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.
The Attor has Arya Stark in his clutches:
Tamlin. Alis and her boys. My sisters. Lucien. I silently chanted the names again and again as the Attor loomed above me, a demon of malice.
The Attor hasn’t taken any of Feyre’s weapons away because “we both knew they were of little use.”
Well, Feyre, you knew they were “of little use” when you left the house but we still had to hear about how tough you were for toting them along.
The Attor just tugged me onward with that slithering gait, its clawed feet making leisurely scratches on the cave floor. It looked unnervingly identical to how I had painted it.
Painted what, the cave floor?
In case you don’t remember what Feyre painted in chapter twenty, she describes it as:
[…] a tall, skeletal 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 lept into flight.
At the end of chapter thirty-three, she described the Attor as having a “pointed” face, which doesn’t strike me so much as a description of a “snout” but if I hadn’t flipped back to check out the description in chapter twenty, I wouldn’t have that gripe.
This leads me to two points: one, this was a great way to avoid re-describing the Attor and slowing down the action, and two, it would have worked better if the earlier description of the Attor hadn’t happened over ten chapters ago because I can’t be the only reader who totally forgot that she painted what she thought the Attor would look like.
Oh, and on the last chapter, Rachael commented that the description of the Attor invokes the image of Batty from FernGully: The Last Rainforest. I, however, have been imagining Bartok from Anastasia, and will continue to read all of his lines in my head in Hank Azaria’s pathetic attempt at a Russian accent (that sounds almost identical to his El Salvador accent from The Bird Cage.)
I encourage you all to pick a Don Bluth animated bat and join Rachael and I.
The Attor takes Feyre straight to the throne room.
Leering faces––cruel and harsh–– […]
Thanks for defining “leer” for me, it’s such an uncommon word and I am unfamiliar with words in general, being a reader.
[…] watched me go by, none of them looking remotely concerned or disturbed that I was in the claws of the Attor.
Why would they? I love that Feyre just knows she’s the main character of this universe and how shocked she always is to discover other people might not be thinking about her.
We strode through two ancient, enormous stone doors––taller than Tamlin’s manor––and into a vast chamber carved from pale rock, upheld by countless carved pillars. That small part of me that had again become trivial and useless noted that the carvings weren’t just ornate designs, but actually depicted faeries and High Fae and animals in various environments and states of movement. Countless stories of Prythian were etched on them. Chandeliers of jewels hung between the pillars, staining the red marble floor with color. Here––here were the High Fae.
This gives real Hellboy 2: The Golden Army vibes, doesn’t it?
There’s a party going on in the throne room and people are wearing masks so idk, if they fell for that shit twice I really don’t know. I don’t know, y’all. Maybe they still have their masks on from the first time and are still cursed to leave them on?
The cold marble floor was unyielding as I slammed into it, my bones groaning and barking.
No one. Not one single damn reader would have been confused by the idea of marble being hard. Not. One. But we need that unyielding here just in case.
This is the sort of petty shit that bugs the hell out of me.
There, lounging on a black throne, was Amarantha.
Though lovely, she wasn’t as devastatingly beautiful as I had imagined, wasn’t some goddess of darkness and spite.
Because…she’s not pretty enough? Like, every single thing we’ve heard about her is that her two main character traits are darkness and spitefulness. Is the notion here that she must be ethereally beautiful to be truly evil? As beauty increases, does the evil increase, too? How does that work? And what level of vanity and self-consciousness does it require to make that link?
But let’s all stop and appreciate that while we’ve heard all the High Fae are preternaturally gorgeous, the one who is Feyre’s romantic rival is the only one who’s just kinda meh.
It made her all the more petrifying.
I don’t see how, when you’ve been terrified of and unnerved by the beauty of every High Fae you’ve encountered so far, and it’s specifically their beauty that has made them seem dangerous to you.
But while her ebony eyes shone, there was … something that sucked at her beauty, some kind of permanent sneer to her features that made her allure seem contrived and cold.
I guess I’m just interrogating the text from the wrong perspective here. I can’t figure out how oh, she doesn’t look like she’s spiteful and dark but she does have a sneer and seems super evil, works.
But Feyre. Feyre, we have to know…
Can you paint her?
To paint her would have driven me to madness.
Great, now I can move on comfortably with that knowledge.
There’s a paragraph that repeats, again, all of the information we know about Amarantha: she worked for the King of Hybern, she killed her slaves rather than free them, she killed humans during the war, she took over Prythian.
Sarah, for fuck’s sake. Trust that your readers don’t have the attention span of me scrolling TikTok on the toilet. We just suffered through an entire chapter of a character telling us all that information several times. We didn’t forget.
Then she sees Tamlin sitting on a throne beside Amarantha.
He was still wearing that golden mask, still wearing his warrior’s clothes, that baldric––even though there were no knives sheathed along it, not a single weapon anywhere on him.
First of all, that you can see. Second, have we ever seen him with knives in the baldric? I feel like that was a complaint I’ve made before, that he wears a baldric for no reason.
He just stared at me, unfeeling––unmoved. Unimpressed.
Why should he be impressed? He literally sacrificed his entire court and everyone in it to save you from Amarantha and you came and presented yourself to her. If I were him, I’d be so pissed off at you, I’d never speak to you again.
There’s more description of Amarantha and a finger bone necklace she’s wearing.
If I shifted my arm, I could draw my dagger––
And do what?
By the way, when I typed that, I sang it to my Kindle.
Feyre is constantly telling us that her weapons won’t work against the High Fae, that she doesn’t have a chance, that’s she’s as good as dead. Then she’s like, ooh, I’m so badass, I could grab my dagger, I’m so ready to fight. And this is apparently a common problem with Maas’s books; the kickass heroine is always almost ready to fight. I may have mentioned this in an earlier recap, but someone recently told me that the Feyre has a higher body count in this book alone than the heroine of Maas’s other series so far. I don’t know if that’s true, but I have seen people mention that in the first book of that series, Throne of Glass, the heroine doesn’t kill anybody.
Why is that a problem?
The heroine of Throne of Glass is a powerful assassin.
I feel like a lot of authors want their female main characters to be these badass warrior women but they give them no common sense, fighting skills that suddenly disappear in battle, and conveniently positioned male characters who do the actual dirty work of killing. Then, they use Girl Power as a marketing point, like being a killer is a strong and positive feminist character trait in the first place. ed.—Reading Modelland has given me new perspective on strong female characters and how the concept went grotesquely wrong somewhere, so expect a blog post about that at some point soon.
The Attor calls Feyre a “human thing” he found, and Amarantha is like, so what?
The Attor chuckled, the sound like sizzling water on a griddle, and a taloned foot jabbed my side. “Tell Her Majesty why you were sneaking around the catacombs––why you came out of the old cave that leads to the Spring Court.”
This implies that the Attor knows why Feyre was sneaking around in there. When did she tell him? Because in the second paragraph of this chapter, Feyre says she can’t speak without screaming, so she hasn’t asked the Attor any questions.
Would it be better to kill the Attor, or to try to make it Amarantha?
You’re not going to kill anybody, Feyre. Sit down.
Feyre figures that since Tamlin isn’t reacting to her presence, he must be under a spell. I’m not sure what she expected him to do in this huge throne room jam-packed with other powerful fairies. Is he supposed to kill Amarantha and then get killed? Is he supposed to run to Feyre and embrace her and give away the fact that she’s the correct human target, not Clare?
Maybe, idk, Feyre, maybe he’s mad that he threw away any hope of defeating Amarantha’s curse just to save you, and then you were like, nah, rather die, thanks.
But Feyre starts making this plan about how badass she’s going to be, like, okay, I need to “figure out my surroundings” and then keeps her hands “within casual reach of my daggers,” and thinks about how since Tamlin might be under a spell, she’ll have to grab him and physically haul him to safety herself.
Shut up, Feyre. You’re not going to do any of that and there’s no indication whatsoever that you could pull it off. Especially not when you’re outnumbered what sounds like hundreds to one.
“I came to claim the one I love,” I said quietly. Perhaps the curse could still be broken.
Right, because curses have a grace period like a credit card bill.
Amarantha laughs at her and says to Tamlin:
“You certainly were busy all those years. Developed a taste for human beasts, did you?”
Does she… does she not remember that humans were part of the curse that she cursed him with? Why is she suddenly surprised about this?
He said nothing, his face impassive. What had she done? He didn’t move––her curse had worked, then. I was too late. I’d failed him, damned him.
Again, maybe he’s protecting you by not acknowledging you, Feyre. Or, here’s a wild thought we haven’t explored yet, MAYBE HE’S MAD THAT HE SACRIFICED EVERYTHING FOR YOU AND YOU THREW IT BACK IN HIS FACE AND MADE HIS SITUATION WORSE.
“It makes me wonder––if only one human girl could be taken once she killed your sentinel …”
We never heard anything about that condition of the curse. That’s just suddenly added to explain why Amarantha said the line about human beasts.
Her eyes sparkled. “Oh, you are delicious. You let me torture that innocent girl to keep this one safe? You lovely thing. You actually made a human worm love you. Marvelous.” She clapped her hands, and Tamlin merely looked away from her, the only reaction I’d seen from him.
At no point did they use Rhysand’s mind-reading powers to interrogate Clare? They never found out that she’s not the same human? Rhysand never saw Clare and went, “yo, I just saw that girl the other day and this isn’t the same one?” I thought he was part of Amarantha’s inner circle. Is he even at this party?
But it’s great that the love interest of this book was totally cool with an innocent girl getting tortured.
Tortured. She’d tortured––
Yes, Feyre, what a shock. The thing that you knew would happen to her happened to her.
Amarantha asks why she shouldn’t just kill Feyre, and Feyre says:
My blood pounded in my veins, but I kept my chin high as I said, “You tricked him––he is bound unfairly.” Tamlin had gone very, very still.
Wait, what?
One of my biggest pet peeves with this book is how something will just be stated as if we’ve been counting on it all along. Like we were sitting here going, yes, Feyre is going to confront Amarantha over the fact that Tamlin was bound unfairly, that’s the loophole that gets him out of this curse, obviously.
No one ever mentioned that he’s somehow “bound unfairly” because of deceit. That was never explained. It was never even proposed as a way he might be able to get out of the curse.
Things you need to know from the next couple of paragraphs: Amaranth has a ring with an eyeball in it and the eyeball can look around, and she tells Feyre, hey, look over there, see that? That was supposed to be you:
There, nailed high on the wall of the enormous cavern, was the mangled corpse of a young woman. Her skin was burned in places, her fingers were bent at odd angles, and garish red lines crisscrossed her naked body. I could hardly hear Amarantha over the roar in my ears.
“Perhaps I should have listened when she said she’d never seen Tamlin before,” Amarantha mused. Or when she insisted she’d never killed a faerie, never hunted a day in her life. Though her screaming was delightful. I haven’t heard such lovely music in ages.” Her next words were directed at me. “I should thank you for giving Rhysand her name instead of yours.”
Clare Beddor.
YES SARAH THANK YOU WE KNOW.
We have already covered that Clare Beddor is the human they took in Feyre’s place. This isn’t a BIG REVEAL. It didn’t need to be a BIG REVEAL. It was already revealed to the reader.
At least Feyre is sickened by the fact that she caused that to happen to Clare, and that she’s responsible for the death of this innocent person who was never involved in what Feyre had going on. But this line:
That rotting body on the wall should be mine. Mine.
Mine.
made me bust out laughing, because due to our experience of Feyre so far, I couldn’t help but read it as Feyre being jealous that she didn’t get murdered. It doesn’t read that way in the text if you actually care about and like Feyre (I’m sure someone, somewhere, thinks Feyre is awesome), but it’s hilarious if you’ve consistently found Feyre selfish and shitty.
Amarantha asks Feyre to respond to this whole displayed corpse thing.
I wanted to spit that she deserved to burn in Hell for eternity, but I could only see Clare’s body nailed there, even as I stared blankly at Tamlin. He’d let them kill Clare like that––to keep them from knowing that I was alive. My eyes stung as bile burned in my throat.
“Do you still wish to claim someone who would do that to an innocent?” Amarantha said softly––consolingly.
There’s that burning in Hell thing in a world without Christianity or any other hell-having religion. But that’s not the biggest problem here.
Tamlin, the love interest of this book, has committed an act so reprehensible that it can’t be forgiven. He watched as an innocent human was tortured to death and nailed to a wall. He sat there and let it happen, knowing that Feyre gave Clare’s name to save her own skin, and he went along with it. He and Feyre are both culpable for Clare’s death, but Feyre is culpable due to her recklessness. Tamlin is culpable due to inaction. To me, that’s fully turned him into a bad guy, in my eyes. All he had to do was say, “That’s not her, the real human’s name is Feyre, Rhysand got it wrong.”
“But Amarantha might not have believed him!” Okay, but when Feyre returned from Prythian, she was glowing. It was commented on, and Feyre noted it, herself. She looked different after Prythian. If Clare didn’t have that glow, they would have known that she was the wrong person, because it would have been proof that she had never set foot in Prythian. And even if Tamlin did fail in convincing Amarantha, at least he would have tried.
But he didn’t.
I snapped my gaze to her. I wouldn’t let Clare’s death be in vain. I wasn’t going down without a fight. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I do.”
Clare’s death is going to be in vain because from spoilers people have told me, Feyre doesn’t even end up with Tamlin. And her death was always going to be in vain because she had nothing to do with this fight, anyway. Feyre’s thought here is, well, if I get Tamlin free, Clare didn’t die for no reason, but she absolutely did. She died for Feyre’s cause, and she died because Tamlin let her die. There’s no way to redeem that, even if Feyre gets her boyfriend back. ed.—I never want to be a side character in any kind of fantasy novel, but I would be extra pissed off if I was a side character in a fantasy novel and I died for someone else’s not-true-true-love.
Back to Amarantha, though:
Her lip curled back, revealing too-sharp canines. And as I stared into her black eyes, I realized I was going to die.
Again, not a BIG REVEAL, doesn’t build any suspense. Feyre has been talking for four chapters now about the fact that she’s on a suicide mission. At this point, Feyre thinking she’s going to die isn’t a big shocker or stakes raiser.
Amarantha asks Tamlin what he thinks about all this.
I looked at the face I loved so dearly, and his next words almost sent me to my knees. “I’ve never seen her before. Someone must have glamoured her as a joke. Probably Rhysand.” Still trying to protect me, even now, even here.
But…he was presumably “here” when he tried to protect you by letting a serial killer torture your friend? And why couldn’t he say that about Clare Beddor?
Because he viewed Clare Beddor’s death as a means to an end. Amarantha would stop looking for the girl Tamlin loved if she believed that girl was dead. Tamlin is just as culpable for Clare’s murder as Amarantha is and, in my opinion, more culpable than Feyre, even though she’s the one who dragged Clare into this mess.
“Could it be––could it be that you, despite your words so many years ago, return the human’s feelings? A girl with hate in her heart for our kind has managed to fall in love with a faerie. And a faerie whose father once slaughtered the human masses by my side has actually fallen in love with her, too?”
If Amarantha didn’t know this or didn’t find it believable that it could happen… why capture and murder Clare? Why did Clare need to be disposed of if Amarantha didn’t know that Tamlin was about to break the curse? What was the motive?
There doesn’t have to be a motive. Sarah wrote it, so it makes sense. She says so.
“I suppose if anyone can appreciate the moment,” she said to the ring, “it would be you, Jurian.” She smiled prettily. “A pity your human whore on the side never bothered to save you, though.”
So, this is actually pretty cool. She has Jurian bound to the finger bone necklace and the eyeball ring. That’s one hell of a punishment. Not only did Jurian have to be tortured to death, but his consciousness also doesn’t get to die. And she made him into cool jewelry.
Just another really awesome idea that proves Maas can write cool stuff, but consistently refuses to do so.
Since Tamlin still isn’t like, gazing fondly at Feyre or whatever, Feyre decides that he’s been potentially glamoured to have his memory wiped. Which is it, book? Is he trying to protect Feyre by playing it cool, or is he under a spell?
My bowels turned watery––I couldn’t help it.
Is Feyre some kind of marsupial whose only threat defense behavior is to spray shit everywhere? Why does this keep happening?
“But I’ll make a bargain with you, human,” she said, and warning bells pealed in my mind.
What did I say in the last chapter? What did I say?
Unless your life depends on it, Alis had said.
Conveniently, it does! This makes me wonder why it was even a condition Alis set out in the first place. Maas knew this was where the story was going, right? Then what’s the point of setting a “don’t make deals” clause if your character is going to have to make a deal right away? It’s not like there’s been any time to build suspense or show us the consequences of making a deal before she goes through with it, and it just makes Feyre look, well, dumb.
“You complete three tasks of my choosing––three tasks to prove how deep that sense of loyalty and love runs, and Tamlin is yours. Just three little challenges to prove your dedication, to prove to me, to darling Jurian, that your kind can indeed love true, and you can have your High Lord.”
…Is that…it?
I mean, that doesn’t sound like it’s gonna be it, right? The last time she did a curse or whatever, it was so painfully specific and riddled with conditions that I assume it took three or four days for her to explain it to the people she cursed. And at some point, I think she probably had to use slides.
“I complete all three of your tasks, and his curse is broken, and we––and all his court––can leave here. And remain free forever,” I added. Magic was specific, Alis had said––that was how Amarantha had tricked them. I wouldn’t let loopholes be my downfall.
Amarantha didn’t “trick” them. She invited them to a party and they went, knowing that the last time she threw a party she stole everybody’s powers. It’s not a trick if you’re just gullible.
But I like that Feyre is so cautious about loopholes when her terms explicitly leave no room for Lucien’s freedom. He’s from the Autumn Court, genius.
Amarantha agrees but says:
“I’ll throw in another element, if you don’t mind––[…]
Of course, you will. We all knew your first answer was way too straightforward.
“[…]––just to see if you’re worthy of one of our kind, if you’re smart enough to deserve him.”
Oh, it’s gonna be based on whether or not Feyre is smart? Bad luck, Tamlin. I am so sorry about that, bro.
“I’ll give you a way out, girl,” she went on. “You’ll complete all the tasks––or, when you can’t stand it anymore, all you have to do is answer one question.”
The question is, unfortunately, “How many em dashes are in this book,” and we all know that counting them will only lead to madness.
“A riddle. You solve the riddle, and his curse will be broken. Instantaneously. I won’t even need to lift my finger and he’ll be free. Say the right answer, and he’s yours. You can answer it at any time––but if you answer incorrectly …” She pointed, and I didn’t need to turn to know she gestured to Clare.
Magic is specific, but you’re totally cool with letting Amarantha vague up those consequences? You don’t need them stated explicitly?
You’re crushing this, Feyre. You’ve made a deal when you were warned not to. You set the terms of the deal in such a way that you can’t rescue Lucien. And now you’re like, meh, I don’t need the specific consequences of failure even though I know I need to be very specific about all of this due to trickery.
Crushing it.
A chill slithered down my spin. Alis had warned me––warned me against bargains.
You just mentioned that––mentioned it on the last page. We talked about this––talked about it a few paragraphs up.
Feyre asks what the tasks are and Amarantha says:
“Oh, revealing that would take all the fun out of it. But I’ll tell you that you’ll have one task every month––at the full moon.”
Magic is specific, right? Feyre just let us know she’s super smart because she’s being so specific (despite forgetting Lucien not being part of Tamlin’s court) so you’d think she’d be all, yeah, no, don’t think so.
You’d think that. But she just blazes past it and asks what she’s going to do while she waits for these unspecified tasks. Amarantha is like, oh, you’ll just have to work for me.
“If you run me ragged, won’t that put me at a disadvantage?” I knew she was losing interest––that she hadn’t expected me to question her so much. But I had to try to gain some kind of edge.”
“Nothing beyond basic housework. It’s only fair for you to earn your keep.” I could have strangled her for that, but I nodded. “Then we are agreed.”
Despite the fact that only Feyre’s actions are mentioned in the middle of that dialogue, it’s Amarantha saying it.
Note, please, that Amarantha doesn’t say she won’t run Feyre ragged or give her work that puts her at a disadvantage. She simply says it’ll be basic housework. She never promises not to sabotage Feyre.
I knew she waited for me to echo her response, but I had to make sure. “If I complete your three tasks or solve your riddle, you’ll do as I request?”
“Of course,” Amarantha says. “Is it agreed?”
His face ghastly white, Tamlin’s eyes met with mine, and they almost imperceptibly widened. No.
Because he’s seeing the same thing we are, Feyre. He’s sitting there going, don’t trust that she’s not going to fuck with you, ps. you’re doing this whole thing wrong.
But it was either this or death––death like Clare’s, slow and brutal.
Yeah, babe, I hate to tell you, but you’re still facing death if you fail the tasks. Amarantha has never indicated that if you fail at the tasks, you’ll just go home without freeing Tamlin. Just because she only said she’d kill you if you got the riddle wrong doesn’t mean she won’t kill you if you fail. Again, Feyre knows that magic demands specificity and she keeps saying she’s concerned with making sure this shit is iron-clad, no take-backsies, but she’s failing spectacularly.
But she feels she has no other choice because:
Because when I looked into Tamlin’s eyes, even now, seated beside Amarantha as her slave or worse […]
Oh, how I would have dearly loved for this white author to tell us what’s worse than slavery. She’s written so sensitively about the subject so far.
Thankfully, she doesn’t opine further on that.
Feyre thinks about how it’s her only hope to believe she might be able to beat this ancient queen.
She’d tricked them all, but I hadn’t survived poverty and years in the woods for naught. My best chance lay in revealing nothing about myself, or what I knew. What was her court but another forest, another hunting ground?
What the fuck are the deer and rabbits like in this world? Were they trying to make tricky deals with her? Were they desperately trying to learn all about her, therefore she had to play things close to the vest? I don’t understand the part about her best chance being to reveal nothing, because Amarantha isn’t asking Feyre anything about herself. She’s just asking Feyre to agree to the deal.
If the author is asking me to believe that hunting animals for food in the woods is on par with making deals with the fae, well… she’s not going to. Because this whole “I used to hunt, therefore I’m in a unique position to best the most dangerous, evil, horrible queen Prythian has ever seen” isn’t gonna wash. It’s just silly and it makes Feyre look goofy at best, narcissistic at worst.
Feyre agrees to the deal and hey, remember when Amarantha said she wasn’t going to do anything to put Feyre at a disadvantage? Right away, Amarantha commands some fairies to beat the ever-living shit out of Feyre.
And I have to be honest, I’m a little jealous of the evil fairies who rinse her ass out and hang it on the line to dry.
Blood sprayed from my mouth, and its metallic tang coated my tongue before I knew no more.
Okay, I’m also jealous of Feyre. At least she gets to lose consciousness during the course of the book. I’d pay someone to knock me the fuck out while I’m reading it.
I mentioned this in the Patreon post and I’ll say it again here: to truly up the stakes and hammer in the grey morality here, it shouldn’t have been some rando we don’t know and have never seen. It should have been one of Feyre’s sisters. Either would add a different nuance of horror and tragedy, or maybe she could have three. It’s even a built-in excuse for Feyre to fall out of love with Tamlin in the next book. Like, once they’re out from under the mountain, she has to truly grapple with the knowledge that, in an unwinnable situation, they made horrible decisions and she’ll never trust him again. IDK. Acting like the audience feels the deep tragedy of Clare Beddor’s death is weak.
This book was designed for people who don’t want to feel anything when they read. The lone POV character never experiences any real fear, lust, pain, sorrow, remorse, or anything else. There’s just a hint of the general concept on the page, like a spritz of emotional Febreze. This is a very safe space for not-like-other-girls, who will always be saved before being raped/abducted/killed/eaten. Bad things happen to other people, at a distance, no need to dwell on that unpleasantness as though it has any bearing on our shining star.
Even when she finally does get a beatdown, she blacks out to evade the physical and emotional effects of violence. I bet she wakes up in the next chapter, maybe complains of a teeny bit of pain, and then carries on with absolutely no impairment whatsoever. She’s certainly not going to let a beating disable her like her useless, lazy father!
Editor, no longer bothering with notes, surrounded by empty booze bottles and frantically googling services that deliver liquor: A halfway decent writer would take this opportunity to mirror the father’s beating in the name of resonance, but let’s be fucking real.
True. Very true. I wouldn’t even mind the sanitizing of stuff except she keeps brushing across “edgy” things and it’s where I just… ya know. One the one hand, I’m not determined to see her broken and crying as a revenge fantasy but I’m also not wild about this being the first time anything really backfires on her.
Clare is just Fridged trope bottom to top so Feyre can feel bad and I hate it.
But OMG yes Feyre getting a beat down and feeling more sympathy for her father for once? If only!
Tbh I like the idea of that. Sometimes people just need a safe read. Take out the slavery, ableism, heteronormativity, and vaguely racist subtext, and it’d be a nice fun chill read that’s unproblematic to enjoy, even if it does make no sense.
Agreed! If it was just a fun, chill read that’s unproblematic this entire story would be so much better. It’s that urge to make the story more grand and/or gritty that’s holding it back. :3
Yeah I thought about it probably being Nesta later on, since the book was setting up all the Nesta hate early on. TBH I don’t wanna go there either because that would give us some sickening shitting on Nesta again probably. I honestly wonder if at first she was setting up her sister to die and then someone else pointed out how fucking cruel Feyre was so Maas backtracked.
Or if it would’ve always been some rando getting fridged so Feyre can experience suffering again. Cuz she did in fact introduce this death as part of that downfall it’s just refusing to fully commit to the bit. And frankly, I don’t know if Maas can successfully write that kind of loss given what we saw about her mom.
Brilliant.
Please tell me I’m not the only one who read the quote “That rotting body on the wall should be mine. Mine. Mine.” and instantly started singing that song from Disney’s Pocahontas?
DIG and DIG and DIG and diggety DIG
hahaha I didn’t but that’s fantastic. Also what about the seagulls from Finding Nemo?
|The Attor hasn’t taken any of Feyre’s weapons away because “we both knew they were of little use.”
I guess we don’t get Tamlin in bondage rope which she’ll cut him free from if it’s so “useless” or is that the actual reason why she brought them?
| This leads me to two points: one, this was a great way to avoid re-describing the Attor and slowing down the action, and two, it would have worked better if the earlier description of the Attor hadn’t happened over ten chapters ago because I can’t be the only reader who totally forgot that she painted what she thought the Attor would look like.
I definitely forgot he was described and even painted. I also forgot she didn’t even fucking see him. I’d ENJOY the damned re-describing if instead of “HOLY FUCK I’M SO ACCURATE” we got to see the details that Feyre got wrong because she was going off her own miserable assumptions and then the Attor could become more nuanced on a visual and personality level when meeting this faerie again. THAT would be sweet as fuck and worth it but building the Attor up in any way between 10 damnable chapters would also have helped a lot, yes, hahaha.
Snout confirmed: I now 100% believe this is a Gargoyle with the head of a French Bulldog, bat-wings, and a snake tongue with further snake features like scales on a long wiggly body and tail. Adorable. Makes me think of that one Chikkin Nuggit short where Chikkin says he has the same cute face as a snake he’s admiring. 😀
My version is absolutely better than whatever we’re getting lol sorry I’m also responding along otherwise I’ll completely forget cute details like this by the time I get to the end. Maas leaves me in a mindless state and Jenny is the only thing keeping me focused. ;P
This entire book is just Brain Fog Incarnate.
|Oh, and on the last chapter, Rachael commented that the description of the Attor invokes the image of Batty from FernGully: The Last Rainforest. I, however, have been imagining Bartok from Anastasia, and will continue to read all of his lines in my head in Hank Azaria’s pathetic attempt at a Russian accent (that sounds almost identical to his El Salvador accent from The Bird Cage.)
|I encourage you all to pick a Don Bluth animated bat and join Rachael and I.
*dying* PERFECTION AS WELL. I LOVED THOSE TWO. Ahhhhh those are both such great ideas but I think I’ll take a different route and assume the Attor sounds like Sir Hiss because this book is so devoid of affectionate snake representation and he deserves some love too! He’d respond to Feyre the way he does Prince John.
|Thanks for defining “leer” for me, it’s such an uncommon word and I am unfamiliar with words in general, being a reader.
Imagine the juxtaposition we could’ve had if Maas had connected it with sexual leering given Feyre’s current “masculine” presentation with pants.
|[…] watched me go by, none of them looking remotely concerned or disturbed that I was in the claws of the Attor.
They’re also not concerned because Attor is just a giant puppy face to them. They assume he’s playing fetch with you Feyre.
| The cold marble floor was unyielding as I slammed into it, my bones groaning and barking.
|No one. Not one single damn reader would have been confused by the idea of marble being hard. Not. One. But we need that unyielding here just in case.
|This is the sort of petty shit that bugs the hell out of me.
I don’t blame you, Jenny. My first thought was that everything after the comma was unnecessary and weird. But then I thought about what you said and wouldn’t it be funny as hell if the Attor dumped her onto this beautiful, pristine Marble Floor and it suddenly became a hidden D&D Slime which softened her fall by gobbling her up and was keeping her in a clear prison? So she’s kinda floating in a creepy, sentient glop and going “OMG OH EWW OH NO” the entire time! >_< ;_;
|Why should he be impressed? He literally sacrificed his entire court and everyone in it to save you from Amarantha and you came and presented yourself to her. If I were him, I’d be so pissed off at you, I’d never speak to you again.
So true. I have a feeling this is basically just a "Queen Beryl has Tuxedo Mask under her Spell" scene. That's why the mask maybe. lol
|ed.—Reading Modelland has given me new perspective on strong female characters and how the concept went grotesquely wrong somewhere, so expect a blog post about that at some point soon.
Oooh, I can't wait! Also, I bet Feyre has a higher sexual body count than Cindarelly too hahaha.
|The Attor chuckled, the sound like sizzling water on a griddle, and a taloned foot jabbed my side. “Tell Her Majesty why you were sneaking around the catacombs––why you came out of the old cave that leads to the Spring Court.”
HE IS JUST SIR HISS bwahahahaha but yeah fuck, Batty and Bartok work so well too. Feyre, why would you ever kill Attor? He/she/they hasn't harmed you, he GAVE YOU WHAT YOU WANTED which was to find Tamlin, and he has a sense of humor.
Fuck you, Feyre. Fuck you. I don't remember a word of threats the Attor said last time and I don't care. Just cause he dropped you doesn't mean you should kill him. HE GAVE YOU AN ESCORT TO THE THRONE ROOM SO YOU'D BE SAFE.
|Maybe, idk, Feyre, maybe he’s mad that he threw away any hope of defeating Amarantha’s curse just to save you, and then you were like, nah, rather die, thanks.
Tamlin's so pissed off that she doesn't have any backup with her right now.
Or maybe he realized she wanted to kill the Attor, Tamlin's only friend here. The "Yo Mama" jokes were friendly jabs between old friends maybe. They just go back so far and talk shit to each other's face and stuff.
|Shut up, Feyre. You’re not going to do any of that and there’s no indication whatsoever that you could pull it off. Especially not when you’re outnumbered what sounds like hundreds to one.
I think the most annoying thing is just that we never see Feyre enact these plans and suffer from them. It'd be fine if she actually fucked up, then we'd feel bad for her, but because it's all inside her head without an iota of humor attached to it like "maybe this time!!!" That's what makes it so insufferable. Or if we understood she has crippling social anxiety style issues or something along with it. Just SOMETHING to make these useless plans less boring. I'm not saying she must become a butt monkey and a woobie instead although she kinda already is with her stupid martyr complex, but never seeing her dealing with repercussions of any sort is monotonous and frustrating.
Like getting caught by the Attor would never truly backfire on her; it just stopped us from having a long sequence of her tense and searching and trying not to be seen which could've been interesting except this is Maas and Feyre so we're probably better off not going through that. IDK.
|Is he even at this party?
"He doesn't even go to here!"
|Her next words were directed at me. “I should thank you for giving Rhysand her name instead of yours.”
So, like… Amarantha never gave a fuck about her sister. She just enjoys using that as an excuse to torture people. I mean, where is the mangled skeleton beside Clare?? Also, lol you'd think Amarantha would go "Funny that he didn't double-check. I'll have to assume he knew you'd be stupid enough to come here anyway."
more later
For some bizarre reason, as of the prequel the Cinderella girl hadn’t even been kissed yet, and while she says she did kiss her previous partner a bunch by Throne of Glass, it’s unclear whether they did the do-do. She seems really shy around men, which is kinda frustrating because it’s literally just to be all ~YA~ and isn’t done logically. Anyway, even if she HAD fucked her late paramour, that’s still only one person as of ToG, so… Feyre’s sexual body count *would* be higher, given Isaac and Tamlin make two.
Personally I actually like the idea of like… an assassin who’s so used to stripping out emotion and focusing on the task, and really into her work, who’s just never really stopped to think about sexual stuff, and when she finally does, is just blindsided and keeps trying to run away from it because she doesn’t know how to deal with those feelings. Unfortunately that’s not how ToG plays out; Celaena is either ~really dangerous~ or pathetically useless depending on what’s more convenient for the plot at the time.
Yeah, you’re right! An impressive assassin lady who’s so business focused and pragmatic, getting in over her head once she actually gets involved with someone would be amazing. It’s truly infuriating how much lost potential Maas peddles.
Although that said, I thought about it recently and the What-IF? premise that series is build upon is kinda senseless to begin with. It’s maybe a short-story worth of plot at best. I can’t fathom building upon the actual tale in an interesting way so I think when she said it ended up tossing a lot of that conceit by the wayside I shouldn’t have been surprised.
It’s a good idea on the face of it but it’s a mini-comic or short fanfiction at best if you do it right IMHO. And like there’s a ton of variations of Cinderella but for example, Donkeyskin, would work better or any other fairy tale that’s adjacent.
That’s interesting because I actually had the opposite thought! Admittedly I was partway through reading Throne of Glass when I saw the original premise, but I was like “wow that is a MUCH cooler premise than the one I’m reading! Why didn’t she do that?!” But what you said makes sense — she must not have found much to write about in it.
The problem as I see it is that the original story of Cinderella being she works hard and has her godmother helping her out of an abusive situation doesn’t exactly mesh well with the plot of “sexy beauty goes to assassinate a prince at a ball and falls in love” because her home life and that drama is a separate plot unto itself. You can do that but then you’re juggling plot A and plot B.
Donkeyskin as my example gets her out of the abusive home situation right around the beginning and from there she has to cope with living a normal life in a new place first. She’s also a servant hiding in the Prince’s palace, wearing a literal donkey skin so people assume she’s weird and/or gross. She goes to ball three times and later on prepares a soup which is how the Prince finds her. It’s literally perfect for “rich girl has to slum it and become assassin” but then falls for the Prince instead. The only key issue is whether or not you want to keep the near incest scenario which is why she flees and that’s the kind of shit Maas would eat up so I’m thinking she focused more on Cinderella just because it’s better known and the one people think of when they think of a fairy tale with a ball.
Cinderella could work but you have to spend more time deciding how she ends up in the assassin trade and like is her family behind it? That can be interesting but you’re forced to make decisions about the father, stepmother, stepsisters, and godmother which have to be answered. Maas clearly doesn’t write about family bonds that well and I have my doubts she answered any of those questions in a satisfying way. There are also plenty of variations/other stories similar to Donkeyskin that include a different method for making the heroine appear “ugly” or strange until the reveal. It can be awkward too but ya know.
THAT SAID I haven’t read Throne of Glass. I’m completely going off what I’ve read in the comments and my assumptions based on how Maas seems to have no sex in Glass, some sex in Thorns, and all the tamest sex she could muster in whatever the fuck the new series is called lol City something.
Good point that Maas could never XD but I still think a book that juggled family drama with the assassin plot could be neat. I think there’s two ways to go about it
1. The leader of the crew of assassins prefers the two other (female) assassins, and is always making Cinderella clean up after them while not sending her out on any actual missions to make a name for herself or earn money. This is her very first mission, and it’s clearly a suicide mission, but she’s determined to actually succeed because it’ll let her finally get enough money to leave the leader and start her own life.
2. She’s actually treated mostly fine by the assassins, but there’s some tragic backstory in her past — maybe even the full Cinderella story, except she ran away from her stepmother at a very early age and was taken in by the assassins. But she uses that to play to the Prince’s sympathies.
Either way, when it turns out he’s very kind to her because of her past, and wants to marry her to rescue her from her abusive situation, she realizes that he’s a genuinely good person and starts to have second thoughts about killing him. She probably stays in the palace after the ball to look for opportunities to kill him, but she ends up slowly falling for him along the way.
Idk; I feel like it could have some great tension and follow a lot of romance beats. It wouldn’t be a *series*, though; and the Celaena series made so much money for Maas that I guess I can understand why she’d have switched to doing that instead 😛
@Al “I still think a book that juggled family drama with the assassin plot could be neat.”
Oh yeah, I definitely agree, and you had a good idea! I didn’t mean to say it would be boring or impossible automatically, just that it doesn’t lend itself immediately and of course this is Maas here.
I agree that actually juggling the family drama could be pretty fun; you could also have her Stepmother making a bid for the throne by sending Cinderella in per the usual fairy-tale, the goal is to get her married, and then coerce her into killing the Prince before initiating a Coup maybe. So Stepmom and stepsisters live in his palace, but the Stepmother doesn’t take into consideration loosening some of her grip once Cinderella falls in love and feels more empowered and shit. IDK but there’s probably a lot of ways to make it work. It does require a lot more thought and some deviation from the actual fairy tale, which isn’t necessarily bad.
While there really isn’t anything worse than being enslaved, I’d say having to spend the rest of your life with Fayray would be a VERY close second.
Also, there is something about this whole book that almost feels like it was meant to be a parody of “Not like other girls” based stories and Maas just isn’t clever enough to pull it off. But i really doubt that is the case. There’s just so many choices Fayray makes that feel like the author is poking fun at “strong female characters” but she’s probably just doubling down on crappy books she’s read by making them even crappier.
Also, also, in Maas’ defense, I have actively forgotten most of what happened, so the repetitive nature of her writing would have been beneficial if I actually cared about any of it. I kind of cared about Clare but she’d dead now. And Lucien, but he… still exists – still shuffles along this mortal coil – still breaths the breath of life. He’s just conveniently been put back in his box until needed for plot reasons.
Fyi, the eye of a faeries as a ring is absolutely not an original idea. It is actually an ongoing practice. It was a thing for Ranger who took the eye of an Autumn fae prince EVERY SINGLE YEAR bc she liked how it looked in “Practical guide to evil” and she did it to him every year. It’s implied she has been doing it for decades. Ranger is… a bit of a horror story there.
It was a thing in Sean McGuire’s October Daye series (I don’t recall who had a ring with an eye tbh) and I have seen it in other stories with the fae. I don’t even remember where it started but now it is quite common for whatever reason.
Before the ‘or worse’ had been rape, so maybe she’s alluding to that. Not sure though.
Seriously, this book. Even now that the plot has finally arrived, it can only be described as EURGH.
Yeah, I was thinking, wow, equal-opportunity or-worsing! I seem to recall some business about cursed Tamlin having to be Amarantha’s lover, and it didn’t especially seem like he was inclined to consent.
Also yes, truly godawful stuff, there was a brief moment years ago when I got curious what all the fuss was about and thought about reading the book, and now I’m *really* glad I didn’t.
It’s a shame she doesn’t really touch on how Tamlin, Lucien, and Rhysand were/could be/still probably are getting raped. Like I don’t necessarily want to explore any rape here because we’d get more uncomfortable isms parading all over the narrative thanks to Maas.
In fact, I’m sure Maas thinks “they secretly enjoy it because men always wanna fuck and it doesn’t matter to them” or something else gross and typical of the way male rape is presented as a weakness of character and can’t truly happen anyway because men are always in charge. (That’s why we don’t explore Tamlin’s angle of the compulsion from the Spring Party.)
Exploring it properly with genuine vulnerability and compassion would take an awareness that I don’t think Maas probably has. Maas “slut shames” Rhysand through Tamlin and Lucien before this chapter for giving in so he isn’t tortured or traumatized at best, while having Rhysand say in reply to their taunts “I have my reasons” as if he’s in control of the situation, so that’s where we’re at already.
Pretty sure she didn’t touch on Clare being raped because she’s unaware Amarantha could do that or else force someone else to do it for her. But also I’m kinda glad we don’t have to hear about that… at least I hope we don’t goddamn.
Fwiw… (I agree but providing extra context if you were wondering) so this doesn’t come up in the first book much, except through implications; but in the second book, Rhysand makes it clear that he wasn’t so much consenting to sleep with Amarantha as desperately trying to distract her with his body, which is a nonconsensual situation. That said, it seems like the male faeries have a weird amount of bodily autonomy? Especially for “slaves”, as Alis put it; apparently Amarantha can’t actually order any of them to her bed — they have to agree to it. So idk why she seems able to control some things they do Under the Mountain or what that whole deal is. I don’t think Maas has any idea what a ‘slave’ even is. It’s all so terribly inconsistent.
Oh yes, non-con for sure. I think as I said in a later comment, Maas sincerely believes men can’t be co-erced in any way, especially not sexually. That or she loves to hint at rape but she doesn’t like exploring it which is why Feyre never actually gets raped and we don’t know of any female character who has been (including Clare.) She probably likes flirting with the term “slave” in a similar manner because the actual concept either eludes her or makes her uncomfortable but it’s sexy so it’s there.
I think again everything would be better if it were BDSM lol. Forgive me if I miss stuff btw. I always click the boxes but I think maybe doing that in prior recaps has so flooded my email that it just doesn’t allow them through any more. IDK I just haven’t seen emails in my spam or my inbox and I have to think to check back. But thanks for confirming my theories!
“The cold marble floor was unyielding as I slammed into it, my bones groaning and barking.”
Barking? I’ve never heard that description used before when referring to bones. Creaking yes, barking though? I immediately picture her bones literally barking like a dog. I’m I the only one that was thrown off by this?
You are not alone. I thought it was such an odd way to describe bone pain. I have heard “barking” in reference to feet hurting, like “my dogs were barking” meaning my feet here hurting, I always thought it was my feet were tired. Maybe she just assumed all parts of the body barked when sore?
Or maybe we will get some kind of shocking reveal that Fayray isn’t a real girl, but is made up of different animal parts. That’s why her family worked her like a dog. She is one! Or at least her bones are. That’s why she’s so special, she’s not just some random human mortal, she’s a bunch of different mortal beings all rolled into one annoying package.
Yeah, I thought it was weird too. Funny but weird.
Someone in Patreon commented on that — something about a cartoon reference they were reminded of?
Is this situation going to be a True Blood style thing? Where the first love interest looked like a good guy but turned out to be the bad guy, and then the initially bad guy turned out to be good for the extremely tiresome heroine? Idk, but this book would need some Askars to even remotely make it work.
Spoiler alert: not the book, no; but the series turns out that way, and what you predicted happens almost exactly in the second book.
Possibly the “You have to do three tasks” thing might be a reference to Eros and Psyche, aka the very very archaic roots of Beauty and the Beast, in which in order to get her lover, Eros back (aka how we see cupid these days sort of)
Aphrodite makes Psyche complete three impossible tasks for her: Sort thousands of tiny grains by type, get some golden fleece and capture some of Persephone’s beauty (it makes sense somehow I promise)
Yeah pretty much. On Wikipedia I think, which references the archived version of her site, Maas said East of the Sun and West of the Moon is an inspiration for this story, which also has its roots in the Eros and Psyche myth. I recommend anyone curious looking up either one to read them and some of the fairy tales categorized similarly, if you want a palette cleanser. :3
Dove beat me to it! But, yeah; we talked on Patreon about this — it’s a retelling of East/West, and it’s very weirdly meshed up with Beauty and the Beast, and it feels clunky. There’s also a bit of Janet/Tam Lin thrown in. None of it’s well done.
Some big spoilers for upcoming recaps, but it feels like Maas liked the setup from East/West with the whole “three tasks and your love is free”; but thought the three tasks were too domestic and girly for her badass action hero protagonist, so she made the actual three tasks very active and violent; but then she ALSO wanted the East/West impossible tasks, so she tried to shoehorn them in as the enchantress going “oh btw you also should do this”
and so every so often she gets an impossible task like “sort lentils from ashes”, but instead of a cool fairy tale twist on it, she just kind of gets deus ex machina’d out of her predicaments because powerful fae inexplicably like or admire her and decide they want her to succeed.
Which! Is not how you do a retelling, Maas!
To be fair, most fairy tales are just befriending a helper who repays the favor when the heroine/hero needs help. THAT SAID this set-up tends to happen earlier on and random fae under the mountain helping Feyre sounds awful. Why didn’t she befriend Tamlin’s servants?? (She DIDN’T befriend poor Alis.) Or befriend some talking animals? Or even just some random faeries living in the area?
This is where Wingless Wonder could’ve come in if he’d survived instead lol. But he didn’t. Because we need nameless corpses to make Feyre sweat. Man, what if Clare had survived? What if the head they found was still alive, just apart from its body?? There’s so much you could do because of magic that wasn’t just “and we dug some graves.” Ugh.
No, that’s the point T_T like.. fairy tales that follow that particular structure are usually “I befriended ants earlier on and they helped me sort the millet” or “she was so kind and lovely that the ants decided to help her” or “he spared the fish so they dove under the sea to retrieve the ring”. All of which is perfectly fine and thematic! But Feyre doesn’t do ANY of that!!! It doesn’t make any sense. And you’re right — it would’ve been cool if she’d befriended servants, or if wingless fairy had survived to help her. Or if, say, at some point while hunting she’d spared a rabbit who turned out to be a shape-shifted faerie. This just felt so forced and random.
Exactly! That’s how it usually goes. To ignore that is just blech. At least with Lucien it kinda makes sense, I guess she became friends with him after he almost got her fucking killed, but only barely.
AND YES FFS give us ACTUAL animal helpers! LET HER HUNT THEM AND THEN CHANGE HER MIND WHEN THEY BEG FOR MERCY. Anything! Even if they weren’t a faerie, like DUDE come on! Talking animals are the NORM in fairy tales!
|made me bust out laughing, because due to our experience of Feyre so far, I couldn’t help but read it as Feyre being jealous that she didn’t get murdered. It doesn’t read that way in the text if you actually care about and like Feyre (I’m sure someone, somewhere, thinks Feyre is awesome), but it’s hilarious if you’ve consistently found Feyre selfish and shitty.
Yeah, Feyre wants so bad to be martyred! Make her Jesus already k thanx bye
You know, I kinda wondered why she decided to fridge Clare and I wonder if at one point Maas had Feyre straight up kill one of her sisters by accident but then she dialed it back to a friend instead of, oh, giving up Nesta.
It might’ve always been this way but just imagine the horror.
Or don’t because there’s still a disconnect and I’m more pissed off than invested. I’d say I’d prefer something else but I really don’t know what. I don’t think this plot is going to please me at any point even with revisions because I want a fun romp. I get that faeries can be dark and violent. They are in the original stories too. I know fairy tales often are as well. But I was never like a huge fan of those elements. I say all that even though I’ve written dark shit from time to time and I sincerely love hurt/comfort but this isn’t that. It’s all hurt and no comfort.
|She died for Feyre’s cause, and she died because Tamlin let her die. There’s no way to redeem that, even if Feyre gets her boyfriend back.
I’m def in the camp that we just didn’t need Clare period and I hate it. I get that Tamlin didn’t act when he should’ve but IDK he’s also been dealing with this shit for a long time and presumably Amarantha abuses everyone in her power. We don’t know if saying anything would’ve saved Clare since Amarantha clearly doesn’t care and probably would’ve enjoyed killing her either way. She’s absolutely not going to let Clare go; that’s just how Amarantha seems to roll once she has someone in her clutches IMHO. Tamlin might’ve simply been raped and tortured with her. It doesn’t resolve him, but it’s possible he kept his self-preservation in mind.
The other factor is that Rhysand is somehow involved and I don’t think whatever excuses he has in these books can truly resolve him either (CONSIDERING HE READ HER MIND) but he’s probably in a similar situation?? It gets murky and I don’t mind exploring that in a nuanced way, but Maas really doesn’t so this was a giant mistake on her part to include a fridged girl to thrill her audience and condemn Tamlin for not speaking out when Feyre didn’t speak out either. Maybe Tamlin could’ve done a lot more for Clare, perhaps he could’ve saved her, but I just don’t give a fuck at this point, especially when he’s being sidelined as the damn Jacob and shat upon simply because he’s not winning the girl. I’m not trying to excuse Tamlin or his actions but the author absolutely built this scene just to go “Ha ha! a TWEEEST; you see Hans was a piece of shit all along and Anna will almost die because of it.”
It’s not built up very well so I sincerely don’t know WTF Tamlin is even like any more. I don’t know and I stopped caring. This isn’t like Alucard’s mom in the Castlevania series, it’s not even that good of a fridge moment for pathos like fuck. I would care if this bitch could get me invested but Maas is just showing off the dead body and patting herself on the back for allowing herself to get this edgy.
This is just the Sailor Scouts getting crucified in Sailor R except more gruesome. Amarantha is Sailor Moon. Tamlin is Tuxedo Mask. I suspect Maas shipped Sailor Moon with some other bastard. lol Like it’s possible it’s pure coincidence but still.
|Because he viewed Clare Beddor’s death as a means to an end. Amarantha would stop looking for the girl Tamlin loved if she believed that girl was dead. Tamlin is just as culpable for Clare’s murder as Amarantha is and, in my opinion, more culpable than Feyre, even though she’s the one who dragged Clare into this mess.
Yeah, okay, that’s a very good point. I absolutely agree. I still feel like Tamlin is being shoved under a bus here for drama. At this point I don’t actively give a fuck about him so I don’t know why I’m rationalizing it but I see this part of the narrative as purposeful, making Tamlin culpable when he didn’t have to be since Clare was going to die no matter what. Maas wasn’t going to let her live and neither was Amarantha. We’ve established that she just enjoys torturing people and killing pretty much everyone since Amarantha has been murdering faeries as well. I’m just especially pissed off because I know Rhysand is culpable too but his hand in this is going to be wiped clean of their stains since he’s the fucker that’s gonna fuck Feyre next and Happily Ever After.
I just… I didn’t wanna be here, Maas. Thanks! I hate it.
And not just because “oh noooos I’m in a POV where I got someone killed” more that everything here is equally exhausting no matter what happens and even the “good times” weren’t that good. The lube pond wasn’t enough, sorry. My Attor HC can’t save these scenes.
|So, this is actually pretty cool. She has Jurian bound to the finger bone necklace and the eyeball ring. That’s one hell of a punishment. Not only did Jurian have to be tortured to death, but his consciousness also doesn’t get to die. And she made him into cool jewelry.
|Just another really awesome idea that proves Maas can write cool stuff, but consistently refuses to do so.
lol yeah okay. Now I want the adventures of Amarantha cheekily cartoonishly murdering people with Jurian as her snarky “voice of reason” and the Attor doggishly enabling Amarantha. Ya know, something more wholesome.
Also I fucking hate how Maas doesn’t know the difference between the word whore and slut or maybe the latter is “too much” for a YA book where a girl was tortured to death and crucified because a privileged WASP bitch’s sister was also tortured and crucified. Oh wait I’m sorry, she’s Irish. So we’ll just casually shit on them and pretend the Potato Famine was a lie the way the Holocaust was a lie.
|Is Feyre some kind of marsupial whose only threat defense behavior is to spray shit everywhere? Why does this keep happening?
OH SHIT SHE’S THE SKUNK SHE SPRAYED HERSELF no wonder they thought she stank and kept trying to clean her up but the smell wouldn’t go away.
|And at some point, I think she probably had to use slides.
I legit love any Dark Lord that rolls up, pulls out their Power Point Presentation and goes “All right, this is how I’m about to fuck you over. Please pay attention and hold your questions until the end.”
It’s unique at least??
|He’s from the Autumn Court, genius.
Poor Lucien. I guess we’ll find out if Maas remembers that detail or if only Feyre forgot about it. IDK. Does it even matter now? Maybe he gives Attor walkies.
God just everything after that too I know fairy tales do the tasks stuff too but like they worked like the villain got pissed off each time so I don’t want it drawn out except some tension would be nice. Baba Yaga, please come get me. I’m not scared.
|What the fuck are the deer and rabbits like in this world? Were they trying to make tricky deals with her?
Feyre is confirmed as Elmer Fudd. In a wig, a dress, and makeup he’s pretty hot; check Google for screenshots. (But all those things will make anyone hot if ya like femme presentation lol.)
|And I have to be honest, I’m a little jealous of the evil fairies who rinse her ass out and hang it on the line to dry.
See? I bet the Attor didn’t even touch her. Just some randos. Attor is awesome.
god even when we get that beat down finally I can’t feel as joyous. I’m just dreading these stupid fucking tasks and I know Feyre is going to bitch about doing chores all night and day. Ugh.
I will say I consider the beat down like minimal payment for telling them Clare’s name. We financing this shit like Clare’s death is a credit card bill lol.
“It says here you bought the Complete Love Interest Trauma package.”
“Yes, I did!”
“Wow. Well, there’s a steep price.”
“That’s okay. My dad gave me this credit card.”
“Sure, sure. Let’s start the billing cycle with a prompt beating to get you started.”
“Okay. Can I do a bunch of small payments each week? I get paid on Fridays.”
“Yep! I’d recommend doing a Full Moon when you can though. Otherwise, you have to do a big lump sum.”
“I thought the chores would cover this?”
“Oh no no. That’s just the interest rate adding up.”
“Well, fuck. Chores won’t pay for anything?”
“No, you’re doing the chores to help lower your interest.”
“Ugh, okay. I guess I understand?”
“You’re not meant to. Someone get the lube and shove this butt-plug in. We got a live one!”
lol or whatever bullshit this was off the cuff.
*DIES* I MEANT TO SAY AMARANTHA IS QUEEN BERYL AND FEYRE IS SAILOR MOON
but fuck it IDK any more who cares lol??? shitty mistake shitty book why am pondering any of this?! I laugh and I cry.
god god I need to stop just directly responding this so isn’t worth it. The recaps are but my thoughts are just as stupid as this fucking book lol
fuck I think I meant absolve instead of resolve.
That’s what I get for ragging on her whore usage bwahakaha
Honestly I was more pissed about Tamlin sentencing his *people* to death over some rando human. It doesn’t matter if you’re in love, Tam; these people swore fealty to you, and you have a duty to protect and take care of them.
With Clare — tbh if Tamlin had protested too much about her dying, Amarantha probably would’ve been all “ohhh so you love her” and then killed and tortured her. He was probably just like “I’ve never seen her in my life, but, shrug, do what you want” to try and get Amarantha to think he didn’t care, in the hopes she’d let her go. I honestly don’t think there’s anything Tamlin could’ve said or done that would’ve made Amarantha *not* kill Claire. So I’m with you on that; he was kinda damned no matter what he did.
Genuinely imo I feel like a much better version of the “twist” in the second book could go like..
– Tamlin is very cautious about sending his men out and only takes volunteers; as a result, only a couple have died
– the curse doesn’t stipulate that the human must ‘have hate in her heart’; just that she killed a faerie. And has to be female, because Amarantha doesn’t want to bring “do you just prefer men?” Into this as a factor
– after Feyre kills the wolf, Tamlin still brings her in, but makes more of an effort to woo and charm her
– Tamlin never sends Feyre away, the entire Claire Beddor part is skipped, and when they’re dragged Under the Mountain together, Feyre declared her love for Tamlin
– unfortunately that didn’t break the curse, so Feyre challenges Amarantha about it, and Amarantha is all “it didn’t work because you didn’t MEAN it!” And the whole ‘demonstration of love’ thing happens because Feyre is like “I DID mean it, and if I prove it then you have to undo the curse!”
– towards the end, Tamlin reveals that he’s actually been doing this just to protect/save his people; the curse didn’t break because he didn’t fall in love with Feyre. But now that Feyre is in love with him, he feels an obligation towards her, especially since she saved them all. He agrees to marry her, but doesn’t truly want to.
– Rhysand wants to
– Feyre is too selfish to really fit in at Tamlin’s anyway, since she doesn’t want to do any of the work of being the Spring Court’s Lady, and never thinks of others, whereas Tamlin prioritizes his court above himself at all times. He hates the idea of being saddled with Feyre, who keeps clinging to him.
– Dark mutually-yandere romance follows in which Rhys and Feyre mate because they’re well-suited to each other, both being selfish and wicked.
Oh shit yeah! That’s absolutely perfect. Excellent nuance for Tamlin too. Like he doesn’t need to be great, he can still be a prick in his own way, honestly should be one, but from what we know, this would make sense for him and his motivations, plus Rhys and Feyre as they’ve been written up to this point.
Oh, absolutely! The entire Spring Court suffered although to be fair, we don’t know if even that could’ve been helped. It’s really just a horror story for everyone except Feyre at this point. I honestly wish the conceit was that Feyre HAD fallen in love and saved them all but then Tamlin turned around and went “thanks, I don’t care about you though. Now I’m off to fight Amarantha because we have a chance.”
She’d feel used but maybe happy she helped the Court, then pissed off that Tamlin is just throwing them back into the thick of it, although he’s TRYING to stop a power-mad fiend from decimating more innocent fae so by his logic he’s doing the right thing. It’s so frustrating that literally no one but Feyre truly matters here, which is probably why Maas lampshades this fact periodically.
And yeah, Tamlin was definitely damned no matter what. It’s literally a no win situation for him and Clare on purpose, because of Amarantha as she’s written and Maas as the author.
Yeah! That would be a good wake up call to Feyre if her characterization was still the same — she’d realize everything didn’t actually revolve around her.
|So we’ll just casually shit on them and pretend the Potato Famine was a lie the way the Holocaust was a lie.|
I’d assume this was a reference to Maas being a Holocaust denier if you hadn’t brought up in previous comments that she’d been raised Jewish (despite her randomly popping Hell into her fantasy world, which is not a thing in Judaism – woo, dominant culture). This sentence is coming across like you personally think the Holocaust is a lie, which I’m hoping is not the kind of thing you would say? Could you please come back and clarify that for me?
Yeah, I have no idea if Maas is a denier. People who lean conservative, are privileged, and think they’re super clever tend to be deniers, but with her being raised Jewish the odds are slim indeed. I was up in my own ass that day because I felt vitriolic about the potential implications (choosing to make the big bad villain from Ireland) and I completely shit the bed with that sentence.
The Holocaust was real and the Potato Famine was real. A lot of human atrocities are unfortunately true, and there are several happening right now even, some of which many people are ignorant of, either because of news bias, genuine government coverups, or algorithms. There are plenty that I don’t know about but which are still current events or old news. Humans are brutal sometimes. 🙁
I realized that reads badly and it bothered me enough I just wanna clarify that I know the Holocaust and the Potato Famine both happened unfortunately. But some people refuse to believe things like that.
Imagining the author’s thought process like: “Okay so now we’re at this big AMAZING scene where Fire finally confronts the Evilest Lady (who isn’t even that pretty but thinks she is lol), and I need to remind the reader why FIRE is truly the ONE person who could ever beat this terrifying challenge!!! Ummm probably because she knows how to HUNT, duh! That’s a really unique skill and not something faeries would EVER see coming, even from a human they all know is already a faerie killer. Hmm, except….is Fire too perfect and clever, maybe? No, look! She’s literally getting beat up now! Could a weak character handle THAT?”
Damn, poor Clare Beddor. Everyone is horrible here. How in hell are there even shippings wars among the characters in this series when this is at the foundation of their relationships? I just want all of them to burn to the ground.
Basing from the excerpts I saw in ACOTAR and Throne of Glass, I seriously hate how Maas writes her heroines. She forces you to believe they’re such badasses based on their intentions and not their actions. If Feyre is so stupid and stubborn anyway, I would’ve preferred if she just impulsively attacked Amarantha and get beat down. At least we know how over her head she is with her situation. Instead we get stuck in her thoughts, supposedly being convinced that she can do something when needed. Which never happens. So just shut up, Feyre.
Yeah it’d be different if Feyre actually kept doing stupid shit and having her ass handed to her when she got a little in over her head, but it wouldn’t have to be anything really horrible. She can bleed a little bit or have a throbbing pain.
Maybe she’s so fucking stupid but becomes kind of endearing because she doesn’t attack everyone, just the people who intentionally scare the shit out of her. So it reads as Feyre having trauma reactions, like an abused doggo. And maybe sometimes she goes a little too hard reasserting her boundaries but you know she actually means well. The fae just aren’t reading the intent behind “don’t touch me, stop staring at me, please leave me alone” in Feyre’s expressions and body language. IF Feyre was actually mute that could work incredibly well.
There’s just so many ways this could be handled without simply making her all thought and no action. You could also create tense moments where she is forced to back down and acknowledge that she did. It doesn’t all need to be in her mind.
God, Amarantha is absolutely comically, cartoonishly evil and it makes for a very boring villain overall.
She could be interesting that way if we really leaned into the cartoon evil comedy on purpose but yeah. Giving her the “motivation” with her sister really does nothing for her. Like ignoring the whole trying to make it logical or even sympathetic angle, it just does absolutely nothing besides give me vague nightmares even though it’s grotesque for the sake of being grotesque. It’s just trying too hard to take her seriously when we probably shouldn’t be.
I had a sudden thought… what if Amarantha’s sister had been turned into an undead skeleton for a long time? That’d be cool, seeing her rattling around the court, just living her undead life, hanging out with her sister. Or she became a different type of faerie since a LOT of supernatural fae-like creatures are literally dead people. What if she became a banshee?!? SO MANY MISSED OPPORTUNITIES.
Fuck what if this shit just straight up happened to Amarantha? No sister, she was the bitch who got crossed and killed and she came back bitter and banshee and deadly cool. It’s all these disconnects that hold some of this back. Like if you’re going hard you need to commit to it. You really can’t half-ass it unfortunately. Or else show more empathetic sorrow and fear IDK. It’s tough finding a middle-ground when you bring so much brutality from IRL into a fantasy world; it’s a difficult balancing act and I’m not great at it either.
“That rotting body on the wall should be mine. Mine.
Mine.”
I actually read this like Fayray is complaining that she can’t have ownership over the dead body now. It should be hers, damnit but Amaranth already hung it on her wall, so unfair.
Pfffft
lol that also works. “I got Clare killed! That’s MY trophy!”
“Is Feyre some kind of marsupial whose only threat defense behavior is to spray shit everywhere?”
As someone with IBS, I absolutely cannot ever read about a character having their bowels turn to water without cringing. You just KNOW the author has never needed Imodium apart from that one bout of Delhi belly they got from eating spicy food on holiday one time.