A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter 33 or “The selflessness of twu wuv”

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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.

Remember how long the last chapter was?

This chapter isn’t like that, so please don’t be too disappointed in the length of this recap. There’s nothing here to really recap, as you’ll see at the end, which I assume will be like five hundred words from now.

I might have been going to my death, but I wouldn’t arrive unarmed.

She’s got a bow and arrows and two daggers. For some reason, Maas is sure to explain that there are other weapons in the manor, but Feyre doesn’t know how to use them. Like, at this point, we know that she fights with a bow and arrows and daggers. No reader, at nearly seventy percent into the book, is going, “Why didn’t she take the mace?”

Better than nothing, even if I was up against faeries who’d been born knowing how to kill.

Now that some fairies have done something bad to someone she knows, Feyre is back to her hardline “all faeries are cold-blooded killers” stance from earlier in the book. Except, of course, for the nice, helpful fairies she knows.

You know. The ones who are “the good ones”?

I’m just saying, as someone who wrote a super racist fantasy series due to sheer ignorance of how my words looked outside of the lens of a white person? It’s really easy to make your book about warring races…racist.

Alis leads Feyre through the woods, sniffing the air to make sure they’re safe. It’s weird how the sniffing power didn’t come up for Alis until it was time to throw it in there to make the situations seem tense and scary. In fairness, we have seen pretty much every single other fae creature sniff Feyre or find Feyre by her smell, but I honestly just assumed that Feyre stinks.

Stay with the High Lord, the Suriel had said. Stay with him, fall in love with him, and all would be righted.

The Suriel never implied that Feyre should fall in love with him. Just that she should stay with him. But whatever, we’ll just go with it at this point.

They walk until nightfall.

I was beginning to wonder whether I should have brought more than a day’s worth of food when she stopped in the hollow between two hills.

Or the top of a mountain, or a municipal fish ladder, who can say at this point, the way geography has been handled so far?

The air was cold—far colder than the air at the top of the hill, and I shivered as my eyes fell upon a slender cave mouth. There was no way this was the entrance—not when that mural had painted Under the Mountain to be in the center of Prythian. It was weeks of travel away.

IDK, the manor was basically right up against the human world, so who’s to say if the mural means anything at all?

And what a fucking strange way to phrase that. “[…]that mural had painted Under the Mountain to be in the center of Prythian.” The mural didn’t paint anything. What was wrong with just saying, “Not when the mural had depicted Under the Mountain as the center of Prythian?”

Hey, just a quick question here… why did the mural depict Under the Mountain as a seat of huge importance at all, when it’s basically the military base of an opposing force? Why is that something Tamlin would have had commissioned at all? “Because Sarah needed to show us the exposition, dummy!” is not an answer I am accepting at this time.

All dark and miserable roads lead Under the Mountain,” Alis said so quietly that her voice was nothing more than the rustling of leaves.

I appreciate that Alis is a tree person and all the little tree-adjacent words Maas has used in conjunction with that. I would enjoy it a lot more if that had been sprinkled in consistently with Alis from the very beginning or even, idk, before chapter thirty-two, when Maas apparently remembered Alis is a tree person. But as I’ve mentioned before, I suspect Maas has no idea you can scroll up in a Word .docx to revise literally anything.

She pointed to the cave. “It’s an ancient shortcut—once considered sacred, but no more.”

This was the cave Lucien had ordered the Attor not to use that day.

I honestly looked back to make sure Tamlin mentioned the cave at all and it wasn’t just something Maas decided to throw in right now for the hell of it. Good news, it’s there.

But if the cave is how Amarantha is getting her evil faeries into the Spring Court…why not just brick it up?

I loved Tamlin, and I would go to the ends of the earth to make it right, to save him, but if Amarantha was worse than the Attor … if the Attor wasn’t the wickedest of her cronies … if even Tamlin had been scared of her …

Did you know … that using a bunch of ellipses … doesn’t make your story … more suspenseful? That it just makes you sound like you can’t breathe—like you can’t breathe … because you’re having an asthma attack?

IDK what is up with the formatting of this book with the space before and after the ellipses but it’s been bugging me for a while, now. And it’s not like it’s a font thing; I checked.

But all that aside, why am I supposed to be like, oh no, so scary, spooky spooky Attor? We never saw him do anything. We heard about how oh, he’ll definitely kill you, Feyre, but Tamlin and Lucien said that shit about every single other fairy creature. First, it was, oh, the Bogge is so dangerous, it would have killed you! Then, oh, be careful of the Suriel, the Suriel is the most dangerous thing ever! But wait, Naga! They’re so dangerous! And the Attor is the scariest of all, except for Rhysand, he’s really scary, but don’t forget Amarantha, etc.

You can’t make every single creature the scariest creature in the book, Sarah. That’s now how books work. It’s not how creatures work.

And again, I must ask, why is the Attor so scary? What has happened in the book so far that should have us frightened so badly? Because all he did was show up and shit talk Tamlin a minute and leave without a fight or anything. If we’d learned that the Attor, idk, is the one who took Lucien’s eye or ripped the wings off that fairy, or if the Attor put the head on the statue in the garden, he might be scary. At this point, he’s just a random being that showed up to build some kind of suspense and not actually reveal anything.

Oh, that’s right. We know the Attor is a scary thing because the author told us the Attor is a scary thing. Well, that clears it all up, no further demonstration is needed and how dare I question her.

Although, when I read that scene again for any clue that the Attor is somehow worse than, say, the Naga, who we saw be scary and strong and violent, he did mention that Amarantha was unhappy that Tamlin “dispatched” his men over the wall. Remember when in chapter thirty-two it was implied that Amarantha had to allow fairies to go over the wall? I do. I remember that.

Alis is like, yeah, bet you’re scared now, and Feyre is like, I’m gonna free Tamlin, and Alis is like, sure you are, anyway, hope you die quick.

“A few rules to remember, girl,” she said, and we both stared at the cave mouth. The darkness reeked from its maw to poison the fresh night air. “Don’t drink the wine—it’s not like what we had at the Solstice, and will do more harm than good. Don’t make deals with anyone unless your life depends on it—and even then, consider whether its worth it. And most of all: don’t trust a soul in there—not even your Tamlin. Your senses are your greatest enemies; they will be waiting to betray you.”

Ooh, see how she changed it up there? You thought she would go for an em dash and she hit you with a semi-colon.

Anyway. Flashforward to Feyre doing absolutely all that stuff in the next few chapters. I haven’t read them, but any time anyone tells Feyre, “Feyre, no,” she goes, “Feyre, yes,” and does it because she’s somehow figured out that they’re wrong and she knows better. I will be astonished if the next few chapters don’t have her guzzling down wine at a contract negotiation with a bizarro Tamlin who’s wearing an eyepatch and a black goatee. ed.—This is basically exactly what happens, but without the eyepatch and goatee.

Then Alis tells Feyre that by the way, those weapons are all shit, and oh, also?

“There was one part of the curse. One part we can’t tell you. Even now, my bones are crying out just for mentioning it […]

My bones are crying out at the fact that there’s yet another condition of this inexplicably detailed curse.

“[…] One part you have to figure out … on your own, one part she … she …” She swallowed loudly. “That she she still doesn’t want you to know, if I can’t say it,” she gasped out. “But keep—keep your ears open, girl. Listen to what you hear.”

The curse ended after forty-nine years. It’s over. Why is the magic still preventing Alis from talking about just one part of it? The curse is over. It’s finished, Tamlin lost.

Feyre thanks Alis for the help and Alis is like, sure, but you’re really gonna die, but good luck. And Feyre is like:

”Once you retrieve them, if you and your nephews need somewhere to flee,” I said, “cross the wall. Go to my family’s house.”

You told your family to flee, assjob. What’s she gonna do, tree-people her way into an empty palace and claim squatter’s rights? That sounds like it’ll go great.

Feyre goes into the cave and there’s a section break and she’s trying to inch her way through the cave in the dark. That’s right. Miss badass survivor? She doesn’t try to make a torch or anything. They’re in the woods with like, branches and tree sap but she just plunges into a dark cave without anything to light her way. But that’s okay because she sees light up ahead finally. But also…voices.

Hissing and braying, eloquent and guttural—a cacophony bursting the silence like a firecracker.

They have firecrackers in Feyre’s world.

So, they have gun powder.

But they all fight and hunt with swords and bows and arrows and shit.

Sure.

When the voices move on, she goes to investigate a crack in the wall, where the light is coming out, and she knows she has to go through it, even though she’s afraid, because she knows Tamlin is being held captive and she needs to find him.

And hopefully not run into anyone in the process. Killing animals and the naga had been one thing, but killing any others …

Please note: Feyre also killed a High Fae. But High Fae are different from Naga. But also, Naga are the only non-western European myths presented in this book so far, and they were described as having dark skin. And she’s fine with killing them, they’re in the same category for her as animals are.

I’m just pointing it out.

I took several deep breaths, bracing myself. It was the same as hunting. Only this time the animals were faeries. Faeries who could torture me endlessly—torture me until I begged for death. Torture me the way they tormented that Summer Court faerie whose wings had been ripped off.

The torture. The torture for Feyre.

Keep your chin up, Boo-berry. You don’t have wings for them to rip off, and you’re not immortal, so they can’t torture you endlessly. The way that this book is torturing me.

Feyre goes through the crack and gets into a hallway. This is kind of a Labyrinth thing, I guess, where if she had gone through the wall, she would have gone straight to the castle. I can think of a few fantasy books that could have used similar magic shortcuts, so I am not mad. I’m so glad that we don’t have to travel with Feyre for weeks.

So, she’s sneaking along this hallway.

This was a mistake––only an idiot would come here.

It’s not mean if I’m not the one saying it.

The thing is, Feyre is making the most foolish choice possible. She had an opportunity to go back and tell everyone in the human world that Amarantha is coming. She could have rounded up a bunch of fighters or something. Instead, she chooses what she knows is a suicide mission. Feyre has come here expecting to die. Not knowing that it’s a danger, just expecting to die and hoping she’ll get to tell Tamlin she loves him before that happens.

It’s not her fault, though:

Alis should have given me more information.

How could she possibly have given you more information, Feyre? The entire previous chapter was just her talking at you and telling you all the exposition that should have been in the book up until that point in one enormous lump.

Feyre does, however, note that she could have bothered to ask for that information or just not have gone on the journey in the first place.

She’s still creeping through the hallways, thinking about how she might need to wait to “gather information” about where Tamlin is and I’m so thankful she decides otherwise because I don’t want to read anymore fucking block paragraphs of “this is why things are the way they are.”

No. A second opportunity might not arise for a while. I had to act now.

Why? Because she’ll be too scared to try again, is her reasoning.

And then, something grabs her.

A pointed, leathery gray face came into view, and its silver fangs glistened as it smiled at me. “Hello,” it hissed. “What’s something like you doing here?”

I knew that voice. It still haunted my nightmares.

So it was all I could do to keep from screaming as its bat-like ears cocked, and I realized that I stood before the Attor.

Oh no, spooky Attor, who’s tied with the Suriel for having the least amount of times trying to kill Feyre. Good thing that’s used as a chapter hook, so we know it’s suspenseful.