A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter 42 or “The Incredible Vanishing Worldbuilding”

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.

TW: Just tons of the author justifying why sexual assault is okay, as long as it’s for a good reason.

*Sorry this is posting late! I had it scheduled but I scheduled it for the wrong week and didn’t realize that it hadn’t posted on Saturday! ed.—In 2023, it’s a Wednesday!

We’re in the home stretch. But the home stretch feels longer and longer with every step.

Quick note, I’m typing all the excerpts in by hand, not copy/pasting, so any errors are mine unless I specifically point them out. This is important especially because my laptop’s E key is fucked up and shit happens. ed.—it’s still fucked up. I guess I should get on fixing that.

Chapter forty-two opens with Feyre not being properly feted for the thing she has spent two chapters insisting she’s going to fail at:

It was a party like any other—even if it would likely be my last. Faeries drank and lounged and danced, laughing and singing bawdy and ethereal songs. No glimmer of anticipation for what might occur tomorrow—what I stood to alter for them, for their world. Perhaps they knew I would die, too.

If there is a way to make Feyre more insufferable, Maas will find it. The fairies are cruel to her, she knows her mission is futile, correct me if I’m wrong but I believe she even considered the possible consequences for the fairies if she doesn’t pull off this third task, and yet now she’s whining that they’re not grateful enough to her or something because the party isn’t about her.

I was clothed in my typical attire, tattooed from the neck down with that blue-black paint.

That’s not what it means to be tattooed.

Tonight my gossamer gown was a shade of sunset pink, the color too bright and feminine against the whorls of paint on my skin.

You heard it here: tattoos are in direct contrast with—and let me go ahead and re-read that just to be sure—femininity.

We’ll go with that.

Rhysand was taking longer than usual to summon me—though it was probably because of the supple-bodied faerie perched in his lap, caressing his hair with her long greenish fingers. He’d tire of her soon.

I love the way Feyre is illogically threatened by any non-servant woman she encounters. The Not Like Other Girls™ that is just radiating from a brief mention of this fae hoe is truly a work of art.

Feyre mentions that she doesn’t even look at Amarantha and that everyone ignores Feyre’s presence but… that seems awfully convenient, doesn’t it? She’s been the nightly court entertainment while roofied for weeks now. She’s about to do this big, spooky task that will definitely kill her. Why would this night be the night everyone ignores her?

Spoiler: it’s so the scene will work.

I was so intent on anticipating Rhysand’s order to serve him that I didn’t notice that someone stood beside me until the heat from his body leaked onto mine.

I went rigid when I smelled that rain and earthen scent, and didn’t dare to turn to Tamlin. We stood side by side, staring out at the crowd, as still and unnoticeable as statues.

Which I don’t buy, frankly. Amarantha has kept Tamlin right by her side this entire time. She’s obsessed with him. She’s imprisoning his entire court to get him to fuck her. And she’s not going to notice when he goes across the room to hang out with her competition?

But that’s exactly what happens. In fact, they’re able to sneak off together without a single fairy noticing them. Not even Amarantha, whom they walk past.

I could scarcely breathe as I moved nearer and nearer to the door, past Amarantha’s dais, past a group of giggling faeries … Tamlin disappeared through the door quick as lightning, and I slowed my steps to a meandering pace. These days no one really paid attention to me until I became Rhys’s drunk plaything.

Oh wow, that’s super convenient, isn’t it? I’m glad that happened and I’m glad that Amarantha has clearly lost all interest in not just Feyre, but also Tamlin, and he and Feyre can both just act casual and escape Amarantha’s notice. This is very much a realistic scenario given the details we’ve already read.

So, they go through this door and start ripping each other’s clothes off up against a wall.

I’m sorry, did you expect that he was trying to rescue her? That he was going to get her out of Under The Mountain so she wouldn’t die trying to save him? Nah, he just wanted to fuck her one last time.

Our tongues danced—not a waltz or a minuet, but a war-dance, a death dance of bone drums and screaming fiddles.

Brush your teeth then, idk what to tell you.

Just as Feyre is about to get Tamlin’s dick out, who should discover them but Rhysand? He points out all the paint smudged on Feyre because somehow she just didn’t think that part through. Probably from the horniness.

Wouldn’t it be hotter if they’d snuck off alone together and were just about to start ripping each other’s clothes off when they realize they can’t because of the paint? The sexual tension would have been… Well, hopefully, it would have been better.

Rhysand does the whole smarmy villain thing about oh, Amarantha would be so displeased to see her pet doing this or whatever. He mentions how the consequences could fall on Lucien and his other eye, which makes Tamlin step away from Feyre. Rhysand tells Tamlin to fix his clothes and take a hike, and Tamlin makes the paint smudges disappear from his skin and clothes, leading me to wonder yet again… what’s the fucking point of the paint? How would Rhysand ever know who touched Feyre if they can just make the paint disappear?

I feel like the point of the paint is simply “Sarah J. Maas watched The Mummy on TBS while writing this.”

Rhysand tells Feyre that if she’s so horny, she should have just mentioned it and he would have gotten her off, and Feyre does her usual thing where she calls him a name in outraged defiance and he reacts exactly the way we expect the male characters in this book to react:

With a few easy steps, he crossed the distance between us and pinned my arms to the wall. My bones groaned. I could have sworn shadow-talons dug into th stones beside my head. “Do you actually intend to put yourself at my mercy, or are you truly that stupid?” His voice was composed of sensuous, bone-breaking ire.

Sensuous. BONE-BREAKING. Ire.

It’s SENSUOUS that he could snap her bones. It’s SENSUOUS that he’s so furious with her.

This. This is the reason I will not be continuing to spork the series. The casual sexing-up of violence against the female main character can only ramp up at this point. I do not trust at all that it will somehow be rectified or discontinued. I learned my lesson from those awful books with the monochrome title.

“You’re a fool, Feyre. Do you have any idea what could have happened had Amarantha found you two in here? Tamlin might refuse to be her lover, but she keeps him at her side out of the hope that she’ll break him—dominate him, as she loves to do with our kind.”

First of all, “our kind?” Is Amarantha not a fae? Is this the clumsy groundwork for an unimpressive twist later in the series? Because I’ve skimmed to the end of this book and I never saw it come up that she’s not one of their “kind.”

Second, isn’t it TERRIBLE the way this FEMALE BITCH is DOMINATING all these DEFENSELESS MEN?! It should be the other way around! With men pushing women against walls and biting them or drugging them and sexually humiliating them in front of crowds. You know. In the sensuous way. The male way.

“You’re both fools,” he murmured, his breathing uneven. “How did you not think that someone would notice you were gone? You should thank the Cauldron Lucien’s delightful brothers weren’t watching you.”

Yeah, super lucky they weren’t. Otherwise, this scene couldn’t have possibly happened.

“What do you care?” I barked, and his grip tightened enough on my wrists that I knew my bones would snap with a little more pressure.

What is it with Rhysand and bone torture? Everything is about bones with this guy.

Anyway, he’s mad that she would even question why he cares whether she lives or dies and like… my bro. This is a valid question. But obviously, he still turns himself into the scary monster version of him because male reaction to any kind of emotion toward Feyre is always intense to the point of violence. That’s just how desirable she is.

But before he could go on, his head snapped to th door, then back to my face. The wings vanished as quickly as they had appeared, and then his lips were crushing into mine. His tongue pried my mouth open, forcing himself into me, into the space where I could still taste Tamlin. I pushed and thrashed, but he held firm, his tongue sweeping over the roof of my mouth, against my teeth, claiming my mouth, claiming me—

Is this a kissing scene or a dental exam scene?

The door was flung wide, and Amarantha’s curved figure filled its space.

LOL did Feyre just call Amarantha fat?

Tamlin—Tamlin was beside her, his eyes slightly wide, shoulders tight as Rhys’s lips still crushed mine.

Now, you can probably guess the reason why this scene is happening, right? Feyre’s got that magic paint all over her and it’s smudged and there’s got to be a way to explain that, right? That was my first thought, and then I was like, “But Jenny, the paint can magically go back to the way it was,” and then I was like, “I’m sure that doesn’t matter.”

But something sparked in the queen’s eyes as she looked at Rhysand. Amarantha’s whore, they’d called him.

That’s right. Amarantha is jealous of Feyre for stealing two of her men. She declares that she knew this would happen and that all humans are the same.

I kept my mouth shut, even as I could have died for shame, even as I ached to explain. Tamlin had to realize the truth.

Raise your hand if you know, deep in your heart, that Tamlin is the one who snitched on her in the first place and he did it without any consideration as to what would happen to Feyre  because he wanted to punish Rhysand.

But I wasn’t given the luxury of learning whether Tamlin understood as Amarantha clicked her tongue and turned away, taking her entourage with her. “Typical human trash with their inconsistent, dull hearts,” she said to herself—nothing more than a satisfied cat.

Here’s what I want to know: if the entire trials thing was to prove that Feyre, a human, is actually capable of love…

WHY DOESN’T THIS END THE WHOLE THING?!

The answer is: because the author didn’t remember that a huge part of this bargain hinges on the original curse. The whole premise is that beating these trials will prove Feyre truly loves Tamlin. This seems like it would invalidate the entire agreement.

But more on that later.

It was only when the light hit me that I saw the smudges and smears on my paint—smudges along my breasts and stomach, and the paint that had mysteriously appeared on Rhysand’s hands.

More on THIS later. In Feyre’s cell, which Rhysand sends her back to. After a section break, Feyre notes that she’s unaware of what time it is, and it struck me how often scenes in Feyre’s cell begin with some statement like, I didn’t know what time it was but it must have been days, or something similar. It’s profoundly repetitive but it didn’t strike me until right now.

Anyway, Rhysand shows up in Feyre’s cell all dishevelled and exhausted because Amarantha has been riding him like a mechanical pony.

“That damned bitched is running me ragged,” he went on, and dropped his hands from his temples to lean his head against the wall. “You hate me. Imagine how you’d feel if I made you serve in my bedroom. I’m the High Lord of the Night Court—not her harlot.”

Wow, that whole thing does a lot, doesn’t it? He owns her for a week every month and can do whatever he wants with her, is like, hey, at least I don’t rape you, and feels he’s simply too high class to be raped or something.

My head is spinning here. Like a five legged hamster on the world’s finest precision hamster wheel. First of all, the obsession with female-on-male sexual assault in this book is like MRA fanfic. Then, the casual shaming of victims of assault or sexual coercion and trafficking throughout the entire story is astounding. We’ve also got the implication that people of a certain quality don’t deserve to be raped, that it’s somehow worse and more of a violation if a person with a title is raped.

Oh, except for Feyre.

So the slurs were true. And I could imagine very easily how much I would hate him—what it would do to me—to be enslaved to someone like that.

Yeah, she can so imagine what you’re actually going through right now, Rhysand. Like, it’s happening to you, but she knows how bad it is because she can think about it happening to her.

She wants to know why Rhysand is coming to her and blurting all this shit out.

“Because I’m tired and lonely, and you’re the only person I can talk to without putting myself at risk.”

Which, frankly, I do not understand. Amarantha is punishing him with death by snu-snu, apparently, because she’s jealous of Feyre. It seems like there’s a lot of risk involved in talking to her at the moment.

“One wrong move tomorrow, Feyre, and we’re doomed.”

No presh.

“And if you fail,” he went on, more to himself than to me, “then Amarantha will rule forever.”

High Fae by day, motivational speaker by night.

Feyre finally admits that since Amarantha took Tamlin’s power before, there’s nothing stopping her from doing it again.

“He won’t be tricked again so easily,” he said, staring up at the ceiling.

I should certainly fucking hope not! The first time he got tricked was by her inviting him to a party, that he went to despite her attacking all the people who came to the last party. If he falls for that again, I don’t know wtf to think.

“Her biggest weapon is that she keeps our powers contained. But she can’t access them, not wholly—though she can control us through them. It’s why I’ve never been able to shatter her mind—why she’s not dead already. The moment you break Amarantha’s curse, Tamlin’s wrath will be so great that no force in the world will keep him from splattering her on the walls.”

I see a lot of praise for this world’s intricate worldbuilding and I think I finally understand where those rave reviews have come from. People confused vague details with exciting twists. There hasn’t been a single moment throughout this book at which point the control Amarantha has over the High Fae is clear. She took their powers. Nope, she left them some. Also, she can control them with their powers. Also, she still made a bargain to relinquish that control so that they can kill her immediately.

These are not twists. These are convenient instances of slapping bandaids over plot holes that are gushing inconsistency.

But if you really want to see some logic hoops that must be sommersaulted through, while both the hoops and the sommersaulter are on fire, it’s time to learn why Rhysand has been drugging and doing Cauldron knows what to Feyre.

“[…] Working Tamlin into a senseless fury is the best weapon we have against her. Seeing you enter into a fool’s bargain with Amarantha was one thing, but when Tamlin saw my tattoo on your arm … Oh, you should have been born with my abilities, if only to have felt the rage that seeped from him.”

See? All this possessive, rapey stuff he’s doing is actually necessary to defeat Amarantha.

Of course, he could just help Feyre beat the final task, like she beat the second one, and not have to do all this pervy, violating shit to her. But then this wouldn’t be SPICY.

Feyre points out that all that pervy, violating shit actually puts Rhysand in danger because Tamlin will kill him, too. Rhysand is like:

“Feyre, for Cauldron’s sake. I drug you, but you don’t wonder why I never touch you beyond your waist or arms?”

Yeah. For Cauldron’s sake, Feyre. He drugs you, but he only touches you in a couple places while you’re blacked out.

“It’s the only claim I have to innocence,” he said, “the only thing that will make Tamlin think twice before entering into a battle with me that would cause a catastrophic loss of innocent life. It’s the only way I can convince him that I was on your side. Believe me, I would have liked nothing more than to enjoy you—but there are bigger things at stake than taking a human woman to my bed.”

Thank god he still wants to fuck Feyre. My biggest fear was that a male character in this book wouldn’t be totally entranced by her. That kind of happened with Captain Barnfuck in that earlier chapter and I almost passed out.

I don’t have to point out that this whole “I paint you and drug you because I’m actually just trying to save my people” thing doesn’t make any sense, right? Everyone is on that page with me already? The evidence provided by the smeared paint still means nothing because he can magic it right back. He’s leaving smudges on her practically naked body but only in places that apparently it’s chaste to touch someone’s practically naked body while they’re drugged? Tamlin is going to look at the smudged paint and go, well, this is all on the up because you only touched my drugged, naked girlfriend’s waist and arms and not her boobies, so I won’t fight for her?

And Rhysand doesn’t seem so good at risk analysis. He wants to goad Tamlin into some kind of violent, sexually jealous frenzy so that he’ll murder Amarantha and everyone will be saved. But Rhysand also acknowledges that if it goes wrong and Tamlin doesn’t believe that Rhysand was on Feyre’s side, there will be a catastrophic loss of innocent life. 

The entire Rhysand-sexually-humiliates-Feyre-for-the-good-of-all-mankind thing falls completely apart when you realize that it hinges entirely on Tamlin caring more about Feyre than every single innocent life destroyed by Amarantha before Feyre got there. The implication is that unless Feyre is violated, Tamlin won’t be mad enough about all the other shit Amarantha did and he’ll just be fine letting her live.

On top of that, we also learn that Rhysand’s father killed Tamlin’s father and brothers.

“It’s a long story, and I don’t feel like getting into it, […]”

Oh, thank god. But don’t you love that a crucial piece of characterization and world-building happened and the author was like, eh, don’t feel like expanding on that? Rhysand does sum things up by saying well, Amarantha wanted to punish the son of her friend’s murderer but that line still absolutely killed me.

Hey. Just a little thought here. Probably not important but…

If Rhysand killed Tamlin’s father and brothers, what sense does it make to then drug and sexually exploit Tamlin’s girlfriend in an attempt to escape Tamlin’s wrath?

Feyre realizes that Rhysand kissed her because he knew Amarantha was about to discover them. Then, Feyre also realizes that Rhysand didn’t force her up against the wall and grope her because he’s a bad guy. He did it for her own good!

If he hadn’t been kissing me, if he hadn’t shown up and interrupted us, I would have gone out into that throne room covered in smudged paint. And everyone—especially Amarantha—would have known what I’d been up to. It wouldn’t have taken much to figure out whom I’d been with, especially not once they saw the paint on Tamlin.

1. Tamlin made the paint disappear from his clothes. We’ve known a long time that he can get stains off his clothes with magic.

2. Rhysand can make the paint magically unsmudge.

3. Amarantha did see what you were up to. With Rhysand.

Regardless of his motives or his methods, Rhysand was keeping me alive. And he had done so even before I set foot Under the Mountain.

I read that and went, “What the fuck is she talking about? Before?” and then I realized that she’s giving Rhysand credit for saving her by taking Clare instead.

Rhysand tells Feyre that she should try to find a way to use all this information against him. He starts to fade away, only for Feyre to stop him by telling him that when her arm was hurt, she would have given up every week of the year for him to heal it, and he’s like, “I know,” and the chapter ends.

The infuriatingly, unbelievably awful chapter is finished.