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.