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 prompt in this text window was “This box is your blank canvas. Have fun!” Or something like that. This makes me highly doubt the algorithm has paid attention at all to what’s happening here.
What followed the second trial was a series of days that I don’t care to recall.
Me neither, Feyre.
A permanent darkness settled over me, and I began to look forward to the moment when Rhysand gave me that goblet of faerie wine and I could lose myself for a few hours.
Fact: Some people turn to substances during times of crisis.
Fact: Some people are more vulnerable to abuse and manipulation during times of crisis.
Fact: I highly doubt Maas is going to be able to handle this with sensitivity.
It totally checks out that Feyre is traumatized to the point of wanting to, well, check out. It makes sense that after a harrowing, dark night of the soul mortality scare, she may have picked “freeze” out of her threat response options.
I went “fawn” mode until I remembered that Feyre doesn’t seem to internalize Rhysand’s actions as something to fear, which is a whole ‘nother… thing.
I stopped contemplating Amarantha’s riddle—it was impossible.
Congrats to all of us for ascending to our true forms and evolving into beings of sheer possibility.
Feyre is convinced she’s going to die from Amarantha’s third task because there’s no way the fairy queen is going to be like, well, guess you can just win, then. I’ve been thinking about that, actually; I’m not sure we’ve ever heard that if a fairy makes a deal, they absolutely cannot break it. Back when we were told that fairies could lie, all assurances that anyone would honor a deal kinda hit the wall.
The future I’d dreamed of was just that: a dream. I’d grow old and withered, while he would remain young for centuries, perhaps millennia. At best, I’d have decades with him before I died.
This has totally occurred to Feyre before. We read it. And what did she reasonably expect in this dream future? That she would somehow live forever? Did she just find out about human life spans?
Decades. That was what I was fighting for. A flash in time for them—a drop in the pool of their eons.
This would be the perfect place for Feyre to doubt whether or not Tamlin actually wants her to be there to save him, wouldn’t it? She could wonder if it really matters that much to him, knowing that she’s going through this for what will amount to basically days of his life in the grand scheme of things?
Sarah decided not to do that, though.
No, see, what Sarah decided to do was tell us how Feyre feels about…
You already know what I’m going to say.
She tells us how Feyre feels about…
I stopped thinking about color, about light, about the green of Tamlin’s eyes—about all those things I had still wanted to paint and now would never get to.
I did wonder when we were going to hear about painting again, to be honest. I thought maybe she would just, IDK. Never mention it again because the author forgot about it?
I’m going to do a lot of skimming in this next part because it’s pretty clearly setting up a vague sequel. Also, because there isn’t any new information revealed, and the whole scene turns out to be useless, anyway. It’s going to shorten the recap, but there really isn’t anything you’re missing in terms of content. It’s a scene that’s just listening to someone else’s conversation while Feyre runs the usual “ATTOR SCARY!” script at us. Nothing new is established at all, and Feyre openly tells us she’ll do nothing about the information that’s rehashed here.
After the section break, Feyre is being taken by the shadowy servants to get all painted up, and they run into the Attor talking to someone else. Now, remember, the faeries can make Feyre basically invisible, which is convenient because they all hide and listen to the conversation.
One of them covered my mouth with a hand, holding me tightly to her, shadows slithering down her arm and onto mine. She smelled of jasmine—I’d never noticed that before. After all these nights, I didn’t even know their names.
This book is so aggressively heterosexual that it wraps all the way around and goes out the other side. Only a fully straight person could read that and not get the most sapphic of vibes.
Think about it.
Every night, nameless female shadow beings come and tickle Feyre’s nude body, including intimate places, with paintbrushes. Now, one of them is holding her, putting a hand over Feyre’s mouth and entwining their shadows or whatever.
This is basically lesbian erotica, and the author has no clue.
Anyway, the Attor is talking to someone else about how the High King is pissed off that Amarantha is doing this whole trials-and-riddles routine after she fucked up the entire war over Jurian. The king doesn’t really care that Amarantha took Prythian or that she took a bunch of spells from him, but now she isn’t falling in line and backing him up on taking over the world or whatever it is he wants to do.
As I said, it’s all very vague.
What manner of creature was this thing to be so unmoved by the Attor?
IDK, Amarantha isn’t afraid of him. I guess the manner of the creature would be a sexually predacious representation of deeply-rooted internalized misogyny?
There’s more talk and threats about the High King and how mad he is and how Amarantha is so dangerous, etc. But everything they talk about is general: the king is mad, Amarantha doesn’t care because she’s so dangerous, the king is mad, etc. Nothing specific like, “The king plans to march on Prythian in three weeks,” or anything that would establish a clear and looming threat. Yet, despite there being no specific new information revealed, the text insists that this is a pivotal Big Reveal™:
Whatever plans the King of Hybern had been working on for these long years—his campaign to take back the mortal world—it seemed he was no longer content to wait. Perhaps Amarantha would soon received what she wanted: destruction of my entire realm.
Do you see what I mean? There are plans, but we don’t know what they are, but we do, and something might happen, but we don’t know when, and maybe the bad guy will win. That whole passage is a vampire hunter’s worst nightmare: not a stake in sight. Nothing in that passage serves to up the tension in any way. Feyre is just hearing two characters rehash stuff she already knows about things that might hypothetically happen.
Those fucking em-dashes. She interrupts the sentence to contradict it. Molto bene.
There was nothing I could do about the King of Hybern, anyway—not while trapped Under the Mountain, not when I hadn’t even been able to free Tamlin, much less myself. And with Nesta prepared to flee with my family, there was no one else to warn. So day after day passed, bringing my third trial ever closer.
The days would have kept on passing even if all that other stuff isn’t true, Feyre. But, in other words: the scene happened for nothing.
Well, not nothing. I have a theory about this.
I was talking to someone last night who read the first two books and stopped because book two in the series very heavily borrowed from Anne Bishop’s The Black Jewels Trilogy and it annoyed them. One of the interesting things they said was that the jump from this book to its sequel felt like starting an entirely different series. I’m not going to find out, but it did make me wonder if this book wasn’t meant to be a stand-alone, and then maybe the publisher requested that it be spun into a series before publication. The lore is pretty slap-dash and then for the next book to basically feel like it’s starting from scratch is… interesting.
But that’s my theory. My theory is that some of these “big reveal” scenes about Hybern and Amarantha’s plans were added in revisions with an eye to expanding this into a series, but no further plotting had been done at that point.
There’s another section break, and Feyre is in her cell. She’s completely broken:
I suppose I sank so far into myself that it took something extraordinary to pull me out again.
Not because she’s being drugged and probably assaulted every night. No, it’s because she almost lost a task because she can’t read.
The literacy thing, I dunno. It’s starting to feel discomfortingly ableist.
I was watching the light dance along the damp stones of the ceiling of my cell—like moonlight on water—when a noise traveled to me, down through the stones, rippling across the floor.
Where is this light coming from? She’s in an underground cell.
Now that I’m thinking of it, how is she seeing “darkness” appear when Rhysand and the shadow people are there? She’s in a cell deep under the mountain. There aren’t windows down there.
At least we know where the music is coming from:
I looked toward the small vent in the corner of the ceiling through which the music entered my cell.
The dungeon conveniently has an HVAC system!
Hey, if Feyre is so clever and resourceful, why hasn’t she considered escaping through the vent? Even if it’s just to note that it’s there and would be too small to escape from?
I’m thinking about how my favorite BookTok-er, MyNameIsMarines, has talked about how people say they like these books because they didn’t have to think while reading them, but that also means that if you think about them even a tiny bit, they fall apart. This is one of those instances where if you’re just flying through the book, brain off, not paying attention, Tamlin’s music coming through this surprise vent would be poignant and romantic. But if you’ve been paying any attention at all to the details, you’re like, “What vent? Why hasn’t she thought about escaping through it? She talks about how tough she is and how she’s always planning her escape all the time, and now there’s a vent we never heard of?”
When Feyre closes her eyes, she can see the music like a painting. Now that Sarah has remembered that her main character was really, really into painting, she’s going to continually remind us, too.
There was beauty in this music—beauty and goodness. The music folded over itself like batter being poured from a bowl, one note atop another, melting together to form a whole, rising, filling me.
The music was so good, it was like eating cake batter? That’s a description I can get behind.
Basically, she has this weird hallucinatory orgasm from the music:
The pulse of the music was like hands that gently pushed me onward, pulling me higher, guiding me through the clouds.
The music makes her see a sunrise, and she remembers how much she wants to see the daylight again, etc, but it’s pretty clear that this is supposed to be sex via fiddle, as well:
I let the sounds ravage me, let them lay me flat and run over my body with their drums. Up and up, building to a palace in the sky, a hall of alabaster and moonstone, where all that was lovely and kind and fantastic dwelled in peace.
This is better sex than when he actually fucked her. Like, how bad in bed is this guy that his fiddle has more sheet game?
The music was Tamlin’s fingers strumming my body; it was the gold in his eyes and the twist of his smile. It was that breathy chuckle, and the way he said those three words. It was this I was fighting for, this I had sworn to save.
The music rose—louder, grander, faster, from wherever it was played—a wave that peaked, shattering the gloom of my cell. A shuddering sob broke from me as the sound faded into silence. I sat there, trembling and weeping, too raw and exposed, left naked by the music and the color in my mind.
Now imagine how hot this would have been and what an impact this intimacy would have made if they hadn’t had that mediocre sex scene way back when.
Wasted. Potential.
Two more days until my final trial. Just two more days and then I would learn what the Eddies of the Cauldron had planned for me.
Now. I don’t want to be a pessimist, okay. I don’t want to ruin your lovely day. But this is chapter forty-one. We’re now a single day away from Feyre’s final trial.
There are forty-seven chapters in this book.
Brace yourself. Thar be bad pacing on the horizon.
With that in mind, starting thinking of the next book we should do here. The summer will fly by and we’ll be done with this one. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.
I still cannot believe that the entire actual plot takes place in the last 25% of the book. Imagine if the trials had been going on the whole time! The author has built in all this time between the trials, and then nothing happens in that time except the same thing over and over again. Why not make the trials the whole point of the story: Feyre breaks the treaty, she’s taken away to Prythian and told her only hope of escaping execution is passing these trials. She wonders, of course, why they’re even giving her that chance instead of killing her outright. In between the trials, she tries to find out more about Prythian and her captors, and eventually learns that passing the trials will break this curse on everyone. And meanwhile she’s also got the option of answering the riddle, but because it’s about love (and, as Jenny/ another commenter noted, Feyre hasn’t really known love in her life), she doesn’t get it. But she gets to know Tamlin and falls in love with him, and therefore, at the darkest moment when she is going to fail the final trial, she realises that love is the answer to the riddle. The author would still be able to write essentially the same story (for better or worse), but there’d be something HAPPENING the whole time instead of 3/4 of a book about eating meals and wandering around a mansion while waiting for the plot to show up.
My friend and I thought the same thing! 75% of the book was filler and all the plot happened here!
It astounds me that this book has 47 chapters. How have we read so much and so little at the same time? This definitely reads like a first draft that she refused to edit because she equates long book with good. Long can be great if there is actual stuff being explored and the plot requires it. This book could have been cut in half easy and probably would have been better for it.
“then I would learn what the Eddies of the Cauldron had planned for me”
Probably autocorrect capitalized that, but I prefer to imagine three cloaked figures huddled around a cauldron knock back their hoods to reveal three of the most Jersey guys who ever Jerseyed, all named Eddie.
Their potential plans immediately become more interesting than anything in this book.
Oh my god XD amazing!
What kind of plans would they have? I hope they say them all in heavy Jersey accents! I love Jersey accents
The Eddies run a celestial craft brewery called the Cauldron. Therein they brew the Beer of Fate.
They still keep the actual cauldron from their startup days, and of course it’s on their logo, but it’s mostly a showpiece now.
Hell yeah!
Amazing
FYI – I read ACOMAF so you wouldn’t have to. Also so that I could say I hadn’t wasted the $18 I paid when I bought it with a number of other banned books from Project Literacy this June. I had no idea I would be buying something so problematic, or I’d have left the book alone to avoid giving Sarah Maas royalties.
Anyway. The second book reads less like hurried rough draft, and more like something that encountered an editor. In fact, it looked like there might have been some half-hearted ret-cons in the 2020 softcover edition that left the colour of Rhysand’s skin up to interpretation, in which case, someone needs to tell Sarah Maas that “golden” and “tan” don’t make Rhysand and other Night Court fairies BIPOC representations. They just imply the use of tanning beds or something equally artificial.
Oh. Other annoying things about ACOMAF:
Yes, the second book in the series had an actual plot from start to finish, unlike ACOTAR, which was plotless wonder until the last few miserable chapters, but the ACOMAF plot is transparent and stupid, so that’s not much of an improvement.
There are no fairy men and women. Fairies are all males and females. Call me a cynical enby, but I suspect this is Sarah Maas prescribing binarism.
Prythian has running water. Sinks and bathtubs have modern taps, and hot water is an option. There are indoor toilets, and they flush. I’m surprised there were no bidets.
The ridiculously ideal hidden fairy city in the Night Court not only has running water and indoor plumbing, it also has nightclubs and a shopping mall. Maas does not use the word “mall,” but she doesn’t have to.
For all the many times I see the word “whore” used as an insult, I have yet to see any evidence of sex work. How do fairies even know what a whore is?
Lots of slut shaming. Feyre is one of the most annoying heroines to ever be written.
Another thing that makes her annoying: she has ridiculous amounts of magical power as a result of the way she was remade into a High Fey after dying at Amarantha’s hands. It doesn’t take her long to learn how to use her new powers, either (oh, gee, what a surprise). Oh, and who goes from barely literate to voracious devourer of long books in the space of a week? Feyre Archeron, of course! Because she’s SPECIAL!
Why is it that anyone named Ianthe in a book MUST be a villain? Ianthe in Melanie Rawn’s books; Ianthe in the Locked Tomb books (which I highly recommend, by the way); and now here. This is so unfair. It’s a pretty name. Percy Shelley named one of his children Ianthe.
There was some sex. Most of it was boring.
The “mating bond” finally gets described. It’s feral and stupid. The whole idea of feral fairies seems ridiculous when the fairies in question enjoy modern conveniences such as shopping malls and indoor plumbing. If the mating bond had been better written, my disbelief might have been suspended. Maybe.
I looked ahead in the fan wiki after completing my read-through, and it looks like this was originally going to be part of a trilogy. After the third book come a sort of flashback novella, and a novel written from Nesta’s point of view. More sequels have been promised. I think Maas is seeing dollar signs.
When you said you got it along with other banned books my very first thought “they must have banned it for being so terrible!” lol Sorry, couldn’t help myself. But it does sound terrible, even if it was edited this time around.
I do have a question, so, we’ve got season based courts, Spring, Fall, have they mentioned Winter and Summer courts? Probably, I just don’t pay that much attention to the details of the story since the writer herself doesn’t seem to. But what’s with the Night Court? Is there a Day Court? Evening Court? Also, nightclubs and a mall? Yeah, I think I’d rather go to time of day based courts rather than the season based courts that have all seasons so why are they even called that.
There’s seven courts; four for the seasons and three for times of day. I think it’s daen, day and night.
Which I think is dumb. Either have day and night, or dawn, day, dusk and night. You can’t just have one transitional time and not the other.
But I guess we had to have the magical number seven even if we have to force it.
Thank you. IDK why I randomly one morning thought “why is there a night court?”
And yeah, I can picture Maas typing away about her seasonal courts and then being all “ooh, you know what I could call the court full of dark and scary fairies? Night Court! Soooo spooooky. Oh, no, but that is only 5 courts. What a boring muggle number that is. I need something magical, like 7, 7 courts, oh, i could do morning court and dawn and dusk and…oh, crap, that’s 8. Ah, the fairies can just flip a switch at the end of the day and make instant night. Yeah, that will work. If I put some sexy near rape scenes in no one will notice.”
Now that I’m thinking about it… it could’ve been interesting if she’d done a Dusk Court as well as the other three, and removed Winter Court. Then the implication might be that there is no Winter in the fairylands at all, which could be made more explicit — a fun contrast to the hardship of Feyre’s experience, since the book opens with her trying not to starve in human winter.
Also this probably wouldn’t work for ACoTaR, but in some other Faeland, it could be inspired by Greek mythology and have a Dawn, Sun, and Moon court for Eos, Helios, and Selene. And each High Lord would have some of the powers of each of their patron deities, and the responsibility of leading their people in worship and mayyybe trying to convert others to their court so their deity could have more followers. And maybe four smaller courts for the wind Boreas Et. Al. that are seasonal. And the Moon Court could be edgelords who call themselves the Court of Night or City of Darkness or something, so there could still be a spooky bumping-into-an-evil-dude moment. I kinda like the idea of Selene having a goth phase XD
I mean I think 8 and 9 can be deemed mystical too. I dunno why anyone would assume the “lucky” number (at least for USA) was the one you had to stop on. meh. I’m sure she just thinks Dawn and Dusk are the same thing or she lumps them both together and thought Dawn sounded prettier… but I typoed DAWK just now by accident and it’d be kinda funny if Maas had just smooshed them together like that haha. Probably no one would notice.
ISTR that in Emma Bull’s War For the Oaks, spring/summer/daytime are rolled into the Seelie Court a.k.a. the Bright Court, whose ruler is called the Bright Queen, Seelie Queen, or Summer Queen. Autumn/winter/nighttime are rolled into the Unseelie Court a.k.a. the Night Court, whose ruler is called the Dark Queen, Unseelie Queen, or the Queen of Air and Darkness.
It’d be really nice for those of us fantasy fans to have some name you could use that doesn’t make people start singing the theme song to a 1980s sitcom, but… “the Bright Court and the Night Court” just roll off the tongue so well, don’t they?
“Dark Court” has that repeated consonant sound right in the middle. “Eventide” is too long in comparison to “Bright”, and “Crepuscular” is right out.
Pffffft
I’m going to start referring to it as the Crepuscular Court 😀
I have been reliably informed that I am an unseelie gremlin creature, so I am delighted to learn of the properties of my court!! 😀
There’s a Day and a Dawn court. Don’t know why! And the guy who wets himself while Feyre’s bowels turn to water is from the Summer Court. I don’t think anyone from Winter shows up in this book, though; but it’s around somewhere.
(This is all just in case you were wondering XD the book is done pretty badly and what you’ve said here is, of course, entirely correct and valid)
Sadly it isn’t night all the time in the Night Court, the way it’s always spring in the Spring Court. It’s apparently just called that because the nights there are really pretty XP
That sounds like a great bundle! Sorry it was soured by Maas’s Maasing, but I hope the other books were good and that you could enjoy them!
Is it bad that I completely forgot Feyre even had a last name until I read this comment? XD
The flashback novella is a Christmas Episode T_T they don’t even have Jesus, but Maas can’t write a world without Christmas. At all.
Also I agree so much about the slut-shaming 🙁 I’d originally been surprised in a good way that Maas was progressive enough to write Feyre making friends with a faerie woman — sorry, “female” — who had a lot of casual sex and wasn’t punished by the narrative for it. But then Ianthe turned out to be a baddie and tried to steal Feyre’s man and was shamed SO hard for propositioning people >:(
How do you pronounce ‘Ianthe’? I never actually knew ^^; it looks very pretty, but I don’t know how it’s said, heh.
Apparently the official way is Eye-anth-ee or Eye-an-thee (same diff? I dunno on wiktionary it doesn’t break down the syllables or offer emphasis unless I can’t read it well lol) but looking around Google some people go with Ee for the I or turned it into a Y for Yon. Thee could be a they/thay for a little flourish. I personally would give it a soft th but it could be a harder th. And most names do have some dialect variations and just the simple fact people can choose how to say it, so I don’t consider those wrong, I’m just noting what was what. Regardless, it just dawned on me Ee-anthey is kinda like Beyonce and I love that. Fancy!
Really sucks Ianthe got shit on by the narrative though. RIP my lady! You deserved so much better, I’m sure, just like every other faerie in this madness. Also, not sure why the fuck Maas didn’t use Seelie and Unseelie btw because that’s relatively common terminology for Fae I think, especially when it comes to the UK but I could be wrong!
Also because I can’t reply in the right spot and I love the idea of Goth Selene… “It’s NOT a phase, Al!” XD
(This is to both Dove and Al)
It’s Eye – YON – thee, to the best of my knowledge; it’s such a pretty name. It means “violet flower.” No idea why it’s always a villain name no matter what author decides to use it.
There are quite a lot of proper names lifted from ancient Greece and Rome, actually, which hurts my brain, because so much of Prythian seems to be pseudo-Celtic or pseudo-British. Which culture do you want to reference and rip off, Maas? Make up your damn mind, would you?
I think, regarding Ianthe in ACOMAF, my biggest pet peeve is that Maas makes it unclear whether her interactions with Rhysand and other male characters are bad because they are clearly a form of sexual harassment, or are bad because Ianthe is an ambitious woman – excuse me, an ambitious FEMALE – who takes sexual initiative, has a high sex drive, and is physically attractive. It’s like Maas can’t tell the difference between sexual harassment and sexual initiative, especially not if a female character is the one making the moves. But it’s bad! It’s very, very bad! It’s slutty!
(Male characters can be aggressive. It’s expected of them).
Sarah Maas has some disturbing values.
“ That whole passage is a vampire hunter’s worst nightmare: not a stake in sight.”
Jenny, this cracked me right up.
omg…. OMFG!!! She ripped off the best series?! Are you fucking serious??! The Black Jewels Series was written beautifully, with such strong characters and amazing world-building, all the while delving into some… dark, hard to write themes. EXTREMELY traumatizing scenes. But extremely integral to the characterization of all characters involved in those scenes. It’s honestly a fantastic series, but not for the faint of heart. It’s definitely dark fantasy; very unapologetic, but what I found to be refreshing.
I thought Maas calling them “High Lords” sounded eerily similar, but was gonna brush it off as coincidental.
Maas is a Maas-ive tumor.
Pffft she sure is!
I am saving this Black Jewels rec 🙂
I highly recommend them, especially if you can tolerate very graphic, very disturbing writing. But extremely beautiful, haunting. The Black Jewels series helped me through some of the darkest moments of my life because even though things got bleak in those books, there is always a glimmer of hope.
Bishop portrays PTSD extremely well, as well. The main character (granted, there’s 4 in total) that the original trilogy is about has to heal from some very real, very horrifying events in her life and even though she at first reacts to the PTSD violently, her support system helps her through it.
I’m pretty sure Bishop can only describe such graphic and heart-rending moments because she herself went through similar trauma.
Although, if you’re also interested in other things that Anne Bishop has written after you get through the Black Jewels Series, there’s the Tir Alainn Trilogy that’s like an interesting twist on the Salem Witch trials (but not set on Earth; at least, I don’t think they call their world Earth but it’s been some years since I’ve read them) and the Ephemera series (granted, there’s only 4 books so far in this one, but that’s because she’s currently been writing more Black Jewels and for her Others series; Others is pretty good, but I’ve only read one of the books of that series so far).
Happy reading!
“I hadn’t even been able to free Tamlin, much less myself.”
I read these stupid, stupid books. They were inexplicably addictive despite being so obviously terrible. But among the many things that made me want to stab the books repeatedly, constructions like the one above were the most memorable on the “poor usage” front. It should be “I hadn’t even been able to free myself, much less Tamlin,” because freeing herself without freeing Tamlin would be easier than freeing Tamlin without freeing herself. Maas kept using constructions like that. I don’t remember any other examples precisely, but it was always stuff like “I couldn’t scream, much less breathe” or “I couldn’t run, let alone walk.” That’s not how words and phrases work, Maas! Running is harder than walking! You can’t scream if you can’t breathe!
Also, did you notice that she reports Amarantha’s hair as being different colors? At one point she describes it as being red, but at another point she reports it as black. I’m pretty sure at one point she even says it is blond. If this were, like, some kind of acknowledged magic thing, that would be fine. But it isn’t. It just reads like Maas forgot what color Amarantha’s hair was and didn’t feel like going back to check.
“And with Nesta prepared to flee with my family, there was no one else to warn.”
No one, Feyre? What about Isaac and his new wife, for whom you were supposedly happy? What about everyone else in your town, whom you may have hated, but surely you wouldn’t want to see tortured to death (and here I thought you felt so bad about Clare). What about the hot mercenary? What about *the rest of the human world*. Feyre sucks so much.
Also, your friend who said that the sequels feel like entirely different books was right. Tamlin’s characterization shifts from “bland, horrible only if you think about it” to “aggressively awful”. Feyre’s characterization flips from “ugh, the absolute worst, most selfish and useless person ever” to “actually seems to care about other people, borderline tolerable.” It was really weird.
THANK YOU for mentioning that about the language constructions. That has been making me crazy.
Maybe when Feyre died and was reborn, she shunted all of her worst qualities off into Tamlin?
Also regarding those weird constructions, she should’ve broken them down into two sentences to create better impact.
I hadn’t even been able to free myself. How was I going to free Tamlin?
I couldn’t breathe! How was I going to scream?!
I couldn’t walk! How was I going to run?!
That questioning second statement really drives it home IMHO and also makes it clear the order they should be in. Because you’re right, and I’m pretty certain I have noticed before and it annoyed me too, but the way she keeps messing up eventually kinda melts my brain into pliable goop and I stop noticing until Jenny or you or someone else points it out again. Even the weird grammar is part of the gaslighting, girl-bossing, gatekeeping moments lol.
Yes, the way you wrote it has far more impact, “How was I” conveys more of a sense of desperation. The way Maas wrote it makes Fayray sound like a victim more than a kick ass “not like other girls” heroine. Like it’s Fayray saying “oh well, couldn’t do anything” instead of “Oh my Eddie’s Cauldron, I don’t know what I’m going to do” but with the implication that she’ll keep trying to find a solution rather than she just gave up and will wait for some hot faerie to come save her again.
lol “Oh my Eddies’ Cauldron!” really does sound like a proper emphatically euphemistic expletive. I’m glad ShifterCat gave us some proper lore here!
But yeah, she’s not even questioning it which if given more meat could add to how beat down and depressed she’s meant to be from her incarceration and the realization that she made a lot of fucking stupid decisions that have lead her to this point in her life. You can kinda just feel Maas patting herself on the back whenever she pats Feyre on the head.
“what the Eddies of the Cauldron had planned for me” is another example of wasted potential. I could imagine a setting in which people used culinary metaphors for destiny, rather than textile ones.
Except that SJM didn’t seem to notice that the various cauldrons which show up in Welsh mythology aren’t sapient objects — they’re magical tools made and owned by gods. The ancient Greeks wouldn’t say, “What the Strands of Fate have planned for me”, they’d have said something like, “What threads the Fates have spun for me”.
For this culinary fate metaphor to work, there would have to be conscious actors (like the Jersey guys Lena imagines). So the phrasing should be something like, “Whatever fate Cerridwen has brewed for me”.
Also, why is Feyre suddenly using these Cauldron metaphors? She wasn’t raised with them. Is this supposed to be another hint that she’s actually a changeling? Because if so, there are so many better ways of doing that.
You know, it’d be really interesting if this entire experience had converted her from one faith system to another or given her more appreciation for her own.
Instead, I’m just left banging my head thinking “aww shit if she’d just been an actual changeling, this could’ve been so cool! Her doppleganger could’ve been involved although RIP that poor bitch! She’d shove you under the bus!”
A thing occurs to me about this whole “Rohypnol Feywine” business: it’s all of a piece with the slut-shaming and internalized misogyny.
Remember those interminable chapters of “they bathed me, dressed me, and sent me to eat”? Because Feyre is Not Like Other Girls, she’s not supposed to care about looking pretty and feminine. But if she’s ~forced~ to look that way, that’s all right. “Oh no, they’ve brushed my hair and put me in this awful girly dress, which I shall then describe to you in loving detail.”
Those scenes would be much different if they were written like, “For so many years I’d had to limit myself to clothes that were cheap and practical. How long had it been since I was allowed to wear something just because it was beautiful and soft? I twirled and watched the skirts flare out around my waist.”
Then consider the old “bodice-ripper” romances, which were products of a time in which women were shamed for being sexual, and frank discussion of sexual assault was hard to come by: it would be bad for the heroine to *want* sex, but if the hero was just so overwhelmed with desire that he *forced* her, well then, that was okay. That’s pretty much what’s happening here: Feyre is Not That Kind of Girl, so she’s not supposed to *want* to give a hot guy lap dances wearing nothing but gossamer and body paint. But if she’s drugged and only kinda-sorta remembers it, that’s all right. She’s totally not a slut, because sluttiness would require agency!
I suspect that what those repeated references to “that useless, trivial part of me” is her “feminine” side. She’s got that bog-standard “feelings are weak” internalized western misogyny. A well-written romance would have the heroine realize that the bonds of affection are in fact a source of strength. But that doesn’t really work here, partly because it’s obvious that SJM’s affections have shifted to Creepy Rhys, and partly because it sounds like SJM has herself internalized that “femininity is weak” notion.
Now, when it comes to kinky smut, “Oh no, this is hot” is absolutely my jam, but SJM sucks ass at writing about pleasure. If I were writing “I’m being put on erotic display, whatever shall I do” fic, it’d be a whole lot different. (Also, Miss Jasmine Scent would get a bigger role.)
I think the sexy dance shit would have worked if, say, Fayray pretended to take the roofies (or, since she’s so bloody special, they just didn’t work on her), and did the dancing as a way to get into that room, observe the players, look for weaknesses or a way to escape, there could even be an “awakening” where “not like other girls” discovers that she’s getting off on performing for the hot fae, that maybe “slave girl” is her kink, and that’s okay.
Imagine how hot it could have been if, while Fay is doing her dance, pretending she is out of her mind, she sees Rhys watching her, his eyes burning into her exposed flesh, sending waves of heat through her that cause her body to twist and turn in ways she never knew possible. The power of her gaze made her feel like – a woman (sorry, had to em dash, it’s mandatory in this story) – a desirable woman. (OOOH, Double em dash, what is happening to me?!??!?!)
Farm boy had never made her feel so wanted, so needed. Rhys’s stare was hunger. It was a burning lust and Fay felt it in every inch of her undulating body, a body that seemed to be working against her mind, bringing her closer and closer to the fire that burned inside this dark and dangerous faerie.
Something like that, which doesn’t negate that Rhys is a total asshole who roofied his sex slave, but does give her some agency and awareness of what is happening to her. I just have issue with her willfully blacking out. While I get that she might think it’s better not to know what is happening to her, as someone who has blacked out and had things happen, it’s not better.
I think you’re right that in the book “that useless, trivial part of me” is being a “weak and feeble woman”. Fayray can suck my dick!” (I don’t technically have one, but if I did, I don’t think I’d want her anywhere near it, but in Maas land words don’t mean anything so there.)
Your scene could also work if Rhys had taken ordinary wine and glamoured it to look and smell like the Rohypnol Feywine, then told her sotto vocce to ACT like a drugged fucktoy. Not only would he not be a date-drugging asshole, but the two of them would have a sexy secret!
…Or, for that matter, it could work for Lucien to give her the not-actually-drugged wine, considering he’s SUPPOSED to be her friend!
oooh, that would have been hot! Only he knows she’s dancing for him of her own free will, and she is getting off on them having this little secret, tricking the oh so powerful Amanawanapea. It could be the beginning of their romance. This shared secret, her gratitude at him giving her free will, him getting off on the fact that she is doing this not because he drugged her and that she will likely go back to her cell afterwards and rub one off thinking of him.
So much potential wasted because, what? Maas wants some kind of love interest twist? Do we know in the book yet that Rhys is going to be the “real” love interest?
IDK anything that removed the date rape vibe would have made this scenario way hotter.
I mean, with Tamlin at least there was the element of it being his inner beast having trouble controlling his urges around her which, while still problematic, is a thousand times better than humiliating her for fun.
Geez, Fayray has the worst taste in men.
god yes what you and ShifterCat came up with is so much better than what we got. why the hell is the fiddle playing somehow sexier than the erotic dance number(s) when we NOW KNOW that Tamlin isn’t even the one, the actual sex with him was bland, and we could’ve had anything y’all mentioned instead? Especially more with Miss Jasmine!
Wait that’d actually be cute. I love that.
That does sound like a much better scene
Ohhh that’s an unfortunately good point re: rape culture. Now that you mention it… yeah, so much of Feyre’s “girly” behaviors are forced on her.