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!”