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.
If I am following this “romance” correctly, Tam refuses to kill Fayray even though she killed his bestie, gives her a place to stay and pretty much anything she wants, and she hates him and thinks he’s a terrible, horrible brute, but then he nearly rapes her and now she’s in love with him? The everloving fuck?!?!?!
Now, there is a chance that Jenny left out a HUGE chunk of story that showed the slow progression between, “he’s got nice abs but he’s a horrible monster” to “he wants me so bad he doesn’t care about consent, he’s a great guy and I’m in love” but I doubt it. I think Maas is just a shitty storyteller.
This might be the worst book I’ve ever not actually read myself but feel only slightly bad about someone else torturing themselves to read for me and just give me the snarky highlights.
Yeah, this shit is unbelievably awful. I would’ve tossed the book if I managed to hold out for this long… or be in a total gaslight daze. I’m glad Jenny is explaining clearly why exactly this is so terrible, how it’s victim blaming, and especially the distinctions about how attending the Calanmai and leaving her room are two different incidents which require different apologies for what happened.
Plus personally, if I was Feyre, I’d put on the pants for sure after the near assault and not put on the fancy ass dress which makes it a easier for him to actually assault/rape me after he suddenly made me worried about that. Ugh.
Your first paragraph sums up what I’m seeing in these recaps, for sure.
It reminds me of when I first tried reading romances in the 80’s but so many of them were problematic in very similar ways to this that I gave up on romance for decades and only really started again within the past ten years, when my Goodreads friends started posting reviews for romances that deliberately address and fix this twisted kind of “love” garbage.
I’m pretty appalled that this is being marketed to teens. If adult women want to read semi-rapey he-couldn’t-control-himself-but-that’s-what-makes-it-hot romances, then fine, I’m assuming we’ve got enough experience to be viewing it as fantasy while recognizing that it’s not something we really want. But when I was a teen with only a fantasy love life, I looked at romances as more akin to instruction manuals — this is how you recognize when a man loves you, this is how he shows it, this is how you should react and respond. I realized how dumb that was after I started having real relationships, but not before I’d accepted more jerk behavior from men than I should ever have tolerated. I like to think kids have healthier ideas about relationships these years, but it’s hard to tell if that’s true when this is a major bestseller.
I have issues with formatting too. I don’t always catch them because there’s a special key combo you have to hit to check them with a screen reader. What I do is, I’ll copy all of the text I want, paste it into a blank notepad, then copy it from there And paste it into a word document. Most of the time that strips all of the funky formatting from anywhere. Another thing that I like to do is to hit control, a, then alt H plus E. That stripped all of the formatting from all of the text in the document. There is a special paste option where you can keep the formatting… But I usually keep that on because I copy and paste from document to document when I am working on a paper.
I’m reading these recaps backward, and I’ve never read the book, so this is my first impression: 1. Jenny is right about the “apology” being an editor insert, and 2. Is Tamlin Wolverine? Because after the mention of retracted claws, I could only imagine this character as Hugh Jackman.
Yeah, that bit about the claws in the knuckles threw me off too! But Tamlin is maybe a knock-off of Beast from Disney’s version at best. He has “elk horns” and claws and I’m confused if he has fangs now because she should have more than a hickey there after he bit her “like a wild animal” or however she phrased it.
Tamlin keeps striking me as some kind of Frankenstein’s monster faerie with all his pieces-parts.
Ugh, yes. And there’s absolutely a place for that idea but not here. I love monsters, werewolves, and weird fairies so Tamlin as he is just… doesn’t work for me. Honestly, when Maas described him the very first time I could only think of the deer yokai from Princess Mononoke, before it gets beheaded and turns into an alien slime beast thing. Now I’m wondering if that’s exactly what he is lol.
It’s weird that nobody here is mentioning it so I’m going to point it out here and in the last chapter — Feyre was TOLD Tamlin wasn’t going to be in control of himself. By wandering around because she “wasn’t scared” or whatever, she was putting Tamlin in a position where he could potentially be.. effectively drunk and on aphrodisiacs and other drugs around her, which feels like her consciously taking advantage of him. That’s messed up on her part, and needs more than just “we apologized at dinner”.
Nobody’s mentioning it because it sounds a lot like “if you go to a bar, you obviously want to be gang-raped by drunks, and they’d be the real victims of your nefarious scheme.”
Except for the fact that this festival isn’t a bar, it’s not a public place that’s open all year; it’s a religious observance that happens once every year where humans weren’t supposed to be in the first place, and this *particular* human was told repeatedly, “hey, if you show up there, this person who is possessed by literal magic outside of his control will try to bang you, and none of us actually consciously want that.” Maybe it’s not diabolical, but it’s at the very least *discourteous* to show up anyway, like “well, I don’t care if he’s magically compelled to try and fuck me for reasons outside his own conscious control; I’m going to hang around anyway.”
The “bar” analogy is a bad analogy because there isn’t literal magic forcing one specific dude to seek out one specific woman and try to bang her against both of their conscious minds.
Not sure that it’s the same though. Presumably drunk people should still have at least a semblance of control; how much control did Tamlin have over his actions that night? (honest question, I have read that recap too but I can’t remember the exact details)
If you go to a bar, you are right when expecting a modicum of safety. If you go to a tiger cage you are not.
It’s also the fact that she wasn’t even in the bar at that point! Let me try something similar to the polar bear at the zoo analogy.
Let’s say Feyre’s weretiger roommate went to the zoo to fuck another tiger, because he’s compelled to fuck tigers by the ancient rites of were-culture. We’ll decide he can talk to the tigers, so it’s not nearly as problematic as it could be. Feyre hates tigers because they’re known for killing humans, they have a reputation for being man-eaters, but getting to live with and know this weretiger has really turned her around on that mindset. Nonetheless, they are tigers, they have fangs and claws, and they are stronger than she is. If for any reason one of the tigers responds to her being there, then she could get hurt because she doesn’t know how to respond to them. She knows this one weretiger and she never asked him about how to react to an actual tiger because they live in a city.
So, she’s intrigued, but they all agreed she shouldn’t go. Then the day of she went to the zoo to watch like a pervert, her friend caught her trying to climb into the damned tiger enclosure to get a better view, and he dragged her home because everyone agreed she shouldn’t get involved in this plus the zookeepers already pulled her ass out of there once before. This woman doesn’t have the training, the liability waiver/zoo insurance, or the sense to be in that tiger enclosure.
Then after her roomie fucked the tiger, the roomie came home and pounced her like Hobbes because he was in tiger mode and of course he could smell her there. But he bit her on the neck instead of raping her. It’s just creepy all around but it makes for a better joke than Feyre simply painting her boy “friends” as literal pigs for laughing about it after the fact.
I mean, yes, it’s true that we don’t know how much consent Tamlin can actually give, we don’t even know for absolute certainty how much consent Feyre could’ve given because the author was vague about whether she was under a spell or not. But this entire scenario was fabricated to put Feyre in danger, threaten her with rape multiple times, show that Tamlin wouldn’t rape her even though it’s implied he’d like to and it’s a bit fuzzy how he views rape but I think it’s safe to say he doesn’t take it seriously since the next day he laughed about biting her at the dinner table. And the bite he gave her is more like a hickey than anything else. Feyre is also suddenly okay with everything, regardless of her considering him accountable for his own actions in the hallway, just so the relationship can continue instead of ending right there.
This entire situation is wild. There’s so many layers to peel off that I agree the bar isn’t a good analogy. Nonetheless, it’s almost pointless to ask who had consent because it’s just the author manipulation at this point. Neither character actually had any genuine motivation to do this other than “I want this situation in my story.” It’d be more interesting exploring Feyre’s and the weretiger’s bestiality fetish since at that point you’ve got something to actually work with. You could have a sincere discussion between the characters about how much they actually like each other and how much of this is simply convenience and actually explore that.
I’d disagree that it’s “pointless” to consider what characters had consent when, because while the author’s work is extremely shoddy, the interrogation of consent here is important in exposing its shoddiness. From the fact that Tamlin stopped at just one bite, it seemed he had *some* control of himself; but from Lucien’s description, at various points he would have had *no* control of himself and therefore would be incapable of consenting. Which is less fantasy aphrodisiacs and more just straight up demonic possession. If I got possessed by a demon and the demon violated a human using my body, obviously I’d feel *bad*, but I’d ALSO feel violated myself.
So… this was just a whole mess and a half, testament to Maas’s writing.
And… that’s a good point about how there was *some* indication that Feyre’s decisions were influenced by magic, but also Feyre’s internal monologue was so similar to her usual unlikable self that we just don’t know how much was magic, and how much the magic had already worn off by the time she went out. By contrast, when Elizabeth is under the influence of magic in *Sorcery of Thorns* (not for sex, thankfully) and thinking thoughts she normally wouldn’t, it’s done VERY well and made clear to the reader that there’s some kind of magical influence going on.
Tl;Dr consent here is a huge mess, and the influence of Magic here is dealt with so inconsistently that a case can be made for consent issues with *either* character, and while that can be something a competent writer tackles, it’s less so for Mass XP
Yeah I agree. I shouldn’t have used “drunk and on aphrodisiacs” as a real-world analogue — I was under the mistaken impression that aphrodisiacs were this fantasy thing that made people uncontrollably horny (like sex pollen or Pon Far), and not just like oysters.
Yeah I agree. I shouldn’t have used “drunk and on aphrodisiacs” as a real-world analogue — I was under the mistaken impression that aphrodisiacs were this fantasy thing that made people uncontrollably horny (like sex pollen or Pon Far), and not just like oysters.
I get what you’re trying to say but IMHO I just think that idea should’ve been entirely scrapped. It’s basically like a superhero hypnosis excuse for why the hero wasn’t a bad person and while being controlled by someone or something else could theoretically remove fault, it’s just a shitty way to wipe the hero clean of a crime that they’ve committed and say, “But it wasn’t really them!”
Especially since this theory also implies that Tamlin had no will while selecting a different person. Does this mean she raped him too? It creates more questions than it needs and it doesn’t resolve the main problem where this doesn’t build up the relationship the way Maas is intending it to. I get building chemistry but if literally everything could be resolved by saying, “this is a consensual BDSM scene” and describing it AS SUCH then unless you want the character to be a villain, JUST WRITE THAT INSTEAD. It’s so much simpler and FFS 50 Shades set a “precedent” where we know more people are down for kink, so actually use those ideas properly and for a good cause. These are Faeries… they’re ancient. They have different cultures and traditions. You could even make it normal and explain it to Feyre because she’s not used to that! AND she’s the reader sub so it makes sense.
I mean, I agree that a lot of this could’ve been executed way better, BUT I disagree that the ‘superhero possession’ thing is an excuse to wipe a hero clean of “a crime they committed”. In settings with supernatural elements like superpowers and magic, the elimination of someone’s free will is a huge deal and REALLY shouldn’t reflect on the person who lost it.
The thing I’m most reminded of here is the Lorelei episode in Agents of Shield, where Lorelei’s power makes men fall into an obsessive lust for her where they’ll do anything she asks if she touches them. One of the male agents gets touched, has sex with her because that’s what people do when they’re touched, and then when he comes back, instead of getting treated like someone who’s just been assaulted, he gets slapped and accused of infidelity by his girlfriend. It’s a messed-up scene because it portrays literally *losing control of your own mind* as “just an excuse” for doing something harmful, and also demonstrates a shocking lack of compassion for male survivors of sexual abuse.
I don’t like “good superhero did bad thing because of hypnosis” arcs either, but I don’t think that if they got mind-controlled, then they’re somehow accountable for everything they did while mind-controlled.
As for the faerie women (or… “females”?) there, according to Lucien, it is commonly understood throughout the entire Spring Court that if you show up to Calanmai (and are a woman, because heteronormativity) and wait by the cave, then you are indicating your own consent for sex with the High Lord. Since Tamlin agreed to be High Lord and do all the rituals and things associated with it, I think the faerie females would assume that that comes with the agreement to have ritual sex in a cave with one of them to rejuvenate the land or whatever. The ceremony is something he’d have agreed to in advance, since everyone in the Court knew about it. Mating Feyre was not — we don’t know if their coupling would’ve had any effect on the lands, since Feyre is human; and also if it was after the ceremony ended entirely, then that has nothing to do with the rituals or duties he had. If we’d literally seen ANYTHING else driving Feyre’s decision — even just, “I’m really hungry so I’m going to grab something to eat and hope I don’t run into Tam” — then it wouldn’t actually be skeevy; it would just be her very reasonably trying to go about her night. But the fact that she just sort of… shrugged off any idea of bad things happening like “pfft, yeah right, anyway I don’t believe any of this so I’m just going to do whatever I want” just feels. Ugh.
That said, you do raise a good point about his whole agreeing to be High Lord in the first place. We find out (spoiler alert) that he got the job because everyone else died. So it’s possible that he actually *can’t* abdicate or refuse to be High Lord or give the position to someone else. In which case… no individual woman is taking advantage of him by lining up to be picked for Calanmai duties (especially since for all they know he’s happy to be High Lord, since everyone wants to be High Lord), but he *is* in a bad situation where he has to do this annual ritual whether he likes it or not, and that’s… kinda messed up. Yet ANOTHER consent issue that Maas completely ignores because hehehe sexy.
Thanks for pointing that out 🙂
I should add, I’m not inherently against all “removal of free will” plot points. It’s possible to do interesting things with this, exploring our humanity or lack thereof, and the nature of culpability but it’s only useful as a tool if you really want to explore that and IMHO Maas absolutely doesn’t want to.
As far as I’m concerned, this “Tamlin was magic drugged for the rite” is in the same vein as the goblins of Goblin Slayer only being able to reproduce via human or elf women, which is similar to the aliens from the Alien franchise except a much shittier version of the concept that denies men get raped or wants to overlook that it happens so the men just get murdered/killed instantly without any rape, the women get captured, rapidly impregnated and rapidly give birth to another goblin, and then tortured to death. It sensationalizes this for softcore smut and shock value in all versions although they vary as to how much violence they actually show.
Except she couldn’t commit to the actual rape at any point, which I’m grateful for I guess (bad enough we had Andras and his death) and then Maas tried to softball it in at the end, with Tamlin accosting Feyre for being hungry long after the rite supposedly ended so he has just enough semblance of himself to only bite her. The fact she’s eating a cookie at the time kind of… it’s funny but it also smacks of “daddy came home drunk and now he’s going to kiss you on the neck, be brave, and you’ll be okay.” Which is… creepy at best.
I’m not going to even pretend it’s anything else and try to explore how the magic works because it doesn’t fucking matter and trying to do that gives Maas more credit than she’s earned. She just wanted a magical excuse to slap in this cool scene from another book and have Tamlin build chemistry and “affection” with “you narrowly avoided rape because you’re so willful” which is a bad take no matter how you contemplate the man. It doesn’t matter. It was a giant mistake born of American Christian creepiness where women aren’t allowed to want sex so the men have to coerce and trick it out of them. It’s nothing different from what was in Twilight or even 50 Shades.
If the book were better I’d be contemplating this with interest, but this really should be kept in mind. It was just the author manipulating the plot because she’s not a very experienced writer and she has some weird ideas that are boring. That’s literally all this is and nothing more IMHO. I’m willing to engage; I just don’t think that Maas was.
Yeah I totally agree. The entire worldbuilding here is just so bad and raises all kinds of issues that she doesn’t want to explore at all.
Someone (Mab, I think?) did bring up that point a post or two ago, and I agree!
Even if he’s still *mostly* in control (with the rite magic slowly wearing off), it should still be upsetting for him. If, y’know, he were written as a sympathetic character.
Yes!!
Poor Tamlin and Lucien — characterization for them both just goes completely out the window as soon as it’s time for the “teeheehee spicy~” bits
Does Feyre “stride” all the time to remind us that she’s Not Like Other GirlsTM, no matter what the circumstances?
Because normally when an author uses a strong descriptive word for something as mundane as walking from one place to another in a character’s own house, it’s to show an emotional state or something similar that creates a tone for a scene. But since Feyre does nothing but stride, it hardly seems worth pointing out anymore — it’s been established over and over again. It would only be interesting if she strolled, sauntered, ambled, trod, plodded, trotted, skipped, wended her way, or any other method of making her way down to breakfast.
Feyre seems like the skulking type to me… lol when she strides I envision a super model on a runway.
Not really because there is magic involved.
Now if Feyruh was compelled by magic to go outside and people still blamed her that would be another thing.
It seems like you missed the whole polar bear cage and penguin suit analogy.
Dammit meant to reply to someone but it got borked. To the bar analogy person above.
I was kinda hoping for an update on that analogy LOL Though I feel like it’s safe to say both the polar bear and the penguin suit probably drowned under the ice and nobody cares enough to check.
I mean, there’s a lot wrong here, but what stood out to me is the implication that she painted Isaac Booty Call fisting her in the hay.
The tonal dissonance around the bite (and everything else) is so fucking weird. It’s like, she’s obviously not actually UPSET about it if she’s humming and swinging her hands and being vaguely snarky but chipper about it. But then she DOES get mad about it and call him a faerie pig? But then she’s not REALLY mad about it because she proceeds to paint them as pigs, which is like the punishment for a prank, not a sexual assault? Is it a serious transgression or a whimsical slap-slap-kiss romance? Make up your mind, SJM!
Like, I can actually see the tone SJM was going for and it makes my head hurt with trying to make the pieces fit in a way that’s not either incredibly dissonant or incredibly offensive.
> 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.
The main take-away from Tamlin’s touching little paragraph is that faerie society is so damn sexist that none of his female faerie lovers has ever had meaningful responsibilities that could let her relate to his.
Which, hey, isn’t a surprise considering what we see in this book and especially the beginning of the next. (Not implying it gets better after, implying I DNF). But then this pervasive sexism and the horrible all-permeating rape culture don’t get addressed, either? This is some trad wife shit.