in late June, but due to some refurbishments being done, the move-in date of August 7th seemed reasonable. Due to delays in materials, August 7th turned into August 14th. Then September 7th. Then September 21st. Luckily, our current landlords hadn’t found anyone to take the house yet, so we weren’t homeless.

Every time move-in day approached, we scheduled the electric to be turned over. We changed our renters’ insurance. We rented a U-Haul. Once, our move-in date was canceled four days in advance. I thought this was short notice, so when the September date approached, I called and checked with the office: are you sure this time? Is everything on schedule? Is all of our paperwork in order? The answer I got was yes, of course, everything is on schedule. We could sign the lease officially on the morning we moved in.

Move-in day arrived. Once again, the electric was switched over. The renter’s insurance was switched over. The U-Haul was waiting for us. But the lease never materialized in the online portal. I called the office. They were really sorry, but the person I’d spoken to had given me the wrong information. The unit wouldn’t be available until October 21st.

I stuck with it. This place was perfect; literally, right across the street from where Mr. Jen works. On the bus line, so our son, who doesn’t drive, could have a job and independence. So many of my friends live in the city. I would have been within walking distance of the theater. My office would have been three times the size of my current one, with plenty of room and privacy. I could wait, because this unit was perfect. It was exactly what we needed. It would be worth the headache, I promised myself. We just had to hold on.

Last week, they called to give us the good news: the unit was ready a few days early. We could sign the lease and move in on October 17th. Once again, I asked: and everything is in order? All of our paperwork? Do you need anything else from us?

Today is finally move-in day. Everything was approved. All the paperwork was in order. We picked up the truck. The insurance was switched over. The electricity was, once again, switched over. Today is finally move-in day. We were getting a new life. We were getting out of the sticks. It’s today.

We were in the driveway. Mr. Jen had just parked the U-Haul.

Edward Rose and Sons called. They were very sorry. They made a mistake on the paperwork. We could still sign a lease today and move in… but our dogs, registered as ESAs, originally approved by management, couldn’t come with us.

Our ESA paperwork hadn’t actually been approved by management. They’re really, really sorry, but the dogs just can’t move in until they’re approved. Maybe we could move in and then see if management will approve them, but there was still a chance that, after move-in, they would be rejected.

The thing is, I know the dogs have to be approved. There is no maybe. They’re registered as ESAs. By law in my state, any landlord whose property has four or more units has to accommodate ESAs. They could have rejected our overall application, but they didn’t. They approved us, and the animals. They took a holding fee (which they are refunding). They insisted, multiple times, that they were fine with our animals and that all the paperwork was in order. They made repeated promises that we were approved.

They violated the Fair Housing Act, and they did it the morning of our expected move-in. They let us spend money, time, eat off of paper plates for two months and live in a labyrinth of moving boxes. We have been effectively camping for two months. Instead of being exhausted from a move, today I will be exhausted from unpacking in reverse. Putting items back into boxes we paid for, sealed with tape we paid for, stuffed with bubble wrap we paid for. We’ll be returning the truck (non-refundable, with miles already on it that we’ll pay for) after we empty out the storage facility we rented (for three months longer than anticipated).

We are heartbroken. We are tired. We can’t look for anything else because what’s the point? Nearly everything that fits our needs in Kalamazoo is owned by Edward Rose and Sons. We’re staying where we are, miles from everything. Isolated, alone, and heading into the worst time of the year for me. I will spend the winter in my dark little office, trying not to be bitter.

And hopefully, we’ll be engaged in a lawsuit that will prevent Edward Rose and Sons from making these “paperwork mistakes” ever again.

A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter 23 or “Handsome powers, powerfully activate!”

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.

Note: This is an extra super bad pain week for me, so if my thoughts seem scattered, please understand it’s not that we at Trout Nation Inc. don’t care about quality control. We just don’t care about it right now. ed.—That note is from the original recap. I’m actually fine right now.

Welcome back to… wait, what? Did we skip a huge chunk of book? Other than skating past any relationship development that could have occurred over the hallway scene? Because this chapter opens with Feyre and Tamlin lying in some grass together like they’re dating. ed.—Or in Twilight.

Lucien, claiming that he had miserable emissary business to attend to, had left Tamlin and me to our own devices, and the HIgh Lord had taken me to yet another beautiful spot in his enchanted forest.

Lucien is to this book as Tiger was to The Brady Bunch.

If you don’t get that reference you’re either too young or never had Nick at Night. ed.—As a still outdated, but more recent, example, one could say that Lucien is to this book as the older sister was to Family Matters.

But there were no enchantments here—no pools of starlight, no rainbow waterfalls. It was just a grassy glen watched over by a weeping willow, with a clear brook running through it.

Shut up, Feyre, you could be on the side of a mountain for all we know. You have some kind of neurological disorder that makes you incapable of describing geological features.

Tamlin mentions that the singing of the willows always makes him sleepy, and Feyre assumes he’s pulling her leg when he insists that yes, willows do sing.

“You’re human,” he said, and I rolled my eyes. “Your senses are still sealed off from everything.”

I’m interested to know who, exactly, did the sealing. I find the wording here…suspect. If their senses are “sealed off,” then who sealed them? Or who broke the seal on the fae?

Ah. Yet another point in a recap where I realize that something interesting could be explored, but probably won’t. ed.—It is not.

I made a face. “Just another of my many shortcomings.” But the word—shortcomings—had somehow stopped finding its mark.

Technically, this would be your second shortcoming, Feyre. The other time the word was used described your inability to read. But I find it interesting that once a dude wants to fuck her, formerly insulting descriptions are no longer insulting coming from that dude.

“I could make you able to see it,” he said. His fingers lingered at the end of my braid, twirling the curl of hair around. “See my world—hear it, smell it.” My breathing became shallow as he sat up. “Taste it.” His eyes flicked to the fading bruise on my neck.

I wonder if magic will taste better once she gets her seal broken. We always hear about how she can taste it. Maybe it won’t be gross and metallic now.

Tamlin tells Feyre that every gift comes with a price, and that price turns out to be a kiss. And of course, Feyre won’t let him kiss her! With her consent?! That would be so UNSEXY! The only way Feyre will deign to be kissed is whilst being slammed up against a wall, I guess.

But of course, she rationalizes why it’s okay to want to kiss him by saying that not being able to see things the way he does puts her at a disadvantage.

You see, she MUST kiss him, to be a strong female character. Otherwise, she OBVIOUSLY wouldn’t do so.

They get up on their knees and he tells her to close her eyes.

I braced myself at the brush of his mouth on one of my eyelids, then on the other. He pulled away, and I was left breathless, the kisses still lingering on my skin.

Ho ho, what is this bit of fae trickery? Methinks Tamlin was jesting about the kiss in payment; he merely needed to lay his lips upon her eyelids.

And since the place he kissed her was her eyelids, sight is, of course, the first heightened sense introduced.

SIKE!

The singing of birds became an orchestra—a symphony of gossip and mirth. I’d never heard so many layers of music, never heard the variations and themes that wove between their arpeggios.

Wow, Feyre knows music theory as well as painting. Truly, a renaissance poor person.

The world had become richer, clearer. The brook was a near-invisible rainbow of water that flowed over stones as invitingly smooth as silk.

Ah, yes. So different from the OPAQUENESS THAT WATER IS @#$%ing KNOWN FOR.

The trees were clothed in a faint shimmer that radiated from their centers and danced along the edges of their leaves. There was no tangy metallic stench—no, the smell of magic had become like jasmine, like lilac, like roses.

Oh my god, I am laughing at myself so hard. Between reading the chapter and writing the recap, I totally forgot that the smell of magic changed. So, above, when I was like, “I wonder if the smell of magic will be different,” I already knew the answer and had forgotten it and I was SO EXCITED to see my question answered.

Until I realized I already knew the answer and forgot it.

Trust me, if you’re inside my head, it’s hilarious.

As is the fact that this:

I would never be able to paint it, the richness, the feel …

came directly after the above sentence, in the same paragraph, suggesting that Feyre is gonna try to paint smells.

But yeah, just in case you were wondering if Feyre could paint this. I know that any object or setting mentioned in this book, I’m like dang, I hope Feyre can paint this, so I’m glad they didn’t keep me—or you, dear Patron—in suspense for long.

Then Feyre looks at Tamlin and if you thought there was no way he could possibly get hotter, well. I have horrible news for you.

It was Tamlin, but not. Rather, it was the Tamlin I’d dreamed of. His skin gleamed with a golden sheen, and around his head glowed a circlet of sunshine. And his eyes—

Not merely green and gold, but every hue and variation that could be imagined, as though every leaf in the forest had bled into one shade. This was a High Lord of Prythian—devastatingly handsome, captivating, powerful beyond belief.

Ma’am, the currency of “oooh, he’s a high lord, so powerful and handsome” is buying less and less lately. Every single time we’re meant to be impressed/horned-up by this description, I lose a little more interest. And that’s pretty fucking difficult, considering I DNFed this book at least three times prior to these recaps due it being uninteresting. Yes, we get it. Handsome. Powerful. Lots of power. Powerfully handsome and handsome with power. Why? Because High Lord. Handsome High Lord Powerful. Power power handsome power.

WE KNOW MOVE ON

Feyre tries to Christine Daae the mask off his face but it won’t move because, you know, Feyre isn’t more powerful than the powerful magical power power that’s powering magically (and handsomely) all over the place. Then, she suddenly can’t see how powerfully handsome and handsomely powerful Tamlin is anymore. He’s back to operating at only 90% handsome power. When Feyre asks him why, he says he glamoured himself again.

“To look normal. Or as normal as I can look with this damned thing,” he added, gesturing to the mask.

Lotta The Phantom of the Opera movie, “woe is me, I am Gerard Butler with pink-eye” vibes coming off this line. Curse this beautiful, bejeweled mask that obscures my powerfully handsome face. I am a monster.

“Being a High Lord, even one with … limited powers, comes with physical markers, too. It’s why I couldn’t hide what I was becoming from my brothers—from anyone. It’s still easier to blend in.”

Wait. This cannot possibly be Tamlin’s inner conflict. I won’t allow that to be the case. He’s tortured because he’s too pretty? Sorry, too handsome? Too powerfully handsome and so he has to tone down his handsome powers? POWERFULLY?!

Weep for him, sweet Feyre. He’s POWERFULLY HANDSOME and his HANDSOME POWERS must be hidden but not by the bejeweled mask that currently hides his handsomeness.

Feyre, a human Facebook post comment section, questions whether he’s really done all he can to get that darned mask off. Is he sure the curse can’t be broken? Did he check with the other courts?

Feyre is your friend from college who answers every single one of your venting posts with “helpful” suggestions like, “THAT’S ILLEGAL YOU SHOULD GET A LAWYER” and “GO TO THE ER IF YOU’RE HAVING CHEST PAINS!”

Thank god you’re here, Feyre. The immortal, powerful, handsome being made out of pure magic might not have thought to ask for help with this whole mask thing. You’re right, he probably just woke up, went, huh, wish I could take this mask off, oh well, and gave up until you arrived.

“I just … just want to know what you look like.” I wondered when I’d grown so shallow.

Previous to the beginning of this book, from what I can tell.

This leads to an unbearable exchange in which Tamlin asks Feyre what she thinks he looks like and she begins to describe how handsome he is to him. Lucky for us, she gets sleepy and the subject gets changed.

“What about your part of the bargain?”

“What?”

He leaned closer, his smile turning wicked. “What about my kiss?”

If Feyre were smarter than she is horny, she’d point out that he actually kissed her twice already, one for each eye, and he owes her for that second one. But Feyre is not as smart as she is horny, so it’s a “cute” and “funny” moment:

I grabbed his fingers. “Here,” I said, and slammed my mouth against the back of his hand. “There’s your kiss.”

And of course:

Tamlin roared with laughter, […]

I just want to sit Tamlin down in front of some Gabriel Iglesias stand-up and see what the fuck happens.

So, that sentence ends with Feyre thinking about how sleepy she is. So, the willow is getting to her, too. Tamlin says he should take her back to the house but instead they just lay in the grass being sleepy.

The most riveting three paragraphs I have ever read, let me tell you. Then this happens and I’m confused so I need input, Patrons:

This was such a lovely dream. I’d never slept so wonderfully before. So warm, nestled beside him. Calm. Faintly, echoing into my world of slumber, he spoke again, his breath caressing my ear. “You’re exactly as I dreamed you’d be, too.” Darkness swallowed everything.

If you have a copy of this book handy, will you do me a favor? Will you read back and see where in this chapter Feyre said he was exactly as she dreamed he would be? Because I’m not understand the “too” despite several re-reads. What the fuck is he talking about?

That’s the chapter. They laid in the grass and she can see magic now. Which really does seem like a big fucking deal for the story, so I’m glad it happened, but I think that with more build up it could have felt like (and been) a much bigger deal. Here, it’s “oh, look how beautiful everything is and how hot Tamlin is and WOW HE GAVE ME FAIRY EYE SMOOCHES NOW EVERYTHING IS EVEN MORE BEAUTIFUL AND HOT,” without much substance otherwise. Feyre doesn’t wonder what this means for her now or how this will change her existence in Prythian. She doesn’t think about why Tamlin didn’t give her this ability before, when it would have given her more of an advantage against the dangers around because she’d be able to perceive them.

And it makes no sense to me that this whole experience didn’t devolve into, “everything was beautiful… except for me because I am plain and human and unremarkable.” I don’t want to read that because it would be terrible writing, but it would have at least been consistent. So far, Feyre has shown very little character development. Most of it has been centered around coming to terms with the fact that she doesn’t have to honor her vow to her dying mother. 

Feyre’s lack of self-esteem hasn’t improved while she’s been in Prythian; if anything, it’s become so much worse. It makes no sense that her “woe is me, I’m not beautiful like other girls are” nonsense wouldn’t rear its head here. But I don’t want to read it. I just want consistency. So I’m faced with the impossible choice between wanting them both but knowing that either would cause me suffering.

Like when I go to Cold Stone Creamery.

A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter 22 or “The Joy of Painting”

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.

PLEASE NOTE: For whatever reason, I decided it would be smart and cool to write this recap in Google Docs and then just copy/paste. I don’t know how, but it resulted in some real fuckupery with regards to quotation marks. Some are backward, some are forward, and every time I try to change it in this window and I hit save, they just go right back. So, we’ll all suffer together with the weird quotes this time around and I’ll learn my lesson and never copy/paste from Google Docs again.

As usual, we open the chapter with Feyre waking up. But this time, she’s waking up horny and there’s nobody to wait on her.

Try as I might to forget the feel of Tamlin’s lips on my neck, I had an enormous bruise where he’d bitten me.

The male love interest has wounded the female main character, so they’re on track to bone any day now.

Right? I mean, I’m still wondering where the “porn” part of the “fairy porn” equation comes in.

I opened the drawers of the vanity, searching for a scarf or something to cover the bruise peeking over the collar of my blue tunic, but then paused and glared at myself in the mirror. He’d acted like a brute and a savage, and if he’d come to his sense by morning, then seeing what he’d done would be minimal punishment.

We’re all readers in the year 2021. We know exactly how minimal his punishment is going to be.

Humming to myself and swinging my hands, I strode downstairs and followed my nose to the dining room, where I knew lunch was usually served for Tamlin and Lucien.

Why is Feyre striding everywhere? It’s such a strong way of describing going to lunch. And speaking of, we are halfway into this book. We are far past the stage where Feyre needs to explain to us that they eat in the dining room. Especially since nearly every day she’s lived in Prythian has gone “wake, bath, hair, think about how I don’t know I’m beautiful (that’s what makes me beautiful), go to the dining room.” We know where the food is and we know why you’re going there. It’s one of three places you go, ever.

Lucien and Tamlin are both at the table, looking hungover.

“You look…refreshed,” Lucien observed with a glance at Tamlin. I shrugged. “Sleep well?”

“Like a babe.” I smiled at him and took another bite of food, and felt Lucien’s eyes travel inexorably to my neck.

“What is that bruise?” Lucien demanded.

I pointed with my fork to Tamlin. “Ask him. He did it.”

You’d think from that “demanded” that Lucien is going to be angry at Tamlin or say something about Feyre being more careful but instead Lucien does ask Tamlin, with “no small amount of amusement.”

It’s charming and funny that Feyre has a visible injury from Tamlin.

Tamlin admits to having bitten her the night before, but he’s sorry not sorry about it:

“She seems to have a death wish,” he went on, cutting his meat. The claws stayed retracted but pushed against the skin above his knuckles. My throat closed up. Oh, he was mad—furious at my foolishness for leaving my room—but somehow managed to keep his anger on a tight, tight leash. “So, if Feyre can’t be bothered to listen to orders, then I can’t be held accountable for the consequences.”

You mean if she hadn’t been out alone at night, if she hadn’t been dressed the way she was dressed, if she had just tried to protect herself from being sexually assaulted by you, hence it wasn’t your fault? Is that what we’re going with?

Because look, I’ve said over and over again that Feyre needs to listen to warnings from the people who actually live in Prythian and know better than she does, but that doesn’t mean that when she chooses to ignore those warnings, the people who harm her are blameless. Two things can be true here: Feyre should never have left her room, and Tamlin shouldn’t have bitten her.

Feyre gets angry and points out that Tamlin cornered her, and Lucien still finds the whole thing funny because what is humor if not watching your friend argue with the woman he assaulted?

“While I might not have been myself, Lucien and I both told you to stay in your room,” Tamlin said, so calmly that I wanted to rip out my hair.

I would like to rip out the hair of everyone at this freaking lunch. Everything we heard about Tamlin not being “himself” had to do with the lead-up to the ritual. He would be consumed by this primal, driving force to find the maiden and do the sex with her and then…

What? I assumed, as a reader, that Tamlin would only be possessed by this force until the magic was raised by the Great Rite. I figured he’d nut out all the magic and that would be it because that’s how the entire set-up made it sound. And he was “himself” enough when he encountered Feyre that he knew what he was doing. If he didn’t know that what he was doing was wrong, he wouldn’t have stopped. So, “It’s your fault because you know how I get” is really not doing it for me here.

I couldn’t help it. Didn’t even try to fight the red-hot temper that razed my senses. “Faerie pig!” I yelled, and Lucien howled, almost tipping back in his chair. At the sight of Tamlin’s growing smile, I left.

Just to briefly recap what’s happened here: Tamlin assaulted Feyre then joins Lucien in making fun of her for…being assaulted.

Wow, swoon, why can’t she end up with both of them?

And how does Feyre respond to this? By painting, of course:

It took me a couple of hours to stop painting little portraits of Tamlin and Lucien with pigs’ features.

I can’t wait until Tamlin or Lucien or both of them see these paintings Feyre made of her own lazy insult and they roar/scream/detonate/immolate with laughter over the exhausting try-hard “humor” in this novel.

But as I finished the last one—Two faerie pigs wallowing in their own filth, I would call it—I smiled into the clear, bright light of my private painting room. The Tamlin I knew had returned.

And it made me … happy.

The Tamlin you knew was the Tamlin who would push you up against a wall, bite you, then make fun of you for almost getting raped by him the night before? Have we met that Tamlin? Or are we just now supposed to go, “Well, Sarah says this is how it’s always been and she’s the author so she would know,” and adjust our memories of everything we’ve already read? There’s been no indication at all that Tamlin would look back on his behavior with anything other than horror. He’s been polite and up until the last couple of chapters, formal for no apparent reason.

But Maas has no interest whatsoever in dealing with the aftermath of her characters’ bad actions. Rather than being angry at what Tamlin did, Lucien finds it hilarious. Instead of Tamlin being truly horrified that he’s hurt her, he’s all, you made me do it, sorry not sorry. And how does Feyre deal with all of this? By running away and making “funny” paintings.

None of this “humor” tracks with the characters as they’ve been presented so far. Maas has taken so much time trying to set up that Tamlin isn’t the cruel beast he first appeared as in Feyre’s cottage. He’s gentlemanly and kind and only wants to show Feyre the beauty and magic of Prythian.

Then she wipes it away because she wants to copycat a horny scene from a TBS miniseries.

And I’m fine with that. Really, I was interested in what would happen between Feyre and Tamlin after that hallway scene because, despite its flaws, they really did have good chemistry there. I was thinking, wow, that chemistry is just going to get hotter when he has to humble himself and ask for her forgiveness, and she learns to trust him again and eventually she consents to a sexual relationship. The payoff is gonna be so great!

But nope. Not interested. Sarah is done with that dynamic altogether. Feyre paints it off, we get a section break, and this is how the entire assault situation is put to rest:

We apologized at dinner.

Oh, I’m sorry. Were you looking for more?

He even brought me a bouquet of white roses from his parents’ garden, and while I dismissed them as nothing, I made certain that Alis took good care of them when I returned to my room.

You meant more of the apology? Like you thought it might be important to excerpt more of the actual exchange that takes place during the apology? I see where the misunderstanding has happened.

There is no apology.

There is no dialogue, no recap of dialogue, no descriptions, no message attached to the flowers. We know there was an apology for this absolutely huge betrayal of the heroine’s trust, because it says:

We apologized at dinner.

That’s it. That and the flowers? That is how the entire Great Rite debacle is sewn up and tossed aside now that Maas is finished with the sexy part.

I went back and forth for a while about the “we” in that sentence, because I’m not sure Feyre actually needs to apologize for being in the hallway. This might seem like a departure from my “do as you’re told and that wouldn’t happen” stance from earlier recaps, but I see Feyre leaving her room and sneaking out to the party as a separate event from Tamlin assaulting her in the hallway. Feyre doesn’t owe Tamlin an apology for disobeying him and going to Calanmai, because it wasn’t Tamlin who was inconvenienced by her doing so.

I’m all for Feyre apologizing to Lucien for interrupting his cultural thing and dragging him away from it. She should apologize for that. And yes, she should apologize to Tamlin for disregarding his warning and acting like she knows Prythian better than he does. But those apologies need to be totally separate from what should be happening regarding the assault: only Tamlin apologizes.

Feyre didn’t run afoul of Tamlin before the Great Rite when he was possessed by the spirit of the hunter or whatever. I might be mixing that up with The Mists of Avalon but come on. We’ve discussed why that would be. But the point is, the ritual was over, the magic nut had been nutted o’er the land, so there’s no excuse for what he did. He did it because he was annoyed that he didn’t get a chance to fuck her when he was possessed.

That’s bad enough that it warrants an apology the readers need to see, in the first place, and without any whataboutism regarding Feyre’s misdeeds.

Maas could have used the apology to deepen the chemistry and connection between Feyre and Tamlin. Instead, she skipped over it in favor of pulling a “both sides” on an assault she’s done with.

But hey, at least he gave her some flowers he went to the trouble of already owning.

This section, by the way, is one paragraph, followed by a single line.

Here’s my prediction: I think Maas turned this manuscript in without any mention of an apology from Tamlin. I think she wrote “And it made me” DOT DOT DOT “happy” and thought it would be fine to leave it there. Then an editor was like, “There needs to be more here. Tamlin can’t do what he did, then tell her it was her fault, and everyone goes on like before. He needs to apologize.” And Maas was like, yeah, fuck it, “We apologized at dinner.”

Rather than take the opportunity to make the story better and the characters more interesting. “We apologized at dinner.”

The next section only cements my firm belief in the above prediction:

“Don’t know if I should be pleased or worried,” Alis said the next night as she slid the golden underdress over my upraised arms, then tugged it down.

I smiled a bit, marveling at the intricate metallic lace that clung to my arms and torso like a second skin before falling loosely to the rug. “It’s just a dress,” I said, lifting my arms again as she brought over the gossamer turquoise overgown. It was sheer enough to see the gleaming gold mesh beneath, and light and airy and full of movement, as if it flowed on an invisible current.

But could you paint it, Feyre? How are we supposed to know it’s gorgeous if you won’t tell us that you can’t paint it, Feyre?!

If we entirely remove the “We apologized at dinner” section, do you know what you’d end up with?

That’s right. Feyre calling Tamlin a pig, Tamlin laughing about it, Feyre going off to paint out her troubles, DOT DOT DOT happy, and then she’s suddenly wearing a dress. The dress was meant to signal that all is forgiven and Feyre is now all about being pretty.

You see, Feyre couldn’t take off her pants while she was being a STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER. But now that one of the menfolk thinks she’s sexy, well.

We don’t need the pants anymore.

The pants were on in case there would be some kind of action and she’d be able to escape. She doesn’t need to escape now because the boy wants to put his pee-pee in her noona and therefore all is forgiven.

Let me stress, once again, for the record: this MASTERFUL, AUTO-BUY AUTHOR EVERYONE MUST READ just put more work into describing a dress than she did into reconciling the main characters after an assault.

“Jenny, don’t be so mean! Stop saying popular books aren’t well written just because you’re jealous!”

Truly, this staggering work of literary excellence is proving me the most woeful of wrongs.

In a desperate bid to be able to claim her work passes the Bechdel test, Maas tosses in a little section where Feyre asks Alis where she learned to do hair, and Alis says she learned from her mother and her sister and grandmother. Then Feyre asks where Alis is from and she’s like, I’m from the Summer Court but I chose to come here and that’s pretty much it until the section ends with Feyre checking herself out in the mirror.

FEMINISM!

I had to keep my hands clenched at my sides to avoid wiping my sweaty palms on the skirts of my gown as I reached the dining room, and immediately contemplated bolting upstairs and changing into a tunic and pants. But I knew they’d already heard me, or smelled me, or used whatever heightened senses they had to detect my presence, and since fleeing would only make it worse, I found it in myself to push open the double doors.

Okay, uh. Excuse me here a real quick second.

What is Feyre afraid of? Being pretty in front of the hot boys? With their earlier confrontation completely resolved with a single sentence, what does Feyre have to be nervous about? The only new information we’ve received about her situation is that she’s wearing a dress. There’s been no further interaction between her or the High Fae that are apparently sensing her through the door when they’re somehow unable to sense her when it’s inconvenient to the story.

Can you tell that I’ve been feeling personally insulted by the shitty writing in this book more and more often lately?

Whatever discussion Tamlin and Lucien had been having stopped, and I tried not to look at their wide eyes as I strode to my usual place at the end of the table.

Lots of striding going on lately. Her legs must be exhausted.

Because the author needs to get Tamlin and Feyre together alone, Lucien gets up and leaves. I’m sure later we’ll learn that he left because he’s secretly in love with Feyre and can’t stand to see her falling in love with Tamlin or something but right now it just reads like “character I don’t want to deal with goes poof” for the author’s convenience.

There’s what’s supposed to be a charged moment of Tamlin looking at Feyre while Feyre tries to not look at him, then she points out that the table is really too long and he’s far away. In response, Tamlin makes the table shorter with magic.

You know. The magic that is precious and rare and must be conserved?

I ignored the metallic tang of magic as I said, “How … how did you do that? Where did it go?”

She ignores the taste of magic, then asks how he did the thing that was clearly magic. I hope she never loses this sense of amnesiac wonder.

He cocked his head. “Between. Think of it as … a broom closet tucked between pockets of the world.” He flexed his hands and rolled his neck, as if shaking off some pain.

“Does it tax you?” Sweat seemed to gleam on the strong column of his neck.

He stopped flexing his hands and set them flat on the table. “Once, it was as easy as breathing. But now … it requires concentration.”

Editor: If it’s such a harrowing feat of strength, why didn’t he just get up and move closer?

Author:

“You could have just taken a closer seat,” I said.

Tamlin gave me a lazy grin. “And miss a chance to show off to a beautiful woman? Never.”

Yup, that’s exactly the fix that makes sense here. Tamlin uses incredible strength and concentration–that takes all of an eyeblink to summon–and depletes himself to make Feyre feel pretty.

Must be fucking nice.

”You do look beautiful,” he said quietly. “I mean it,” he added when my mouth twisted to the side. “Didn’t you look in the mirror?”

OF COURSE, SHE DID. I feel like she’s never not in front of the god damn mirror. She fell asleep at her vanity in the last chapter for god’s, sorry, CAULDRON’S sake.

Though his bruise still marred my neck, I had looked pretty. Feminine. I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a beauty, but … I hadn’t cringed.

There’s a lot to unpack there vis-a-vis who qualifies as beautiful but I don’t feel like biting a steel cable in half in my rage today.

A few months here had done wonders for the awkward sharpness and angles of my face. And I dared say that some kind of light had crept into my eyes–my eyes, not my mother’s eyes or Nesta’s eyes. Mine.

Everyone knows the first place weight gain becomes noticeable is the eyeballs.

Tamlin leaned back in his chair, yet his shoulders were tight, his mouth a thin line. He hadn’t been called to the border in a few days–hadn’t come back weary and covered in blood since before Fire Night. And yet … He’d grieved for that nameless Court faerie with the hacked-off wings.

In case you were planning to write a book and nobody ever mentioned to you, “By the way, ‘and yet’ is like ‘nevertheless’ or ‘despite’,” congrats, I just helped you out. The way this is written makes it sound like it’s somehow unusual for Tamlin to grieve for the dead fairy because Tamlin hasn’t been covered in blood. No reader would come to that conclusion. No reader would think, “Wait…how can he be mourning that fairy if he hasn’t come back to the house covered in blood?!”

What grief and burdens did he bear for whoever else had been lost in this conflict–lost to blight, or to the attacks on the borders? High Lord–a position he hadn’t wanted or expected, yet he’d been forced to bear its weight as best he could.

I am so tired of this going around and around and around. Feyre, you’ve wondered this same shit a million times. Either ask or shut up and make this book a hell of a lot shorter.

Feyre decides it’s time for a field trip. She’s going to give him a present that she has apparently made for him.

When I went to drop his hand, he didn’t let go. It was enough to keep me walking quickly, as if I could outrun my thundering heart or the sheer immortal presence of him at my side. I brought him down hall after hall until we got to my little painting room, and he finally released my hand as I reached for the key.

I just included the above to note that more words were spent on walking to the fucking painting room than were allotted to resolving the assault issue.

Tamlin says he didn’t realize she would actually lock up the room and Feyre says:

”Everyone snoops in this house. I didn’t want you or Lucien coming in here until I was ready.”

The only person we’ve seen “snooping” in the house so far is Feyre.

I stepped into the darkened room and cleared my throat, a silent request for him to light the candles. It took him longer than I’d seen him need before, and I wondered if shortening the table had somehow drained him more than he’d let on.

Ma’am. He was sweating and flexing his hands like he was in the early stages of a heart attack. And rather than coming in and lighting the damn candles yourself, you passive-aggressively hint that you want him to use his magic to do something you probably do by your own damn self every damn day. And then you’re like, oh, gosh, I wonder if it’s hard for him to use his magic.

DO YOU FUCKING THINK, FEYRE?

The Suriel had said the High Lords were power–and yet … yet something had to be truly, thoroughly wrong if this was all he could manage.

YES FEYRE THAT HAS BEEN THE WHOLE DEAL WITH ALL OF PRYTHIAN SO FAR IT’S THE ONLY SCRAP OF PLOT THIS FUCKING BOOK HAS.

The room gradually flared with light, and I pushed my worry aside as I stepped farther into the room.

Well, thank god she could stop worrying. As long as FEYRE is comfortable.

I took a deep breath and gestured to the easel and the painting I’d put there. I hoped he wouldn’t notice the paintings I’d leaned against the walls.

You mean, you hope the supernatural creature with heightened senses and who is constantly in peril won’t notice something about his surroundings?

“I know they’re strange,” I said, my hands sweating again. I tucked them behind my back. “And I know they’re not like–not as good as the ones you have here, but …” I walked to the painting on the easel. It was an impression, not a lifelike rendering. “I wanted you to see this one,” I said, pointing to the smear of green and gold and silver and blue. “It’s for you. A gift. For everything you’ve done.”

Wait, NOW he’s done something for you? He was evil and horrible and very bad, bad, bad, when he let you live after you murdered his friend. He was evil and horrible and very bad, bad, bad, when he screwed with your family’s memory and gave them money, food, and security you couldn’t have given them. But now that you know that he wants to get humpy, all of these things you’ve been pissed off about are somehow magically things you’re grateful for?

Feyre tells him the painting is of the glen/valley/ravine/crevasse he took her to, where they swam in the pool of starlight. He tells her he knows what it is, then he goes to look at those paintings she hoped he wouldn’t notice. I’m gonna just blaze through these because…well, it’s really boring to read about someone looking at paintings and saying out loud exactly what the painting represents. One is of the woods where Feyre hunted, one is of her cottage, and one is…

Well, actually, I do have to excerpt what it is because it sounds like the most ridiculous high school art fair entry ever:

A tanned, sturdy male hand fisted in the hay, the pale pieces of it entwined among strands of brown coated with gold–my hair.

Doesn’t that sound like a life drawing assignment? “Draw a realistic hand. It may be holding an object.”

Tamlin immediately guesses that it’s a painting of Barn Booty’s hand while he and Feyre got down and dirty and it makes him growl.

Was that … jealousy? “It was the only escape I had.” Truth. I wouldn’t apologize for Isaac. Not when Tamlin had just been in the Great Rite. I didn’t hold that against him–

EXTREME RON HOWARD NARRATION VOICE: Yes, she does.

but if he was going to be jealous of Isaac–

Not to split hairs here, Feyre, but Tamlin was Cave Copulating as part of a ritual. You were getting Barn Booty because you were horny. So while neither of you should be jealous of either…let’s just say the situations aren’t comparable so maybe you shouldn’t start with your judgemental little comparison, okay?

Tamlin moves on to the next picture, which is of Feyre’s dad being beaten to pieces by the creditors.

Can I just say how refreshing it is to get a recap of the ENTIRE GOD DAMN BOOK SO FAR in the form of PAINTINGS WE CAN’T SEE AND THEREFORE MUST BE DESCRIBED FOR US?

You’ll hit that word count, Sarah. Believe in yourself.

Tamlin swore. “You were there when they wrecked your father’s leg.”

“Someone had to beg them to stop.”

Did you paint the part where you shit your pants but were still braver than your sisters?

Tamlin doesn’t want the picture of the valley/clearing/fen/park that Feyre painted for him. He wants the painting of the bleak winter forest, which I think we’re supposed to take as romantic or deep or something. Feyre does.

“Tell me there’s some way to help you,” I breathed. “With the masks, with whatever threat has taken so much of your power. Tell me–just tell me what I can do to help you.”

Yeah, just tell her, Tamlin. So she can decide she knows better and then just does whatever the fuck she wants until she has to be rescued. Again.

Tamlin tells her that there’s nothing she can do because she wouldn’t survive the stuff Tamlin has to do to, idk, fight the blight or something? There are so many em dashes and ellipses and none of them lead to any concrete “this is what I have to do to accomplish this thing” so I don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. I guess I’m supposed to be so dazzled by the romance happening that I’m not curious about the plot.

At this point, I’m not, but I should be.

“So I’m to live here forever, in ignorance of the true scope of what’s happening? If you don’t want me to understand what’s going on … would you rather …” I swallowed hard. “Rather I found someplace else to live? Where I’m not a distraction?”

No, Feyre, please don’t take your toys and go home. I’m so enjoying watching you just putter around the god damn house all day until it’s time for something to happen to you.

“Didn’t Calanmai teach you anything?”

No, not a damn thing. Is this your first day? Have you been to orientation?

“Only that magic makes you into a brute.”

He laughed, though not entirely with amusement. When I remained silent, he sighed. “No, I don’t want you to live somewhere else. I want you here, where I can look after you–where I can come home and know you’re here, painting and safe.”

Oh, good. For a second there, I thought Feyre was going to break this FASCINATING cycle of get up, get food, ignore every warning anyone ever gives her, get rescued, get mad about getting rescued, go to sleep, repeat. I definitely want to read more and more of that, rather than anything different at all.

Tamlin goes on to say that he has thought about getting rid of her, but he just couldn’t let her go.

”I’ve had many lovers,” he admitted. “Females of noble birth, warriors, princesses …” Rage hit me, low and deep in the gut at the thought of them–rage at their titles, their undoubtedly good looks, at their closeness to him. “But they never understood. What it was like, what it is like, for me to care for my people, my lands. What scars are still there, what the bad days feel like.” That wrathful jealousy faded away like morning dew as he smiled at my painting. “This reminds me of it.”

Can we take a moment to acknowledge how messy, fucked up, and just outright bizarre everything in that paragraph is? Let’s talk about structure, first. All of Tamlin’s dialogue is tagged with Feyre’s thoughts/actions. And the outright abuse of em dashes and ellipses in this chapter should have resulted in the firing, without severance, of the editor who worked on this book.

Now, let’s move on to Feyre BEING JEALOUS OF ALL HIS PAST LOVERS DESPITE JUST THINKING ABOUT HOW HE HAS NO RIGHT TO BE JEALOUS OF HER PAST LOVERS. And she’s so pathetic about it, too. Like, the insecurity is off the charts. Poor me, I bet he had sex with a pretty girl once!

Feyre, the dude just spent a bunch of time telling you that you’re beautiful, praising your artwork, and then he capped it all off by saying he couldn’t get rid of you. Your insecurity is disingenuous. We live inside your head. We know you think of yourself as the hottest of all shits, even though you repeatedly insist that you do not feel this way.

“Of what?” I breathed.

He lowered the painting, looking right at me, right into me. “That I’m not alone.”

Yes, Tamlin, because having to hunt to feed one’s family is exactly the same as having to save your entire species and you should be sure to give Feyre credit for that.

On the other hand, it appears that Feyre thinks the two are equal enough to end the chapter with a reminder that she wants to bang Tamlin:

I didn’t lock my bedroom door that night.

Good. I hope someone bursts in and murders you and chapter twenty-three starts with your funeral.

A COURT OF JEALOUSY AND HATERS: ACOTAR chapter 21 or “Zoo Tragedy”

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.

CW: Rape

Chapter twenty ended on the pulse-pounding cliffhanger of Feyre seeing the most beautiful man she’s ever seen–again.

Everything about the stranger radiated sensual grace and ease. High Fae, no doubt. His short black hair gleamed like a raven’s feathers, offsetting his pale skin and blue eyes so deep they were violet, even in the firelight.

Excuse me, sir, but I believe it’s a Mary Sue’s job to have raven-black hair, pale skin, and violet eyes. You’re such a poser. I’m gonna put my middle finger up at you.

Thank you didn’t seem to cover what he’d done for me, but something about the way he stood with absolute stillness, the night seeming to press in closer around him, made me hesitate to speak–made me want to run in the other direction.

Starting to notice a pattern here. Feyre is only afraid of sexy, sexy dudes and anything non-European.

He, too, wasn’t wearing a mask. From another court, then.

Wait, wait. Wait. This guy is getting the kind of introduction a major player gets in a book like this. He gets compared to a raven and has super speshul eyes. So, he’s not just here today, gone tomorrow. We’ll hear from him again. ed.—god above, do we ever fucking hear from him again. He’s on god damn merch.

I mean, we better. Because nobody is that bad at writing, are they? ed.—as this entire genre of Hyphen Fantasy sprung from thousands of Maas imitators has proven…yup. Yup, they for sure can be that bad at writing.

But so far, all of the people Feyre needs to meet in order to move the story forward have to come to her. And that’s what’s making this so…boring. We never leave the same small circle of people, we never move on from this very limited setting of the manor and the woods to go out and do anything. In a fantasy novel. There’s no “we must leave the safety of the manor and go on an incredible journey where we’ll meet all sorts of folk.” We’re sitting on our asses watching Feyre paint and then occasionally something important will wander in to rescue her from something else that’s wandered by.

That’s all this book is going to be, isn’t it?

Sexy Stranger asks Feyre why she’s at the ritual.

His voice was a lover’s purr that sent shivers through me, caressing every muscle and bone and nerve.

I predict this series is going to be like the Sookie Stackhouse books in that by the end there will be seventeen different male characters, each hotter than the last, desperate to bang the heroine.

I took a step back. “My friends brought me.”

This is the kind of shit I say when I’m at the movies alone and I run into an ex-boyfriend. “My husband is totally here! And my friends! SO MANY FRIENDS HAVE I! I AM POPULAR AND WORTHY OF LOVE!”

The drumming was increasing in tempo, building to a climax I didn’t understand.

LOL, climax. Don’t worry, Feyre. By the end of this chapter, you’ll totally get it.

But also, here’s a sneaky thing that gets into everybody’s writing and it’s so obnoxious when you realize you’ve done it and you have to go back and try to find all the places you did it like a scavenger hunt of anger and regret: instead of “the drumming was increasing in tempo” using “the drumming increased in tempo” makes it more immediate and engaging. And that’s a lesson you’re gonna hear right now and go, “Wow, I’m gonna watch out for that in my work.” But you won’t. Because our brains are not wired to think differently than we talk. It will only be after it bothers you in another author’s work that you will remember how often you fuck that up.

It had been so long since I’d seen a bare face that looked even vaguely human.

In the previous chapter, she mentioned that the fairies who attacked her looked like High Fae but with “sharper” features, and that they weren’t wearing masks. And High Fae look human.

So, she just saw bare, vaguely human faces.

But whatever, if I point out every single time the author contradicts something two pages back, this would be an endless project and tbh, at this point, I’m halfway through and ready to be done.

Sexy Stranger doesn’t buy the “my cool friends are all in the bathroom” Jenny-style lying Feyre tries out.

“And who are your friends?” He was still smiling at me–a predator sizing up prey.

Say it with me: an em-dash is not a suitable replacement for a complete metaphor. This punctuation makes Feyre the predator on the first read.

Feyre is like, two ladies brought me, which sounds like a kindergartener making up a lie. Two ladies, yeah. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

When Sexy Stranger asks for the names of these ladies, Feyre realizes she’s pretty much dug herself into a hole.

Had I just traded three monsters for something far worse?

Who fucking cares at this point? Look, this is gonna sound victim blamey. And I guess it is. But I’m totally comfortable blaming Feyre for whatever happens to her when she’s been told multiple times that this is not a place for a human to be, that it will be dangerous for her to be anywhere near these festivities, and that there is a 100% chance that yes, she will get hurt.

It’s like telling someone, “Hey, that’s the polar bear enclosure, so it’s full of polar bears and you shouldn’t go in there,” and that person is like, “Well, I’ll just put on this suit covered in dead penguins and get in there and it’ll probably be fine.”

This isn’t a case of, “Don’t walk home from work alone in that short skirt or you’ll get assaulted and it will be all your fault.” This is a case of, “Don’t jump into the polar bear enclosure, especially since you’re wearing a suit covered in dead penguins.”

Sexy Stranger adheres like Gorilla Glue to the Sexy Stranger Code, Section 8: concerning rescues of Strong Female Characters, subsection xii, which reads: “In the case of thwarting a potential gang rape, all Sexy Strangers must deliver a trite phrase that will be perceived as cocky or arrogant by the Strong Female Character and the reader.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. “For saving you.”

He’s not about to end up penalized by Pipe Fitters and Sexy Strangers Union local 308 again.

I bristled at his arrogance butt retreated another step. I was close enough to the bonfire, to that little hollow where the fairies were all gathered, that I could make it if I sprinted. Maybe someone would take pity on me–maybe Lucien or Alis were there.

Yeah, maybe you should run into a crowd of fairies to escape the fairies. You’re so good at this, Feyre.

Sexy Stranger points out that it’s not super common for fairies to be friends with mortals, what with humans being, you know, super afraid of them as the result of centuries-long animosity and violence. He points out, too, that humans are supposed to stay on their side of the wall. She tells him that she’s been friends with these fairies her whole life and has no reason to be afraid of them, and he’s like, yeah, but they ditched you at the Great Rite so…

Feyre’s response? That they went off to get snacks.

Like my very cool and popular friends at the movie theater.

He smiled for a heartbeat longer. I had never seen anyone so handsome–and never had so many warning bells pealed in my head because of it.

Except for when you saw Tamlin in his human form. And when you met Lucien. I swear, the next named male character Feyre meets is gonna be too attractive to look at without having the eyeballs melt from one’s head.

Feyre knows she’s caught in her lie when Sexy Stranger tells her that there aren’t any refreshments yet, but they could go somewhere together, and she’s like, no thanks. He tells her to “stay out of trouble” and to enjoy herself at the Rite.

His eyes gleamed in a way that suggested staying out of trouble meant staying far, far away from him.

But rather than doing that…

Though it might have been the biggest risk I’d ever taken, I blurted, “So you’re not a part of the Spring Court?”

That’s the biggest risk you’ve ever taken? Not, idk, snaring a dangerous fairy and forcing it to answer your questions? Or showing up at a festival you’ve been repeatedly warned against going anywhere near?

The most infuriating part of this is that he’s not wearing a mask, so she knows the answer already. I’m supposed to believe she’s taking a big, scary risk and being oh so super brave for asking someone a question she already knows the answer to.

He returned to me, every movement exquisite and laced with lethal power, but I held my ground as he gave me a lazy smile. “Do I look like I’m part of the Spring Court?”

Every single hot guy in this book must be described as a potential killer. I’m starting to worry that this series was written specifically to appeal to readers who feel Tate Langdon was an innocent woobie widdle soft boi in American Horror Story.

If this were not so heavily marketed and word-of-mouthed as “spicy” YA fantasy, I wouldn’t care. Worse shit happens in other fantasy novels. Erotic horror? Yeah, you’re supposed to be terrified of the thing getting you horny. But YA is meant for a specific age group and fantasy, well, yeah, sometimes you’re terrified and horny at the same time but NOT WHEN YOU’RE WRITING FOR TEENAGERS. ed.— In recent years there has been discourse surrounding whether or not this book is YA, especially considering the books that follow are adult fantasy romance (I’m supposed to call this High Fantasy or Epic Fantasy, but I refuse to, as the fandom seems only to talk about the romance aspects of the series, indicating that the romances are the driving plots, with any good vs. evil stuff used as a setting for those romances). I see people argue that ACOTAR is only classified as YA because people hate women for reading and they want to denigrate their tastes, which, like…if you feel like your tastes are being denigrated because someone suggests you read YA, that’s a YOU problem. The real reason ACOTAR is often classified as YA is because THE PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR SPECIFICALLY MARKETED IT TO THAT AUDIENCE. It’s not sexism, it’s literally the author’s and the publisher’s fault.

Now, is this book specifically billed as YA fantasy on the author’s website? No. I believe she and her publisher describe it as “high fantasy.” It is not. We’ve discussed why, in the past. It’s not “high fantasy,” it’s not “epic fantasy,” it’s swords and sorcery and that’s fine, but if we’re all meant to pretend that the author never intended this book for YA audiences…why did she and her publisher use the fact that it won numerous YA fantasy reading polls and reader’s choice awards in their marketing? Why did the author attend various industry conferences as a YA author, specifically to talk about YA and meet teen fans? ed.—Ah. I see I already ranted about this and only had to contain my rage for another paragraph.

It was reviewed by School Library Journal and the publisher added the review to the book’s “praise for” page and Amazon page. That’s pretty damning.

But let’s move on to more of this “it’s okay to be afraid of being Or Worsed so long as the guy is hot,” because this chapter is basically…that. Just that.

He gestured to his face, where a mask might go.

Um. No, that’s like…that’s exactly where a mask does go.

I’m so glad I didn’t have to be around this author during the pandemic because thinking, “Hmm, a mask might go on your face,” is some alarming shit.

There were so many better ways to phrase it, I’m sure you can come up with one on your own.

Just like every other situation in this fucking book, Feyre thinks about how she should be running but gosh, she’s just so curious, she has to ask questions.

“Why are you here, then?”

Excuse me, but why the fuck are you here, then, Feyre?

The man’s remarkable eyes seemed to glow–with enough of a deadly edge that I backed up a step.

Does Maas get paid per em-dash? That one isn’t even necessary!

“Because all the monsters have been let out of their cages tonight, no matter what court they belong to. So I may roam wherever I wish until the dawn.”

More riddles and questions to be answered.

Uh. None of that was a riddle or a question. It was an entirely straightforward answer.

Now that she’s had this spooky experience, Feyre goes back to the house as she was originally instructed and–

Gotcha!

I hurried back to the hollow, too aware of the fact that I was putting my back to him. I was grateful to lose myself in the crowd milling along the path to the cave, still waiting for some moment to occur.

Can you imagine being the sheriff at that zoo tragedy presser? “We managed to rescue the individual from the polar bear enclosure unscathed, at which point she draped herself in more dead penguins and leaped back in.”

That’s right, Feyre is back in the fray, surrounded by fairies, including more of the kind that just tried to Or Worse her, and she’s really more concerned with once again describing the fact that the gathering has fairies that are wearing masks and fairies who aren’t wearing masks.

As I scanned the crowd, my eyes met with those of a masked faerie across the path. One was russet and shown as brightly as his red hair. The other was–metal.

OH WOW I WONDER WHO THIS IS I HOPE THE AUTHOR BUILDS A SHIT TON OF NEEDLESS SUSPENSE.

I blinked at the same moment he did,

Then how do you know it happened? Your eyes were blinking.

and then his eyes went wide. He vanished into nothing, and a second later, someone grabbed my elbow and yanked me out of the crowd.

WHOA I’M SO FREAKING FREAKED OUT RIGHT NOW WHO COULD IT BE?!

Yeah, it’s Lucien. It’s the character we’ve heard described that way a million times.

Lucien is like, what are you doing here, then he calls her an idiot and I’m like, “get her ass, Lucien! Drag her, metal-eyed queen!”

He picks her up and throws her over his shoulder and of course, she’s all put-me-down about it. He gets her back to the house.

Lucien dropped me on the floor of the manor hallway, and when I steadied myself, I found his face just as pale as before. “You stupid mortal,” he snapped. “Didn’t he tell you to stay in your room?”

Well, of course, he did. You didn’t expect Feyre to like, do that, did you?

“There was hardly anything–”

Feyre knows better than the dude who actually has lived in Prythian the whole time, and she’s gonna tell him.

“That wasn’t even the ceremony!” It was only then that I saw the sweat on his face and the panicked gleam in his eyes. “By the Cauldron, if Tam found you there …”

“So what?” I said, shouting as well. I hated feeling like a disobedient child.

Stop acting like a fucking child then? Just like, off the top of my head?

“It’s the Great Rite, Cauldon boil me! Didn’t anyone tell you what it is?”

YES! YES, TAMLIN DID! AND HE WARNED HER TO STAY AWAY.

But Lucien tells us again because Maas thinks we can’t handle the awesome complexity of her pathetic attempts to cobble together a mythology.

“Fire Night signals the official start of spring–in Prythian, as well as in the mortal world,” Lucien said.

“WE FUCKING KNOW,” Jenny said.

Not to belabor a point I’m going to beat like the skeleton of a horse that died during the Crimean but this world-building is shitty and not-good. It’s the “official start of spring in Prythian,” but until now the lands of the Spring Court have been described as being spring full-time. It was winter in Feyre’s world when she left it, and when they crossed into Prythian, it was spring.

You know, just for fun, let’s make a little list of all the times prior to this statement that we were told it’s fucking spring in fucking Prythian:

Of course it would be magic, because it was spring here. What wretched power did they possess to make their lands so different from ours, to control the seasons and weather as if they owned them? (Page 47)Mercifully, I was soon astride a white mare, riding with Lucien through the spring-shrouded woods beyond the gardens. (Page 84)Even the balmy spring woods seemed to recoil, to wither and freeze. (Page 90)Again, no markers, but it was filled with touches of spring: trees in bloom, fickle storms, young animals … At least I was to live out my days in one of the more moderate courts, weatherwise. (Page 116)I repeated Lucien’s instructions as I walked out of the manor, through the cultivated gardens, across the wild, rolling grassy hills beyond them, over clear streams, and into the spring woods beyond. (Page 123)Perhaps I was the first human in five hundred years to walk beneath those heavy, dark branches, to inhale the freshness of spring leaves masking the damp, thick rot. (Page 124)Did Tamlin or Lucien ever grow tired of day after day of eternal spring, or ever venture into the other territories, if only to experience a different season? (Page 125)I wouldn’t have minded endless, mild spring while looking after my family–winter brought us dangerously close to death every year–but if I were immortal I might want a little variation to pass the time. (Page 125-126)We were crossing a meadow of new spring grass when he caught me glancing at him for the tenth time, and I braced myself as he fell back from Tamlin’s side. (Page 165)

So, yeah. There are all the times it is explicitly stated that it’s done been spring this whole ding-dang time. But then somewhere around page 170, Sarah went, “Oh shit, but I want to put the Beltane scene from The Mists of Avalon in here!” and just abandoned the whole fucking thing, I guess?

If we get to the end of this book and it’s fucking Christmas or some shit in the Spring Lands I’m going to burn down a Barnes & Noble. ed.—from what I understand, there absolutely is a truly tragic Yule story written as a bonus or something.

Anyway, back to Lucien’s re-explaining of Calanmai:

“Here, our crops depend upon the magic we regenerate on Calanmai–tonight.”

\

HEY EVERYBODY WERE YOU AWARE THAT CALANMAI WAS TONIGHT?! I TOTALLY MISSED THAT AND I’M SO GLAD SARAH KNOWS I HAVE THE MEMORY RETENTION AND READING COMPREHENSION OF A BLOBFISH WITH REPEATED TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY.

The crops thing also throws me, considering how many times we’ve seen food just magically god damn appear from nowhere at all and now there’s people who have to cook it and grow it and idk, are these people going to starve without these crops that have never been mentioned?

“I want to put Beltane in my book because I decided it’s about fucking and that way I can put fucking in it and yeah, sure, it’s a seasonal thing and I’ve established that there are no seasons and also that food magically appears like it’s no big deal but I’m sure by the time the reader reaches this point in the book they’re going to be so dazzled by Tamlin’s super hot abs that I don’t really need to worry about writing well at all! Huzzah!” Sarah said, probably.

Tamlin had said something similar two days ago.

WE WERE THERE WE FUCKING KNOW.

“We do this by conducting the Great Rite. Each of the seven High Lords of Prythian performs this every year, since their magic comes from the earth and returns to it at the end–it’s a give-and-take.”

Every High Lord. Even in the courts that aren’t associated with spring? Does the winter court celebrate a spring festival? Does the autumn court celebrate the rebirth of power? ARE YOU SURE THIS IS THE ROAD YOU WANT TO GO DOWN, MS. MAAS? ARE YOU SURE?

“Tonight, Tam will allow…great and terrible magic to enter his body,” Lucien said, staring at the distant fires. “The magic will seize control of his mind, his body, his soul, and turn him into the Hunter. It will fill him with his sole purpose: to find the Maiden. From their coupling, magic will be released and spread to the earth, where it will regenerate life for the year to come.

THIS IS JUST MISTS OF AVALON! Seriously, if you doubt me, go to the library, pick up a copy of this book, read chapters fourteen and fifteen. This is EXACTLY THE MISTS OF AVALON BUT WRITTEN SO MUCH SHITTIER.

I mean, with the exception of the random child rape right in the middle of the scene that’s like, just mentioned like it’s no big and the kid is super into it. Like, damn, that bitch was telling us exactly what she was into that whole fucking time.

But I digress.

Feyre wants to know who the maiden is and Lucien is like:

“No one knows until it’s time. After Tam hunts down the white stag and kills it for the sacrificial offering, he’ll make his way to that sacred cave, where he’ll find the path lined with faerie females waiting to be chosen as his mate for tonight.”

Not to be a broken god damn record here, but…

MISTS. OF. AVALON.

What’s even funnier about the change from the Hunter hunting the King-Stag to the Hunter slaying the White Stag is that the White Stag is part of Arthurian myth, as well.

“But you were there–and other male faeries.” My face burned so hot that I began sweating.

Help! Someone help Feyre, she’s gay-panicking!

“Well, Tam’s not the only one who gets to perform the rite tonight.

Yeah. You just said there are seven other High Lords doing it.

Once he makes his choice, we’re free to mingle. Though it’s not the Great Rite, our own dalliances tonight will help the land, too.”

NO, and I cannot stress this enough, HOMO.

Lucien didn’t want Feyre to be there because:

“Because he would have smelled you, and claimed you, but it wouldn’t have been Tamlin who brought you into that cave.”

I think she’s safe, since she doesn’t have a brother she can be tricked into fucking like Morgaine did.

But no, that’s not what Lucien is talking about. He’s talking about how Tamlin would have Or Worsed her, violently.

“I should go,” Lucien said, gazing at the hills. “I need to return before he arrives at the cave–at least to try to control him when he smells you and can’t find you in the crowd.”

Nah, Lucien, just say, “I should go get my dick wet because this is the only time it’s gonna happen since I have to spend all my fucking free time with Glowery McStraightdude for the rest of the year.”

It made me sick–the thought of Tamlin forcing me, that magic could strip away any sense of self, of right or wrong. But hearing that … that some feral part of him wanted me … My breath was painful.

It makes her sick that he would do that to her…what about the fairy he’s gonna do it to? What’s up with that? No concern there or just phew, glad he’s not gonna Or Worse me?

And yeah, Feyre, it’s SUPER SEXY that Tamlin would want to rape you. You’re right. So fucking hot. Definitely appropriate for a book that’s TOTALLY NOT YA.

“Stay in your room tonight, Feyre,” Lucien said, walking to the garden doors. “No matter who comes knocking, keep the door locked. Don’t come out until morning.”

SIR WE ALREADY KNOW SHE’S NOT GOING TO DO THAT.

So, let’s head over to ye olde section break, where she’s gonna leave her room.

At some point, I dozed off while sitting at my vanity.

I choose to imagine Feyre falling asleep while gazing at herself because she’s that vain but also that boring.

The drums suddenly stop and magic just whooshes over everything, including her, in her room.

Though I tried not to, I thought about the probable source and blushed, even as my chest tightened.

Can you imagine hours and hours of endless drumming that only stops when you climax? Imagine the anxiety. Am I taking too long? Are the drummers’ arms getting tired? Are they thinking, god, when is this dipshit gonna jizz so I can go home and put ice on my tennis elbow?

Also, does Tamlin just splooge magic and everyone knows when to stop or does he have to wave a white flag out the cave door?

Well, he’d certainly taken his time with the ritual, which meant the girl was probably beautiful and charming, and appealed to his instincts.

Because men famously have increased staying power when they’re more aroused by their partner.

Don’t criticize him, Feyre. He had to do all this to a soundtrack.

And let’s talk about this roundabout compliment Feyre is giving herself. She’s just been told that she can’t be at the ritual because Tamlin would choose her out of animal instinct and now she’s saying, oh, I bet the girl he chose instead is so beautiful and charming because that appeals to his instincts. The instincts that would have made him choose Feyre. Those instincts. The ones that are inspired to priapism by beauty and charm.

Feyre thinks about how the girl was probably psyched to be chosen because Tamlin is a High Lord.

And I supposed Tamlin was handsome. Terribly handsome. Even though I couldn’t see the upper part of his face, his eyes were fine, and his mouth beautifully curved and full. And then there was his body, which was … I hissed and stood.

Oh, do you like his body, Feyre? None of us outside of the book could tell because you hardly ever mention his flowing golden hair or rock-hard abs.

I stared at my door, at the snare I’d rigged. How utterly absurd–as if bits of rope and wood could protect me from the demons in this land.

The prosecution reminds the jury that Feyre has caught two fairies, including a High Lord, in snares before this point.

Needing to do something with my hands,

eyebrows eyebrows

I carefully disassembled the snare.

…oh.

Then I unlocked the door and strode into the hallway.

She doesn’t just not stay in her room. She STRIDES THE FUCK OUT OF IT.

STRIDES.

She thinks about how stupid the holiday is and how she’s glad humans don’t have them, and she goes to the kitchen for a meal that seems like it was written by someone who just started the Atkins diet and desperately misses carbs. Then she heads off to paint, only to be stopped in the hallway by Tamlin, who’s just come back from the ritual.

His bare chest was painted with whorls of dark blue woad, and from the smudges in the paint, I knew exactly where he’d been touched. I tried not to notice that they descended past his muscled midriff.

I’m sorry, Feyre, were you expecting that he somehow had sex with someone without anything touching his dick? But if you were wondering, yes. The woad is also used in The Mists of Avalon.

From The Mists of Avalon:

She could not see him clearly; the rising sun was in her eyes, and she could see only that he was tall, with a shock of fair hair, and strongly built. He is not one of their own people, then? But it was not for her to question. The men of the tribe-and especially an old man, with the gnarled swollen muscles of a smith, blackened like his own forge were painting the youth’s body from head to foot with the blue woad […]

Look, if Maas were a better writer, the sameness of the scenes would be obvious. Before Tamlin even returned to the house, I was like, “I bet he’ll have symbols drawn on him in blue paint when he gets back, and hopefully it doesn’t turn out that he accidentally fucked his own sister.”

Anyway, back to excerpts of ACOTAR:

I was about to pass him when he grabbed me, so fast that I didn’t see anything until he had me pinned against the wall.

My favorite part of this scene is that she’s eating a cookie when she runs into him, and the sentence right after the one above is about her dropping the cookie.

“I smelled you,” he breathed, his painted chest rising and falling so close to mine. “I searched for you, and you weren’t there.”

Damn, Feyre. Take a bath.

He reeked of magic. When I looked into his eyes, remnants of power flickered there. No kindness, none of the wry humor and gentle reprimands. The Tamlin I knew was gone.

You mean “the thing that is happening to me now is exactly the thing Lucien told me would happen?”

“Let go,” I said as evenly as I could, but his claws punched out, embedding in the wood above my hands. Still riding the magic, he was half-wild.

He has you pushed up against a wall, with his claws out, talking about he could smell you. I feel like that’s probably full-wild.

“You drove me mad,” he growled, and the sound trembled down my neck, along my breasts until they ached. “I searched for you, and you weren’t there. When I didn’t find you,” he said, bringing his face closer to mine, until we shared breath, “it made me pick another.”

Thanks for clarifying that you were out there stalking Feyre to rape but you settled for a consenting partner. I was worried you were sitting in that cave alone, crying and jacking off while the drummers tried to avoid eye contact.

I couldn’t escape. I wasn’t entirely sure that I wanted to.

Yeah, he’s scaring me but it’s so haaaawt.

The thing is, the sexual tension in this scene is hot, and that’s the problem. Because as I noted before, Maas can be a competent writer, when she wants to be. And this scene is just roiling with “omg do it already!” vibes that have me suddenly invested in these characters boning despite their lack of chemistry in every scene they have together. It’s totally unearned, but the fact that she can pull me back into the story even a little bit is pretty impressive.

But…it’s also assault. He’s got her arms pinned, she’s telling him to let her go, but he ignores her so he can tell her all about his recent sexual encounter:

She asked me not to be gentle with her, either,” he snarled, his teeth bright in the moonlight. He brought his lips to my ear. “I would have been gentle with you, though.”

And to verbally fantasize, without her consent, about how he would have had sex with her:

Every inch of my body went taut as his words echoed through me. “I would have had you moaning my name throughout it all. And I would have taken a very, very long time, Feyre.” He said my name like a caress, and his hot breath tickled my ear. My back arched slightly.

To me, it’s not enough that Feyre’s all, oh, maybe I don’t want to escape. I would have liked this scene better if she wasn’t turned on by his ferocity so much without any assurance to the reader that she’s actually enjoying this and not conflicted about it, and that deep down she’s not afraid of him at all.

You know. Because that fairy that always tells the truth told her she would be safe with him.

“Why would I want someone’s leftovers?” I said, making to push him away. He grabbed my hands again and bit my neck.

THE POLAR BEAR GOT HER.

I cried out as his teeth clamped onto the tender spot where my neck met my shoulder. I couldn’t move–couldn’t think, and my world narrowed to the feeling of his lips and teeth against my skin. He didn’t pierce my flesh, but rather bit to keep me pinned. The push of his body against mine, the hard and the soft, made me grind my hips against his.

SHE IS NOW GRINDING ON THE POLAR BEAR.

I should hate him–hate him for his stupid ritual, for the female he’d been with tonight …

I mean, if we’re continuing with this polar-bear-enclosure-penguin-suit metaphor, I guess “female” is correct. But come on. We all know it’s derogatory. This fairy wasn’t a fairy or a woman, she was a “female.”

Also, why should she hate “the female?” Give me one good reason to hate her for participating in a ritual that is part of her faith, a ritual that doesn’t harm anyone and does measurable good for her community?

His bite lightened, and his tongue caressed the places his teeth had been.

I hate finding this sexy but if Feyre wasn’t so angry, if she hadn’t asked him to let her go, if he wasn’t doing shit like punching his claws into the wall and biting her while she wonders if she really likes this, it would be a really hot scene.

But it’s too late. Feyre’s pussy juices have activated.

He jerked away. The air was bitingly cold against my freed skin, and I panted as he stared at me. “Don’t ever disobey me again,” he said, his voice a deep purr that ricocheted through me, awakening everything and lulling it into complicity.

She disobeyed you like three times already tonight, so good luck with that.

Then I reconsidered my words and straightened. He grinned at me in that wild way, and my hand connected with his face.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” I breathed, my palm stinging. “And don’t bite me like some enraged beast.”

Okay, thank you, Feyre, for having the common sense to protect yourself from the dude who just shoved you against the wall, talked about how he would fuck you, and then bit you. We’re cautiously back in the game.

That said…maybe when he tells you what to do, you actually should listen. Because you were in real danger when you disobeyed before. This might actually be good advice, especially considering how not too long ago you had a fairy tell you that this dude is the only person you’ll be safe with.

Which tbh, I’m sitting here like, I bet he’s evil and that fairy meant Lucien, who is somehow a High Lord and we don’t know it yet or he becomes it before the end of the book or something.

He chuckled bitterly. The moonlight turned his eyes to the color of leaves in shadow. More–I wanted the hardness of his body crushing against mine; I wanted his mouth and teeth and tongue on my bare skin, on my breasts, between my legs. Everywhere–I wanted him everywhere. I was drowning in that need.

I so wish there was just one additional sentence in here about how she wants these things, but not when he’s acting like a freaking rapist.

His nostrils flared as he scented me–scented every burning, raging thought was pounding through my body, my sense. The breath rushed from him in a mighty woosh.

The Mighty Woosh is my favorite British comedy.

He growled once, low and frustrated and vicious, before prowling away.

Because everyone loves a sullen rapist.

That’s the hook. He’s frustrated because he can’t fuck her, and this is described as “vicious,” which makes me believe that Feyre ultimately made the correct choice in slapping him.

This isn’t the most rapey thing I’ve ever read for my league of jealous haters, but it’s probably the most frustrating. If Feyre had simply acknowledged that she knew she was safe with him even though he was exhibiting those behaviors, and that she knew this because she had outside confirmation from that Suriel thing and not because she’s just horny, it wouldn’t have been rapey at all.

I can’t believe she’s survived jumping into the polar bear enclosure this many times.

A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter 20 or, “OR WORSE.”

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.

CW: Rape

We begin with a fundamental misunderstanding of how light works.

After a tense dinner during which Tamlin hardly spoke to Lucien or me, I lit all the candles in my room to chase away the shadows.

Because shadows are famously present in the absence of light.

I didn’t go outside the following day, and when I sat down to paint, what emerged on my canvas was a tall, skeletally thin gray creature with bat ears and giant, membranous wings. Its snout was open in a roar, revealing row after row of fangs as it leaped into flight.

Well, we found it. The thing Feyre can paint. Something she’s never seen before. Which is fine by me. Maybe she’ll give up on landscapes and start painting cool shit I’m interested in. Like monsters.

Everyone is busy and Feyre wants to help them get ready for Calanmai.

Anything to avoid going into the garden, where the Attor might appear.

Not to spoil anything but the second it could inconvenience the author’s plan, Feyre’s fear of going outside stops being… Well, it just stops being.

The drumbeats came from far away—beyond the garden, past the game park, into the forest that lay beyond.

What game park? Why are we discussing it as though it’s ever come up before the last chapter?

You know how in the last chapter I was like, “I read ahead a couple of chapters?” Do you know why?

Because I was confused and trying to figure out why there was suddenly a game park.

Feyre watches the sunset and the fires starting up in the distance, and Sarah Maas indulges her love of cramming as many topography-related words into this thing as she possibly can, which is a theme that continues through the whole thing. Probably the whole book. I hope not.

Not invited, I reminded myself. Not invited to whatever party had all the kitchen faeries tittering and laughing among one another.

Loving the subtle implication that not only should she have been invited to this party, but she deserved to be invited because servants are going. Like, you’re a prisoner, dude. You still rank below the servants.

Also, waaaaah forever about not getting to go to the party when you were told it wouldn’t be safe for you. Like, several times, you were told it wouldn’t be safe.

Even the garden, usually buzzing with the orchestra of its denizens, had quieted to hear the drums. There was a string—a string tied to my gut that pulled me toward those hills, commanding me to go, to hear the faerie drums …

You can already hear them, though.

I get the sense that Feyre is being called out there by magic. I would love if that had been made more explicit. She’s noted that she can smell magic in the air, she’s inexplicably drawn toward the fires and the drumming, but at some point here we need to know that it’s magic and not just her being the way she usually is. Because right now, I’m getting more, “I wasn’t invited and I want to go because it’s rude they didn’t invite me” and a lot less, “Why do I inexplicably want to go out there among a bunch of dangerous creatures I’ve been warned against interacting with?”

She’s considering going out to the forbidden fairy party she was warned several times not to interfere with, when Tamlin shows up all hot and shirtless and… armed for some reason.

He was shirtless, with only the baldric across his muscled chest. The pommel of his sword glinted gold in the dying sunlight, and the feathered tops of arrows were stained red as they poked above his broad shoulder.

This is a goofy outfit and I’m gonna tell you why. I’m sure you can figure it out. If you need a sword and a quiver of arrows…you need some armor. A shirt, at least. Even though yours seem to be made out of crepe paper, Tamlin.

I just don’t get why one attends a party strapped like that but not with any armor. And honestly, why go to a party where you think you’re gonna have to resort to archery?

Feyre asks:

”Where are you going?”

Out to get some cigarettes. Where the fuck do you think he’s going?

He tells her has to go to the Calanmai thing and she’s like, oh, what are you going to do there, and rather than being like, “None of your goddamn business, do as you’re told,” he explains that he has to “partake in the Great Rite.”

Now, if you’re a Pagan of any flavor (or you went through a passing Wiccan phase in high school), I don’t need to explain what the Great Rite is. It’s a thing an old white male pervert (not the good kind) made up as part of “witchcraft” where it’s like, super really important for people to have group sex, supposedly based on pre-Roman magic in Britannia or something like that.

If you’ve read or watched The Mists of Avalon, basically it’s that. The Calanmai of this book is basically the Beltane rite from that book, but without anybody fucking their half-sibling.

”Go to your chamber,” he snarled, and glance toward the fires. “Lock your doors, set up a snare, whatever you do.”

Set up a snare? Like the one she trapped you with or the one from earlier in the book that you said she could never possibly trap you in?

Feyre figures that whatever the Great Rite is, it has something to do with violence and that’s why he’s carrying those weapons. But Tamlin won’t tell her anything else.

”Just do it.” His canines began to lengthen. My heart leaped into a gallop. “Don’t come out until morning.”

You’re going to be shocked by this, Dear Reader, but she does not, in fact, stay in her chamber. She wants to ask Tamlin to take her along with him but he doesn’t give her the opportunity to ask anything else. He heads off to the party, we head off to a section break, and Feyre heads off to her room.

Even though she fully remembers that she’s been told to stay inside for her own safety, she’s once again called by the drumming.

But a wild, wicked voice weaving in between the drumbeats whispered otherwise. Go, that voice said, tugging at me. Go see.

I would have liked to see Feyre actually afraid of the presence of all of these faeries and all this danger, and afraid of this pull toward the festivities. That would have created some awesome tension in this scene. But no, we got the draft where Feyre wants to do something and conveniently she’s compelled to do that by magic.

If it’s so important to make sure Feyre is safe in her room, why didn’t Tamlin use his magic to make her sleep through the festival? He used magic on her to make her sleep on the horse ride to Prythian. Is there some reason it wouldn’t work on this night? Other than the fact that it would be devastating to the author’s intent for the scene? Which is something that could be worked around easily and, again, more effectively. Imagine if Tamlin found Feyre there, listening to the drumming, and realized the magic was calling to her? And as a result, he uses that sleeping magic. But the magic raised by the drumming or whatever is too strong and it intentionally wakes her up so she’ll seek out the festival against her better judgment?

Because the way it’s written now, she has no fucking judgment. Just an empty little pumpkin stuck on top of her neck.

By ten o’clock, I could no longer stand it. I followed the drums.

Time is a hell of a thing in this book. It’s spring forever, but they have seasonal festivals. Now, their hours are divided up just the same as they are in the real world. I’m not saying there can’t be time in fantasy novels, I just don’t get using such specific times in a world where time seems to work differently. Possibly, I’m just now noticing this because I had to obliterate a lot of a first draft I’m currently writing because I thought it would be interesting to fuck with time in it, and guess what? It’s not interesting at all when you can’t express the passage of time.

But at least mark the time in Prythian with like, “By the time the stars came out” or some shit like that. Make it sound archaic.

The stables were empty, but Tamlin had taught me how to ride bareback these past few weeks, and my white mare was soon trotting along.

Are you sure you didn’t teach yourself, oh self-sufficient one? Oh, you natural talent. You shining savant star.

I didn’t need to guide her—she, too, followed the lure of the drums, and ascended the first of the foothills.

FOOTHILLS?! FOOTHILLS?! THERE’S A FUCKING MOUNTAIN NOW?!

Can someone please, and I beg this sincerely, send Maas some kind of Geology for Dummies book? Foothills are SPECIFICALLY THE LARGE HILLS AT THE BASE OF A MOUNTAIN. There’s really no other context for the word, and “foothills,” like the “park” have never been mentioned in any description previously.

Concealed in my hooded cloak, I gaped as I approached the first giant bonfire atop the hill. There were hundreds of High Fae milling about, but I couldn’t discern any of their features beyond the various masks they wore.

Hundreds of High Fae. Hundreds of them. The ones that are terrifyingly powerful and which Feyre fears above all the other creatures in Prythian. The most deadly and ruthless ones, according to her. And she’s like, tra-la-la, let’s crash their party.

I’m sorry, but OBJECTIVELY, this is an inconsistent book. That’s a fact, not an opinion or critique. There is no way that one can argue the reverse. As the Earth goes around the Sun, this book is full of more contradictions than the fucking Bible.

Feyre realizes that when she tries to look at the fairies head-on, she can’t see their faces.

It was magic—some kind of glamour put on me, meant to prevent my viewing them properly, just as my family had been glamoured.

How. Does. She. Know. This.

How does she know that the glamour is only on her, that it’s meant specifically to prevent her from seeing their faces? Why would they have done that? Nobody expected her to be there. The only people who are at this thing who know she exists are Tamlin and Lucien and the castle staff, right? And they think she’s locked up in her bedroom. So, why would they bother glamouring her to conceal the identities of the attendees at a party she’s not supposed to be at? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the fairies to glamour each other, so they can’t see who’s who doing what dirty stuff at these hedonistic drum circle things?

Feyre points out again that she’s wearing a hood, because I guess as a reader I’m supposed to be like, “Yup, that’ll trick them into not realizing you’re human.”

I prayed that the smoke and countless scents of various High Fae and faeries were enough to cover my human smell, but I checked to ensure that my two knives were still at my sides anyway as I moved deeper into the celebration.

She’s not only crashing the party, but she’s also bringing weapons just in case…what? Just in case she needs to kill some of Tamlin’s guests? After she was warned not to go out there?

Ugh, could someone please, and I mean this with the utmost sincerity, eat this bitch?

There’s a knoll on the foothill because words are meaningless and that’s where Feyre leaves her horse because there’s a “trench between two nearby hills” and that’s where all the faeries are going.

Trenches are really narrow and deep. They’re like, what they dig to put phone lines and sewer pipes in. But it’s a trench that hundreds of fairies are going to crowd into.

I almost slid down the steep bank as I entered the hollow.

So, not a trench so much as a ravine, you Doinkus Maloinkus. ed. —this is still one of my all-time favorite insults I have ever made up.

At one end, a cave mouth opened into a soft hillside. Its exterior had been adorned with flowers and branches and leaves, and I could make out the beginnings of a pelt-covered floor just past the cave mouth. What lay inside was hidden from view as the chamber veered away from the entrance, but firelight danced upon the walls.

Again, this is taken from The Mists of Avalon. If I hadn’t thrown my copy in the burn barrel, I would be able to look it up specifically, but I’m sure as shit not in the market to give money to the estate of a pedophile just to call this out. But this description itself is real, real damn similar.

All the fairies are coming to line up along a path that “wended between the trenches among the hills” which I don’t even have the strength to deal with because at this point I don’t even know what grass is or what dirt looks like anymore.

I watched them sway, then shifted on my feet. I’d been banned from this?

Yeah, wow, you were banned from what seems to be a religious ceremony that you showed up to mock, apparently. I’m sorry their ritual isn’t interesting enough for you.

I found nothing of interest, and none of the masked faeries paid me any heed.

I WONDER WHY YOU WEREN’T INVITED.

Despite the faeries all ignoring her and her amazing disguise of like, putting her hood up, someone grabs her.

I blink at the three strangers, dumbfounded as I beheld their sharp-featured faces—free of masks. They looked like High Fae, but there was something slightly different about them, something taller and leaner than Tamlin or Lucien—something crueler in their pitch-black, depthless eyes. Faeries, then.

Remember how like, just a page ago she was glamoured and couldn’t see faces?

I do.

Can you guess what the fairies are gonna try to do to Feyre?

I can.

That’s right. They’re gonna “or worse” her, complete with phrases about just having fun and how long it’s been since they’ve seen a human woman, etc.

If I cried for help, would someone answer?

Probably, but probably not in the way you’re hoping they will.

Would Tamlin answer? I couldn’t be that lucky again; I’d probably used up my allotted portion of luck with the naga.

Yup, because if there’s any vibe we’ve gotten from Tamlin, it’s that he just will not protect Feyre from anything.

Feyre struggles while the fairies do the stereotypical gang rape dialogue prelude, but then for some reason, there’s this:

I yanked my arms in earnest.

Uh…doesn’t this imply that the rest of the time she’s been trying to get free, she was kinda half-assing it?

I thought of the naga, whose horrible exteriors matched their rotten hearts.

Do you remember how the Naga were described as having dark skin?

I do.

”Once the Rite’s performed, we’ll have some fun, won’t we? A treat—such a treat—to find a human woman here.”

To quote Roger from American Dad!, “This is the talkiest rape ever.” I don’t get it. I mean, I do get it, most people don’t want to just toss a brutal gang rape into their YA book, but ever since Twilight it’s like, are you even a YA heroine if you’re not nearly gang-raped at least once? Do editors send manuscripts back like, “Sorry, this just isn’t a good fit for us, you didn’t put the heroine in danger of sexual violence from a bunch of randos?”

It’s cool for most of those editors to have the heroines outright experience sexual violence, but only from the hero and only because it’s true love or whatever.

So, the fairies are hissing and threatening and dragging Feyre off to the woods to or-worse her, when she finally manages to get them to drop her and someone else grabs her.

There you are. I’ve been looking for you,” said a deep, sensual male voice I’d never heard. But I kept my eyes on the three faeries, bracing myself for flight as the male behind me stepped to my side and slipped a casual arm around my shoulders.

Oh good. Another man to fawn over Feyre and “roar with laughter” when she says something not-that-clever. I was just thinking how we needed more of that. ed.—and wouldn’t this have been the perfect time to introduce a female character, since it’s more often women than men who rescue other women from these situations?

The fairies take a hint when the new dude is like, hey, thanks for finding her for me, go have a good time, and Feyre finally gets a chance to see who the heck it is that came to her rescue:

Standing before me was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.

Because you knew in your heart, Dear Reader, that Feyre can only be rescued by the most handsome of men.

That’s the whole chapter, by the way. The last chapter was never-ending, with way too much shit packed into it. But this whole, short chapter is just Feyre going to Calanmai even though she’s told not to, almost getting raped so she can get rescued, then ZOMG HAWT GUY!

I’m starting to think there aren’t going to be any female characters in this book aside from frumpy bird servants and the apparent serial killer we may or may not get to at some point. I know we’re only about halfway through this thing but since it’s a series and there’s not much going on in the first book, I’m not holding out hope that the dread SHE doesn’t get revealed until the last twenty percent of the nineteenth book or whatever. ed.—But “OMG YOU HAVE TO KEEP GOING THE FIRST TWO BOOKS ARE TERRIBLE BUT AFTER ONLY ABOUT 1,400 PAGES, THE SERIES GETS REALLY GOOD!”

A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter 19 or “Don’t worry. The paint has arrived.”

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 know what you’re wondering.  And yes.

The next morning, my paint and supplies arrived from wherever Tamlin or the servants had dug them up, […]

THANK THE CAULDRON AND YE OLDE AMAZON DOT COM

The rest of that sentence covers Tamlin taking Feyre to the gallery. Of the hallways on the way there, she observes:

The marble floors shone so brightly that they had to have been freshly mopped, and that rose-scented breeze floated in through the opened windows. All this—he’d done this for me. As if I would have cared about cobwebs or dust.

I mean. He didn’t mop the floors. And you complain about everything else so it’s safe to assume you’d complain about cobwebs and dust.

Before Tamlin can show Feyre the gallery proper, she asks him why he would do something like this out of kindness. Because apparently, kindness is out of character for Tamlin despite us never once having seen this being the case.

Want a writing tip?

The smile faltered. “It’s been a long time since there was anyone here who appreciated these things. I like seeing them used again.” Especially when there was such blood and death in every other part of his life.

That’s what we call a POV skew. Feyre can’t definitively tell us the “why” behind Tamlin’s desire to see someone enjoy the gallery. She’s not in his head.

This is also a missed opportunity: if Feyre had compared her own relationship to blood and death and hardship to his, it would have created more of a bond between them in the reader’s mind. But this is super popular YA fantasy romance, so “I seen his abs through his shirt so now you should be horny, too, reader,” is good enough, I guess.

Tamlin opens the doors to the gallery.

The pale wooden floors gleamed in the clean, bright light pouring in from the windows. The room was empty save for a few large chairs and benches for viewing the … the …

The suspense is unbearable, Feyre.

What’s in the gallery? What is it?!

I barely registered moving into the long gallery, one hand absentmindedly wrapping around my throat as I looked up at the paintings.

Paintings so good, you have to choke yourself.

Pastorals, portraits, still lifes … each a story and an experience, each a voice shouting or whispering or singing about what that moment, that feeling, had been like, each a cry into the void of time that they had been here, had existed.

Aaaand prose so good I have to choke myself. Every time I run across something in this book  that I find particularly neat or interesting, I get angry. I know I’ve been saying that a lot in these recaps but damnit, I’m just so frustrated. If Maas would slow down or get honest beta readers or an editor who gave a damn, her writing could be actually good! WHY NOT TRY TO BE GOOD?!

There’s an interesting bit where Feyre recognizes that despite the differences between her and the fairy artists who’ve made the paintings, their art transcends those boundaries and makes her understand them.

A concept so good, I have to choke a stranger because I’ve finally had enough disappointment and despair at the wasted opportunities that abound in this book and it’s translated to a Hulk-esque rampage of violence and blood.

That’s gonna be the title of my “spicy” “Young Adult” fantasy novel: A Rampage of Violence and Blood.

That’s a joke. I don’t have it in me to write something like this. It would suck the soul from my body. ed.—In a bizarre turn of events, I’m in negotiations about a spicy fantasy novel. The title is out of my hands, but I strongly suspect the publisher will go with something noun of noun and noun and I will have to stop making jokes.

Tamlin is shocked that a human could possibly appreciate fairy art.

I wiped at my damp cheeks. “It’s …” Perfect, wonderful, beyond my wildest imaginings didn’t cover it. I kept my hand over my heart. “Thank you,” I said. It was all I could find to show him what these paintings—to be allowed into this room—meant.

With the reputation these books have for being non-stop sexfests, I honestly expected this to be followed by Feyre telling the Tamlin that she can think of a better way to pay for that pizza just as soon as her roommate Taffiny gets out of the shower.

This would have been a fantastic bonding moment if it had come earlier in the story. Also, if we hadn’t seen it before. We’ve already done the dramatic room reveal and Feyre studying paintings and learning about Prythian. And the study was magic. Tamlin strolled in, lit all the candles magically… but that first time, the sentiment was wasted because it’s a library and she can’t read.

Imagine if this scene occurred in place of the library scene. Feyre could see the mural here; that information wouldn’t be lost. It could also incorporate Tamlin, making the reveal less of an infodump. Cutting the entire library scene and slotting the gallery into its place would lay the foundations of understanding between the two of them. That would have made everything that’s happened since charged with the romance that at the moment seems forced. As a reader, I recognize they’re gonna fuck, despite the lack of chemistry between the characters. I’m not excited for that. I’m not anticipating it. I’m just accepting it as a fact, like my own mortality.

Tamlin leaves Feyre in the gallery, where she stares at paintings until she almost passes out from hunger.

After lunch, Alis showed me to an empty room on the first floor with a table full of canvases of various sizes, brushes whose wooden handles gleamed in the perfect, clear light, and paints—so, so many paints, beyond the four basic ones I’d hoped for, that the breath was knocked from me again.

This is where I, a hobby artist myself, thinks snidely to myself “you really only need three and a white if it’s not watercolor,” but in the interest of not being a dick I will confess that most of the paint sets I’ve curated for myself are six colors (warm and cold primaries) and a white.

Anyway, Feyre says she began to paint and we go into a section break.

Weeks passed, the days melting together. I painted and painted, most of it awful and useless.

Self-portraits, then?

I bet when we hear about her art through Tamlin’s eyes, it’s going to be ZOMG SO AMAZING and she’s just modest. She don’t know they’re beautiful, that’s what makes them beautiful, as Harry Styles used to say.

Feyre does note that she takes an occasional break from her dawn-to-dusk painting to hang out with Tamlin and ride around on horses with him.

But there were the days when Tamlin was called away to face the latest threat to his borders, and even painting couldn’t distract me until he returned, covered in blood that wasn’t his own, sometimes in his beast form, sometimes as the High Lord. He never gave me details, and I didn’t presume to ask about them; his safe return was enough.

I guess if I’d ever gotten even a whiff of the chemistry these two supposedly have, I would be like, swoon, so romantic, she worries about him but doesn’t admit it to him. Since Tamlin has all the personality of wet toilet paper drying on the ceiling of a middle school bathroom, their relationship development means nothing to me.

And though my dreams continued to be plagued by the deaths I’d witnessed, the deaths I’d caused, and that horrible pale woman ripping me to shreds—all watched over by a shadow I could never quite glimpse—I slowly stopped being so afraid. Stay with the High Lord. You will be safe. So I did.

Okay, I’m putting money on it: the shadow she could “never quite glimpse” is Lucien. I might have thought it would be a really cool twist and actually, it’s Tamlin who’s the person who just calmly watches Feyre get cut apart, but we already know that Lucien isn’t a High Lord. We just found this out in the last chapter.

But whoever it is who gets to watch Feyre get tortured to death…lucky bastard.

The Spring Court was a land of rolling green hills and lush forests and clear, bottomless lakes. Magic didn’t just abound in the bumps and the hollows—it grew there. Try as I might to paint it, I could never capture it—the feel of it.

1. We fucking know because you tell us in every chapter.

2. Magic actually doesn’t grow there and that’s been established as a problem.

3. WE FUCKING KNOW BECAUSE YOU TELL US IN EVERY CHAPTER.

Feyre admits she even tries to paint pictures of Tamlin because she’s so comfortable being around him. She’s even able to not think about her family, sometimes. Until she does.

My family, glamoured, cared for, safe, still had no idea where I was. The mortal world … it had moved on without me, as if I had never existed. A whisper of a miserable life—gone, unremembered by anyone whom I’d known or cared for.

That’s what happens to pretty much everybody in the end. But it’s apparently the first time Feyre has ever realized that even though she’s the main character of this book, she’s not the main character of the entire universe and it spins her into an existential crisis in which she can’t paint anymore.

No one would remember me back home—I was as good as dead to them. And Tamlin had let me forget them.

At what point did it become Tamlin’s job to make you remember, Feyre?

She spirals into this whole thing where Tamlin probably only gave her the paints to get her to shut up about her family and keep her in the dark about the blight and shit like that, which culminates in her thinking about how stupid and useless she is. Which, pardon the shit out of me, Feyre, is my job. But the passage really would be a good insight into depression, anxiety, or any number of other hateful brain diseases that trick people. Instead, it’s just another poor me, I’m so mistreated moment in a long line of self-pitying passages.

After dinner, she’s so pissed off at the unfairness of living in a paradise where everything is provided for and nothing is expected of her that she storms off into the garden.

“My father had this garden planted for my mother,” Tamlin said from behind me. I didn’t bother to face him. I dug my nails into my palms as he stopped by my side. “It was a mating present.”

Is that like a push present or something?

I stared at the flowers without seeing anything. The flowers I’d painted on the table at home were probably crumbling or gone by now. Nesta might have even scraped them off.

When are we gonna stop fixating on Nesta and how unfair Nesta is and how much she hated wonderful, wonderful Feyre for absolutely no reason? I get it, trauma from bad families lasts forever. But this kind of writing also makes books feel like they’re gonna last forever.

Tamlin providing for them or no, glamouring their memories or no, I’d been … erased from their lives. Forgotten. Id’ let him erase me. He’d offered me paints and space and time to practice; he’d shown me pools of starlight; he’d save my life like some kind of feral knight in a legend, and I’d gulped it down like faerie wine. I was no better than those zealot Children of the Blessed.

You mean the Cult of the Totally Right About Everything? Because so far, Prythian is exactly how they described it and the High Fae, with the exception of ones we’ve only been told about but never met, are also pretty much exactly how the Children of the Blessed envisioned them.

And why does the girl who runs through the woods skinning animals and fucking dudes in haystacks refer to the super polite and accommodating guy who lives in a sumptuous palace full of priceless art as feral?

Words mean things, Sarah.

I stalked to the nearest rosebush and ripped off a rose, my fingers tearing on the thorns.

Leo-pointing-at-tv-meme.gif

I ignored the pain, the warmth of the blood that trickled down. I could never paint it accurately—never render it the way those artists had in the gallery pieces.

I’m starting to think Feyre isn’t a very good artist. I’m very much wondering why there are apparently numerous paintings of Feyre pricking her finger in the present which were painted in the past.

The order of words also affects meaning, Sarah.

He didn’t reprimand me for taking one of his parents’ roses—parents who were as absent as my own, but who had probably loved each other and loved him better than mine cared for me.

Oh good, the Who Had It Worse circus is rolling into town, featuring Feyre the Sad-Sack Clown.

A family that would have offered to go in his place if someone had come to steal him away.

I opened my eyes so wide they’re stuck that way and now I can’t blink. This has to be a joke, right? Because in chapter four, Tamlin made it clear that it had to be Feyre because she’s the one who killed Andras. Nobody, not even Feyre, questioned that. And she’s the one who stood up and admitted to killing Andras, specifically so Tamlin would take her and not harm her family.

Plus, she’s saying her whole family should have offered to go her in place. In Feyre’s equation, three of them equal one of her in an even trade.

Feyre explains to Tamlin that she feels ashamed to have left her family and that she feels “selfish and horrible” for painting. That’s somehow tied to her shame over leaving her family but she doesn’t expand on it. We’re meant to just accept it without questioning it too much.

“All Those years, what I did for them … and they didn’t try to stop you from taking me.”

Bullshit, Feyre, we were there! And we can turn back to chapter four where your father begged for your life and for Tamlin not to take you.

Like, if you’re going to retcon shit that happened in your book while the book is being written, might I suggest you scroll up and fucking fix it that way?

“I don’t know why I expected them to—why I believed that the puca’s illusion was real that night. I don’t know why I bother still thinking about it. Or still caring.” He was silent long enough that I added, “Compared to you—to your borders and magic being weakened—I suppose my self-pity is absurd.”

Pretty much, yeah. Don’t forget, he’s grieving for the friend you murdered, too.

I can’t believe I didn’t think of this until right now, but…if the treaty demands a life for a life and fairies are out there slaughtering humans all the time, how is Andras’s death not a fair trade for one of the random villagers who are allegedly getting killed? ed.—Generally, I think of myself as a generally kinda stupid person. You know, like, I’m not a great thinker, right? But I’m still 100% that even my dumb ass could outthink every damn High Fae in Prythian and absolutely run that motherfucker.

Tamlin tells Feyre that if the whole thing with her family bothers her, it’s not “absurd” to be sad about it but I disagree because I’ve been trapped in this whiny brat’s head all the damn time. Tamlin is way more understanding than I am. Then, he kisses her boo-boo from the thorn.

His lips were smooth against my skin, his breath warm, and my knees buckled as he lifted my other hand to his mouth and kissed it, too. Kissed it carefully—in a way that made heat begin pounding my core, between my legs.

Is that the spicy part BookTok is soaking their panties over? Because this is like, the first time anyone hasn’t been fully dead from the waist down. ed.—I’m pretty sure that at this point, I still didn’t have TikTok, or at least, I wasn’t active on it. Like, when I tell you that shit CAME IN LIKE A WRECKING BALL when I did.

Seriously, we’re 40% in with barely a stirring of my loins and everyone who recommended this book to me ever made it sound like solid porn.

When he withdrew, my blood shone on his mouth. I glanced at my hands, which he still held, and found the wounds gone.

Okay, wait. I’m kinda. Wait.

Hang on.

Is he a vampire or some shit? I thought he didn’t have enough magic to heal things anymore? Am I somehow confusing this with a different book I’ve forgotten all about?

Anyway, he somehow has the rose she “chucked” (direct quote) into the bushes in an earlier paragraph and the thorns are magically gone and he puts it in her hair and tells her she shouldn’t feel bad about painting because it brings her joy.

Tamlin seems like a pretty solid dude. You can do better than Feyre, bro.

He leaned in closer, so close that I had to tip my head back to see him. “Because your human joy fascinates me—the way you experience things, in your life span, so wildly and deeply and all once, is … entrancing. I’m drawn to it, even when I know I shouldn’t be, even when I try not to be.”

Mr.Jen often says he wishes he could “feel joy” the way I do over tiny things. Is he a High Fae and, if so, where the fuck is my magic castle full of free food?

But I like this motivation for Tamlin liking her, despite the fact that we haven’t really seen Feyre express joy or anything other than self-pity. It’s so much more interesting than books of this genre that are like, “oh, you’re so sexy and mysterious and unusual and amazing and brave for reasons that will go unexplored as your actions continue to evade anything approaching a single one of those adjectives.” This is specific enough to satisfy me.

Just as soon as Feyre like…enjoys something.

But she kinda fixates on the “try not to be” part:

Because I was human, and I would grow old and—I didn’t let myself get that far as he came closer still.

I’m sorry, is he inside her at this point? I don’t mean penis in vagina. I mean like, has he fused with her and/or phased partially through her? Because he keeps getting closer when we’re told he’s already super close.

But bonus points to Feyre for just assuming that he doesn’t want to get attached to her because she’ll die and he secretly yearns to be with her forever or something.

He gives her a slow, tender kiss on her cheek and says:

“One day—one day there will be answers for everything,” he said, releasing my hand and stepping away. “But into until the time is right. Until it’s safe.”

That’s mighty convenient for the author, ain’t it? “I can tell you exactly what’s going on but dang, it’s just really unsafe at this point. Better hang around for like three hundred more pages and endless descriptions of grass Feyre can’t paint until we get there!”

He left me and I took a gasping breath, not realizing I’d been holding it.

Look, I know fanfic has obliterated the usefulness of the phrase, but holding a breath you didn’t realize you were holding is a real thing and it’s a grammatical hill I’ll die on.

After a section break, Feyre decides she needs to go to the “sanctuary” of the woods to think about how things with Tamlin have changed following their garden interlude. Sanctuary is an interesting word choice to describe a place we’ve been consistently warned is super dangerous.

Especially when she notes that she’s brought her knife and her bow and arrows so she won’t be caught empty-handed.

Because everyone needs to be armed in a sanctuary.

I crept through the trees and brush for no more than an hour before I felt a presence behind me—coming ever closer, sending the animals running for cover. I smiled to myself, and twenty minutes later, I settled in the crook of a towering elm and waited.

How does she know it’s precisely twenty minutes?

She waits up in the tree until:

A snap and roar of fury echoed across the lands, scattering the birds.

When I climbed out of the tree and walked into the little clearing, I merely crossed my arms and looked up at the High Lord, dangling by his legs from the snare I’d laid.

She caught a High Lord in a snare. After telling us over and over that no human could possibly match a High Lord in any way.

Sure.

Like, maybe we’re gonna find out that he knew it was there and let himself get captured? I hope? I just want one glimmer of consistency in this book that isn’t Feyre whining about how everything sucks for her.

He chuckled, and I came close enough to dare stroke a finger along the silken golden hair dangling just above my face, admiring the many colors within it—the hues of yellow and brown and wheat.

But no mention of whether or not she can paint it. I’m dying to know, Feyre! CAN YOU PAINT IT AND DO IT JUSTICE?!

My heart thundered, and I knew he could probably hear it.

He couldn’t hear you sitting up in a tree or making a snare or anything like that.

But he leaned his head toward me, a silent invitation, and I ran my fingers through his hair—gently, carefully. He purred, the sound rumbling through my fingers, arms, legs, and core. I wondered how that sound would feel if he were fully pressed up against me, skin-to-skin. I stepped back.

Oh my gosh, is this chemistry? Unearned chemistry, but at least there’s a reason for her nethers to tingle.

What? This part was sexy.

Tamlin frees himself from the snare and asks Feyre if she’s feeling any better, and gives her some paper with poems on them. He reads her one:

There once was a lady most beautiful.
Spirited, if a little unusual
Her friends were few
But how the men did queue
But to all she gave a refusal

As he reads the increasingly off-color poems, Feyre realizes that they all include words from the list she’d been compiling when trying to send a message to her family.

“We had a contest to see who could write the dirtiest limericks while I was living with my father’s war-band by the border. […]”

By the border of where? Limerick, the town in Ireland? That border? BECAUSE I’M NOT SURE YOU CAN HAVE A LIMERICK IN A WORLD WHERE IRELAND DOESN’T EXIST. THAT PARTICULAR TYPE OF POEM WAS INSPIRED BY A SONG CALLED “WON’T YOU COME TO LIMERICK” AND WAS NAMED LIMERICK AS A RESULT BUT OKAY THEY MEAN THE ONE IN PRYTHIAN.

Despite previous characterization, Feyre finds the whole thing really funny. Yuppers siree, after being so sensitive about this list of words and interpreting any reference to them as mockery of illiteracy, Feyre is fully cool with Tamlin mocking her with obscene poems (the rest of which we are, mercifully, spared).

And then comes the section break.

The only thing that happened in that scene is the poems and the hair petting. It advanced the plot…not at all. I can’t even say it advanced the relationship because Tamlin poking fun at something Feyre is ashamed of doesn’t fit with his characterization and Feyre letting that shit slide without four chapters of woe-is-me definitely doesn’t fit with hers.

I used to think fanfic was a good place for people to learn to write but damn, not if they’re not gonna bother to learn the difference in conventions between writing fanfic and writing original fiction. I love fanfic and write pointless PWP scenes all the time but this book is already way, way too long.

After the break:

I was still smiling when we walked out of the park and toward the rolling hills, meandering back to the manor.

WHAT PARK?! THIS IS THE FIRST TIME A PARK HAS EVER BEEN MENTIONED. I THOUGHT THEY WERE IN THE WOODS BECAUSE THAT’S WHERE SHE SAID SHE WAS.

I have no idea where the fuck they are (apparently I should, from the way it was just dropped in there) but let’s just follow them and hope we find our way back.

Feyre asks Tamlin what he meant about his dad giving his mom a mating present and not a wedding present. Tamlin explains that High Fae marry, but they can also find a fated match who’s like their soulmate. It’s like, deeper than regular love, I guess.

I didn’t have the nerve to ask if faeries had ever had mating bonds with humans, […]

Whoa, yeah, that would have taken A LOT of nerve. Why is she just assuming that’s gonna be a possibility? Why is she even wondering about it? They’ve flirted a little, we know they’ve spent time together off-screen, and now she’s like, wondering if they could be soulmates?

She ends up asking him what happened to his parents, and it’s time for what I assume is a hallmark of Maas’s writing: the exposition dump. Tamlin rambles on about how his father was worse than Lucien’s terrible dad. Like, enslaved people. And pre-treaty, apparently they did some real, real gross things. He tells Feyre that the reason he spared her was that when he saw how shitty her house was he decided not to be cruel like the rest of his family.

Slaves—there had been slaves here. I didn’t want to know—had never looked for traces of them, even five hundred years later. I was still little better than chattel to most of his people, his world.

WHY WOULD YOU HAVE LOOKED FOR THEM?! YOU JUST FOUND OUT ABOUT THEM!

Seriously, do editors just huff burning plastic fumes all day? Did Maas even bother to read through her first fucking draft or did she just go, eh, good enough, and mail it off?

Love that the white heroine is not only traumatized by the very thought that she could have been enslaved (but wasn’t) and has decided to opt out of knowing about slavery. That rings pretty fucking true.

Tamlin goes on another monologue about how his mother loved his father despite him being a full-on monster of a person. Tamlin joined the war-band because he wasn’t interested in inheriting the title of High Lord (and his brothers would have killed him if he had shown interest) and because:

“I’d realized from an early age that fighting and killing were about the only things I was good at.”

The problem was, no matter how he tried to downplay his abilities, he kept getting more and more magical, I guess.

“Fortunately or unfortunately, they were all killed by the High Lord of an enemy court. I was spared for whatever reason or Cauldron-granted luck. […]”

Editor’s Note: How did he survive when all of them had been killed?

Author: whatever reason.

Editor’s Note: Which court killed his family?

Author: …an enemy one.

Such a brutal, harsh world—with families killing each other for power, for revenge, for spite and control.

Bitch, your dad got beat so bad you shit your pants and that was just over money. Don’t act like you had no idea such a concept existed.

But brace yourselves, dear patrons. Because you’re about to laugh so hard you prolapse your anus.

Perhaps his generosity, his kindness, was a reaction to that—perhaps he’d seen me and found it to be like gazing into a mirror of sorts.

WHAT? LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL OMG. OMG.

Yes, Feyre. He looked at you, the person who had just killed and skinned his friend and saw directly through to your inner selflessness and abounding goodness. That’s exactly what it was. That is exactly the benefit of the doubt most murder victims’ loved ones extend directly post homicide and mutilation of the corpse.

That was the equivalent of the heroine describing herself in a mirror. But this time, it’s a metaphorical mirror and instead of seeing how beautifully ugly the heroine’s perfectly attractive face and body are, we’re seeing how gorgeous her soul is.

And it’s all based on someone else’s experience which is just… the cherry on top of a rotten maggot and slug dairy-free ice cream sundae.

“[…] When the title fell to me, it was a … rough transition. Many of my father’s courtiers defected to other courts rather than have a warrior-beast snarling at them.”

A half-wild beast, Nesta had once called me. It was an effort to not take his hand, to not reach out to him and tell him that I understood.

DOES HER ARROGANCE HAVE NO BOUNDS?! He’s cursed to be an ACTUAL BEAST. You don’t understand that type of body horror because YOUR SISTER SAID SOMETHING MEAN.

This is like when someone’s human family member dies and someone hijacks their grief to talk about their dead cat.

I HAAAAAAAAATE IIIIIIIIIT!

Before I could ask about it, we cleared the little wood, a spread of hills and knolls laid out ahead.

I THOUGHT THEY WERE ALREADY OUT OF THE WOODS?! WHERE IS THIS FUCKING PARK?! WHAT IS HAPPENING?!

Anyway, she sees faeries assembling wood for bonfires, for a holiday called “Calanmai”, standing in here for Calan Mai, which is kinda similar to Beltane. Spoiler: I read ahead and it’s a good thing she called it Calanmai or I would never have noticed that the structure of the ritual is lifted almost entirely from The Mists of Avalon.

But he does call it “fire night”.

I’m wondering why Prythian celebrates seasonal holidays when the land itself is always divided up into seasons that never, ever change. It would have been neat if the author who created the world would have wondered that, too.

Tamlin even describes it as a “spring ceremony” meant to create magic to sustain his lands for another year. But how does a year work, when it’s always spring? Do the other courts have to do this? What about the winter place and the autumn place? How do they summon up magic if their seasons are about death and dormancy?

Why write fantasy if you’re not curious about the world you’re creating? That’s the entire point.

Tamlin warns that Feyre will see more faeries than usual, despite the fact that the blight has scared them off from the land.

“It has—but there will be a number of them. Just … stay away from them all. You’ll be safe in the house, but if you run into one before we light the fires at sundown in two days, ignore them.”

“And I’m not invited to your ceremony?”

“No. You’re not.” He clenched and loosened his fingers, again and again, as if trying to keep the claws contained.

He’s probably frustrated because he already had a date for this thing lined up and then you had to get involved in his life and he doesn’t want to have to explain all this baggage to the faerie lady he’s trying to pull.

Though I tried to ignore it, my chest caved a bit.

Again, the arrogance. The sheer arrogance. She’s spent all this time shit-talking faeries, trying to escape, trying to set traps for them, literally killing more than one, and then she’s gonna get sad because she’s not invited to one of their parties?

When they arrive at the garden which I guess could have been a basketball court or a mountain and probably still could be in a future chapter because this author has apparently never been outside before, there’s something bad lurking. Tamlin tells her:

“Stay hidden, and no matter what you overhear, don’t come out.”

Come on, dude. You know she isn’t gonna do any of that. Are you new here?

Alone, I looked to either side of the gravel path, like some gawking idiot. If there was indeed something here, I’d be caught out in the open. Perhaps it was shameful not to go to his aid, but—he was a High Lord. I would just get in the way.

DID YOU NOT HEAR THE INSTRUCTIONS HE CLEARLY GAVE YOU? That’s something else I’m noticing a lot about Feyre. People who know better than her will tell her to do something and she takes the time to sit around and try to make it her decision. Writing Tip: Listening to other characters and trusting them to know better in situations when they actually do know better will not make your female characters weak.

I had just ducked behind a hedge when I heard Tamlin and Lucien approaching.

No matter what you overhear…

Maybe I could sneak across the fields to the stables.

Stay hidden and don’t come out.

That’s the gist of what he said, right? And what’s she considering?

I was about to make for the high grasses mere steps beyond the edge of the gardens when Tamlin’s snarl ripped through the air on the other side of the hedge.

I turned—just enough to spy on them through the dense leaves. Stay hidden, he’d said. If I moved now, I would surely be noticed.

WHY ARE WE HAVING A FULL PAGE EXPLANATION FOR WHY FEYRE IS CHOOSING NOT TO RUN? BECAUSE THE HIGH LORD SAID SO AND HE KNOWS MORE ABOUT THIS WORLD THAN SHE DOES IS ENOUGH! WE DON’T NEED TO HEAR THE EXPLANATION OF WHY SHE’S GONNA STAY BUT ONLY BECAUSE SHE DECIDED TO.

Tamlin and Lucien are…apparently in the middle of a conversation with a disembodied voice? That we’re not hearing until just right now? How did she miss the first part when she’s just on the other side of the hedge?

I don’t care. Fuck it, at this point, I just don’t care. This book made sense to someone somewhere. Maybe I’m the one who’s poorly written. Maybe I’m a poorly-written, sad-sack author in a Charlie Kaufman screenplay who doesn’t realize they’re reading a book within a book. Maybe at the denouement I will be killed in an accident that’s supposed to be ironically funny but instead just shows the audience that they’ve wasted two hours of their time on something that’s objectively just not entertaining.

Again, by Charlie Kaufman. Can’t stress that enough.

The disembodied voice Tamlin and Lucien are arguing with is there to warn them that the dreaded She is angry about the dead naga and Tamlin’s “continued behavior.” What behavior, oh ghostly voice?

“Speak you so ill of she who holds your fate in her hands? With one word, she could destroy this pathetic estate. She wasn’t pleased when she heard of you dispatching your warriors.” The voice now seemed turned toward Tamlin. “But, as nothing has come of it, she has chosen to ignore it.”

I think I’ve figured out what’s happening. There is a fantasy novel style plot going on, but it’s not in the book we’re in. Which is why we’re not privy to it at all, and the author keeps delaying the plot with sentences like, “she has chosen to ignore it” so no detail is needed.

“Tell her I’m sick of cleaning up the trash she dumps on my borders.”

The voice chuckled, the sound like sand shifting. “She sets them loose as gifts—and reminders of what will happen if she catches you trying to break the terms of—”

We found her. The Chosen One. The one who loves em dashes even more than Jenny Trout.

This scene doesn’t serve up much new information at all. I’m pretty sure we’ve already heard about She releasing the bad faeries or being in charge of them or whatever. Though She is clearly part of the main plot (which, again, hasn’t shown up and we’re almost halfway through the book) here’s what I think I’ve pieced together, so far:

She is badShe likes the bad faeriesFor some reason, Tamlin owes her fealtyBut she keeps attacking himAnd that’s supposed to make him more obedient

The disembodied voice tells Tamlin it can tell that he’s afraid and not to worry because it’ll all be okay soon, but it’s, you know. Evil mocking. In response:

“Burn in Hell,” Lucien replied for Tamlin, and the thing laughed again before a flap of leathery wings boomed, a foul wind bit my face, and everything went silent.

My guess is the evil disembodied voice is running off to tell everybody back at the office about how hilarious is it that these non-Christian faeries keep talking about hell.

Once the thing is gone, Tamlin and Lucien find Feyre. Lucien is super concerned about what she might have overheard, but just like us, she didn’t understand what the fuck they were talking about. Good thing the author doesn’t take the opportunity to clue us in, beyond Tamlin saying that some faeries are really, really scary.

Thank god someone reminded us.

Apparently, the thing that was in the garden is called an Attor. I guess we should hold onto that information in case it comes back later. The important thing is that it didn’t see Feyre.

I guess it’s good that it couldn’t hear her through the hedge the way Tamlin and Lucien can hear her breathing halfway across the castle or whatever.

Tamlin is clearly shaken up and tells Feyre he’ll see her at dinner.

Understanding a dismissal, and craving the locked door of my bedroom, I trudged back to the house, contemplating who this she was to make Tamlin and Lucien so nervous and to command that thing as her messenger.

The spring breeze whispered that I didn’t want to know.

I don’t know who she is, but I’d lay money she’ll end up being blonde.

Anyway, that’s the hook for this exhaustingly long chapter.

It would have been about 2/3 shorter if we hadn’t had to live through all the god damn painting.

THE OGRE’S FAIRYTALE BRIDE

It’s release day for The Ogre’s Fairytale Bride on Patreon, Ream, and Kindle Vella!

I have some pretty amazing news about Fablemere, the series that begins with The Ogre’s Fairytale Bride, but I’m going to leave that until after the excerpt:

The book was shockingly heavy, and its brown leather cover was in much better shape than most of the stock. She ran her fingers across the embossed letters on the spine.

“Fablemere,” she read aloud. Maybe it’s Latin for something.

She opened it and found thick parchment pages. It appeared to be handwritten, complete with odd drawings in the margins. It couldn’t possibly be a true medieval manuscript. Not in a place that sold bulk back-dated issues of Popular Mechanics.

She carefully turned a couple of pages, until she got confirmation. It wasn’t a priceless manuscript. There was a full-page photo of…

Grass.

A close-up of grass.

That was odd.

Odder still, the longer she looked at the grass, the more she didn’t want to look away or turn the page. Something about it was utterly fascinating.

And as she watched, a small yellow beetle tottered across the photo.

She flicked it aside.

And felt the grass.

“What the—” She moved to slam the book closed. Only… there wasn’t a book. Her hands were splayed on the ground. The yellow beetle trundled over her fingers.

She sat up. Took a gasp of clean, fresh air.

No dust. No mildew.

No bookshop.

She blinked up at a gray, cold sky, marked by a rapidly closing scar, through which she could see the flickering fluorescent light above the sales counter.

“No.” She stumbled to her feet, waving her arms as the seam crept closed. “No!”

And then it was gone.

No, no, no. This is not happening.

What “it” was, she had no idea. But it was happening.

Vanessa felt the side of her head. Then the top. Then the back and the other side. Nothing hurt. No head injury.

Unless I’m in a coma. Yup. That made the most sense. She’d probably been crushed under a bookcase and now she was in the hospital, hallucinating the grassy hillside she kneeled on, and the line of trees at the bottom.

And the looming black mountains far off in the distance.

She sat back on her heels and tried to think of a way to test herself. There had to be a way to tell if this was a hallucination. What was the point of watching all that Grey’s Anatomy if she hadn’t learned something about comas?

“Fuck, how did they wake up Really Old Guy?” She pulled up a tuft of grass. It didn’t transform into a handful of butterflies or cotton candy. She counted fourteen pieces, closed her hand, opened it, and counted again. “Fourteen.”

Maybe that wasn’t a real test. She pulled the strap of her bag over her shoulder.

“Aha!” She jerked the zipper open. “If I were hallucinating,” she said aloud to the absolutely no one around her, “I probably wouldn’t hallucinate—” 

A used tissue.

Her head swam. She dug around frantically in the bag. A tube of lip balm. Her prescription bottle. She held it up, praying the label would be nothing but indecipherable squiggles or big, black text reading YOU’RE IN A COMA.

It said: TAKE 2 TABLETS BY MOUTH TWO TIMES A DAY lamoTRIgrine 100 MG TAB UNIC

Only a pharmacist could hallucinate that.

If she wasn’t in a coma… where the hell was she?

Something screeched. Like a pterodactyl would screech. She assumed. She’d never met one in person and she sure as fuck didn’t plan on it now.

Scrambling to her feet, she raced down the hill, her tennis shoes sliding on the damp grass. It had rained recently. That was the smell in the air.

It hadn’t rained in days back home.

Nope, not thinking stuff like “back home,” she scolded herself. As far as she was concerned, she was in intensive care, having a very dangerous sleep.

Running from the potential pterodactyl was just a precaution.

The shrieking call split the sky again, sending out vibrations that slammed through the air and tossed Vanessa to the ground. She rolled, flipped, rolled again, and came to rest with a dull thud against something solid and furry. And very, very dead.

She scrambled back from the carcass of a huge, ghost-white deer. A foot to the left, and she would have been impaled on its antlers. Its milky blue eyes stared sightless at the sky, and darkened blood stained its snowy coat.

Once, Vanessa had ridden her bike past a puddle with a dead squirrel floating in it. The deer smelled similar, but so much worse.

The pummeling cry filled the air again, closer now, though Vanessa wasn’t sure how she knew that. Some instinct inside her, she guessed, that wanted her to get up and keep running for the trees. She pushed herself to her feet and moved faster than she ever had in her entire life, faster, even than when she’d wanted so badly to beat Mandy Fink at the five hundred meter during sophomore year.

It had been a long time and a hundred or so pounds since high school, though. Her lungs burned, and more lactic acid pumped through her muscles than oxygen. Eventually, she would have to stop and take her chances with the pterodactyl.

Stop saying it’s a pterodactyl!

The grass got deeper as she reached the bottom of the hill, and the ground got softer. The grass turned to moss, and the moss slipped away from the dirt beneath it like the skin off a blister. She almost lost her footing when the next ear-shattering screech sounded. The flap of enormous wings stirred wind across her face. Just a few more steps and she’d make it beneath the shelter of the trees, if she could even consider them shelter. The wings made another pass overhead, casting a huge shadow over the ground, and Vanessa made the split-second decision to throw herself bodily into the woods.

And directly into some nasty thorns.

She yelped as the vines scratched her face and arms, and she tried to push and kick her way free, but only succeeded in poking herself more. They tore at her hair, at her arms, and for a moment, she thought she should have chosen death by pterodactyl. But whatever had been screaming and flying was gone now. She took a few deep breaths and worked at extricating herself from the brambles.

Freeing herself ended up drawing more blood, and there were some thorns that had broken off in her skin, but she had her chin hair tweezers in her purse and plenty of hand sanitizer. I’ve got this.

Whatever this was.

You can read new chapters of The Ogre’s Fairytale Bride every Tuesday an Thursday on Patreon, Ream, and Kindle Vella.

Now, do you want to hear the news? Shortly after I announced The Ogre’s Fairytale Bride and the concept of Fablemere as a setting for fantasy stories in different genres and formats, I got an offer for another fantasy romance, also set in Fablemere! I can’t give any details until the ink dries and I’m allowed to say with who and when, but while The Ogre’s Fairytale Bride posts, I’ll be hard at work on a deeply, deeply spicy Cinderella retelling…with fairies.

This is the first time I’ve ever had an offer on a related property before the first one even came out, so I feel like a superstar, especially considering it’s something I’ve built from the ground up. I hope everybody enjoys the world of Fablemere, because it looks like I’m going to be living there for a very, very long time.