Review: A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas

Title: A Court of Mist and Fury

Author: Sarah J. Maas

Release date: May 5th, 2016

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Rating: 5/5 stars

Warning: This is the second book in a series. If you have not read A Court of Thorns and Roses, I do not recommend reading this review any further. 

Warning #2: This book contains graphic scenes of a sexual nature. If you are not comfortable reading this then I would recommend skipping this book. 

Now that all of that is out of the way… I have to say I wasn’t the biggest fan of the first book in this series (trilogy? Does someone know how many books there will be, cause I am very confused). I thought Feyre was beyond annoying and Tamlin, boy oh boy don’t even get me started on Tamlin. The only characters that I really enjoyed reading about in ACOTAR were Lucien and Rhysand. So I wasn’t very eager to read this book. However, everyone and their mother seemed to absolutely adore this book, even if they weren’t the biggest fan of the first one. So I decided I would give it a go, and boy am I happy I did!

Summary:

This story starts off in the Spring Court. Amarantha has been defeated and Tamlin & Feyre are about to get married. Feyre, however, is suffering from PTSD thanks to what she went through Under the Mountain. And Tamlin isn’t supporting her the way he should. It doesn’t take long for Rhysand to call in his bargain and sweep Feyre away to the Night Court. Things take off from there. I don’t want to say anything else in case I spoil anything. Just read it 😉

Characters:

The characters were by far my favourite part of this entire book. I found them to be much more developed than they were in ACOTAR.

Lets start off with Feyre, as I mentioned earlier, she annoyed me to no end in ACOTAR. Especially because she was willing to sacrifice EVERYTHING for Tamlin. But I really think she redeemed herself in ACOMAF. She learns to stand up for herself and let go of things that are unhealthy for her. Overall I am loving her character arc and I can’t wait to see how much she grows in the third (and final?) installment of this series.

Rhysand, my absolute favourite character. The best High Fae, the best High Lord, the best person. I love him! He was basically the only reason I even finished the first book. I don’t know how much I can say about him without spoiling the plot. But I really enjoyed reading about him. I found him to be a very well fleshed out character. And he’s just precious, okay?

Tamlin, my least favourite character. The worst High Fae, the worst High Lord, just overall a complete dick. As you might be able to guess, I despise Tamlin. In the beginning of this book Feyre is mentally (and physically for that matter) very unwell. She wakes up screaming from night terrors and pukes her guts out on a daily basis. And what does Tamlin do? HE FUCKING LOCKS HER UP IN HIS MANOR! I know he’s trying to protect her and all but that’s a shitty excuse. You can’t just take away the freedom of ‘the love of your life’ because you’re afraid something will happen to her. Go fuck yourself, Tamlin! Also, a quick side note cause I don’t want to waste too much time on Lucien, he was one of my faves but now he is a douche and I really hope he redeems himself in ACOWAR.

The Inner Circle, honestly Rhys’ inner circle is squad goals! Morrigan is probably my favourite, or Cassian. I love the dynamic of the inner circle, they’re like a family and they are all so damn precious.

Likes:

As I already mentioned, the characters were my favourite part of this story. But a close second was the pacing of this book. I thought that Sarah wrote a perfect balance of romance, action, and suspense. The whole story just flowed very nicely.

Something else I liked was the fact that Feyre suffered from the things that happened Under the Mountain. Obviously, I didn’t like to see her suffer, but it made sense in the story. It is all too often that I see heroes or heroines who don’t mentally struggle with the things they went through and that is just not realistic. If you go through such horrible things it leaves mental scars that you have to learn to deal with. I appreciated that Sarah included that in this book.

Quote: 

“To the people who look at the stars and wish, Rhys.” Rhys clinked his glass against mine. “To the stars who listen – and the dreams that are answered.”

Dislikes:

I can’t write this review without mentioning the controversy surrounding Sarah J. Maas’ books. It is quite clear that she doesn’t write very diverse characters. Pretty much all of them are straight, white, cisgendered people. And the few people of colour she does include are either very minor side characters or turn against the main character at some point. I thought long and hard about whether I should deduct this book points for the fact that the cast of characters is not very diverse. As you can tell from my star rating I decided against this and I will explain why.

This book was not diverse when it comes to race, sexual orientation or gender. But it did discuss PTSD, depression and abusive relationships. Which I personally haven’t seen in a lot of books. I 100% see the problems people have with the characters Sarah creates but I do feel like I have to give her credit for including the aforementioned aspects in the novel.

I do hope Sarah includes more diverse characters in A Court of Wings and Ruin, but I am not going to deduct ACOMAF points because I find that mental health is also something that should be included in books and I think Sarah did that quite well.

Final thoughts: 

I really enjoyed this book and I cannot wait for A Court of Wings and Ruin. If you have read ACOTAR and weren’t the biggest fan then I would still recommend giving this one go. I personally think it’s much better and totally worth it.

Lots of Love,

Lotte

Who’s is your favourite character from ACOTAR or ACOMAF?

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