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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.
This is going to be a super short recap because the chapter is super short, and frankly, that’s good because only two things happen in it. I love a chapter that’s short and has two things happen in it, especially in a book where all the chapters are too long and have half a thing happen in them.
So, Feyre is seeing herself “through eyes that weren’t mine,” and since we know she has this link with Rhysand and since she saw herself through his eyes briefly in the previous chapter, we know she’s seeing herself laying there dead because Rhysand is seeing her laying there dead with her neck broken.
Feel free to insert Billy Crystal from The Princess Bride saying, “mostly dead.”
Tears shone in Lucien’s remaining eye as he raised his hands and removed the fox mask.
Feyre said the magic word, and now the masks can come off. The curse is broken.
Tamlin’s still-masked face twisted into something truly Lupine as he raised his eyes to the queen and snarled. Fangs lengthened.
Back up. I must have missed something here. I thought the mask came off when he was in beast mode. I also, for some reason, keep assuming that beast mode is part of the curse. Possibly because I spent the last eight weeks in Beauty and the Beast. ed.—The musical. I did not, unfortunately, become briefly part of a fairytale world. Or because it was described as part of the imaginary blight Tamlin made up. Either way, I wasn’t super clear on how beast mode worked before but now I’m extra confused.
Amarantha backed away—away from my corpse.
Look. I’ll allow this one. Would I have written it differently? Yup. I also wouldn’t have written ACOTAR if given the choice. But if I had, I would have just said, “Amarantha backed away from my corpse.” But Maas seems to believe that em-dashes make things more visceral. In a scene like this? Fine. Have the damn em-dash, and don’t say I never gave you anything.
The queen was blasted back, thrown against the far wall, and Tamlin let out a roar that shook the mountain as he launched himself at her. He shifted into his beast form faster than I could see—fur and claws and pound upon pound of lethal muscle.
Wait, didn’t his face just go beast mode, and she saw it? Also, I have a question (that will probably never be answered) about Feyre’s sight here. Did he change so fast that Rhysand couldn’t see it happen? What kind of eyesight do fairies have? Is it better than mortal eyesight? I need to know so that I can tell just how fast this transformation is that can’t be seen but was seen just two paragraphs ago.
She had no sooner hit the wall than he gripped her by the neck, and the stones cracked as he shoved her against it with a clawed paw.
In the last chapter, there was also a lot of people getting slammed into shit so hard the walls/floor/etc cracked. I’m starting to worry about the structural integrity of this underground chamber.
Amarantha fights back, but Tamlin has magic shielding abilities, I guess? And when the Attor and the goblin-type fairies loyal to Amarantha try to protect her, the other fairies in the throne room attack them. Lucien throws a sword to Tamlin:
Tamlin caught it in a massive paw. Amarantha’s scream was cut short as he drove the sword through her head and into the stone beneath.
And then closed his powerful jaws around her throat—and ripped it out.
Hey, here’s a question: if Tamlin is so much more powerful than Amarantha, why didn’t he kill her before she could curse him? She’d already stolen some of his power, right? I mean, she gathered all the High Lords and took a bunch of their power, but Feyre breaking the curse didn’t have anything to do with restoring that power to the High Lords of Prythian. It was just about breaking the curse over Tamlin and the Spring Court. Feyre figuring out the riddle does nothing for the fact that Amarantha stole all that power before she cursed Tamlin, so it stands to reason that now that the curse is broken, Tamlin is just operating at the amount of power he had after Amarantha stole the rest of it, right?
Oh, Jenny. Don’t be silly. Sarah wants the story to go this way, so it will go this way, regardless of what she wrote before.
It wasn’t until I was again staring down at my own broken body that I realized whose eyes I’d been seeing through.
It’s Rhysand; we already guessed that. And it’s super convenient that, in the middle of a battle for the freedom of Prythian, Rhysand is just standing there watching and doing nothing so that we can see what’s happening in the scene.
Yeah, that little “seeing through someone else’s eyes” device doesn’t work super well when it requires that person to wield immense power yet not participate in a giant battle for the freedom of their people.
Tamlin falls to his knees in his hot guy form.
He scooped up my limp, broken body, cradling me to his chest. He hadn’t removed his mask, but I saw the tears that fell onto my filthy tunic, and I heard the shuddering sobs that broke from him as he rocked me, stroking my hair.
“No,” someone breathed—Lucien, his sword dangling from his hand. Indeed, there were many High Fae and faeries who watched with damp eyes as Tamlin held me.
The people who were participating every night as she was drugged and forced to dance for them in a sexually provocative manner, who had placed bets that she would die and who laughed and enjoyed seeing her hurt are all now suddenly weeping. Why?
Because the author believes everyone should be weeping for Feyre. Because she’s the Mary-est to ever Sue. No one is allowed to dislike her (except for the whore fairy who tried to steal her boyfriend), and everyone should weep when she dies.
And I get it. They’re happy they’re free from Amarantha, and they’re grateful. But Feyre only freed the Spring Court. Tamlin is the one who freed all of them.
But Tamlin isn’t the author’s avatar in this world. WHOOPS, WHO SAID THAT? WHO IN THIS ROOM DARED TO IMPLY THAT ALL OF MAAS’S MAIN CHARACTERS ARE HER BUT WITH SPECIAL POWERS?!
Now, Feyre is dead. Book over, right? But there’s a whole series. So she has to be saved. And the first person to do anything about it is Lucien’s dad, who I guess no longer has a fucking problem with humans or whatever?
Tamlin glanced up only when the High Lord opened his fingers and tipped over his hand. A glittering spark fell upon me. It flared and vanished as it touched my chest.
One by one, the High Lords come forward and put their little drops of light on Feyre’s chest. Every single High Lord. It’s like the slowest, talkiest bukkake video.
Rhysand stepped forward, bringing my shred of soul with him, and I found Tamlin starting at me—at us. “For what she gave,” Rhysand said, extending a hand, “we’ll bestow what our predecessors have granted to few before.” He paused. “This makes us even,” he added, and I felt the twinkle of his humor as he opened his hand and let the seed of light fall on me.
Again, it was Tamlin who did the hard work. But the only important part of this book is making sure Feyre is the center of all the attention, all the time.
I’ve said many times (and I’m sticking to it) that I’m not reading the rest of the series. But I strongly feel that this will do what a lot of other, similar fantasy not-YA-but-definitely-targeted-to-online-YA-fandoms series do: the heroine becomes more powerful, is revealed to have more specialness, finds out she’s the chosen one more than once, etc. There are some super amateurish books out there where the authors just pile power upon destiny upon “turns out you’re not human, you’re a [fantastical creature]” over and over until all possible conflict is rendered utterly useless in the face of the all-powerful being they’ve made their main character into, but the reader is still supposed to feel that everything is high stakes because the plot never wraps up.
So yeah, anyway, then Tamlin puts his light on her chest and kisses her and says he loves her, and the chapter ends.
And guess what? I thought there were forty-seven chapters.
There are only forty-six.
WE ARE ALMOST DONE!
“…the heroine becomes more powerful, is revealed to have more specialness, finds out she’s the chosen one more than once, etc. There are some super amateurish books out there where the authors just pile power upon destiny upon “turns out you’re not human, you’re a [fantastical creature]” over and over until all possible conflict is rendered utterly useless in the face of the all-powerful being they’ve made their main character into…” This makes me think of all the unlikeable male action heroes from bad Hollywood films (Steven Seagal, I’m looking in your direction, but even many of the objectively better actors fit here) who we are just supposed to like because they’re the protagonist. Their importance is totally unearned but universally honored by all supporting characters in the story which essentially gaslights the audience into thinking they are good and heroic. If you’re a man, you can insert yourself into the dumb fantasy as the hero. If you’re a woman/minority/foreigner/queer/unattractive person or whatever, you may subconsciously absorb that messaging as the person witnessing “greatness” from the sidelines and it actually does some damage. At least if you’re young and impressionable. Now that we’re seeing so much atrociously bad writing about shitty female leads, I guess it’s clear that lessons were not learned. Equality without evolution here. Yay feminism?
I mean, the key difference between Gilgamesh and Beowulf (other than being crafted centuries apart in different areas of Eurasia lol) is that the former has some interesting faults. And both of them could easily fall into this same mold.
It’s honestly just egotism and anyone can have that. Learning how to cut that away from your writing is hard. To this day, I still love Coelasquid’s blog post “Don’t worry guys, everything isn’t a Mary Sue” because it discusses the importance of context.
Incidentally, to add onto your point about marginalization, I’d argue the core issue is that such people are so often told they must earn their place to be considered good enough whereas anyone with power and privilege is simply lauded for being who they are and where they are in life. This is why normally the marginalized can see the cracks in the veneer and also feel damaged by seeing these inner expectations on display.
On the flip side, any time the marginalized people try to present themselves as the protagonist without any concern for their perceived place, they get struck down much harder by everyone around them with criticisms. For that reason, Mary Sue tends to remain a gendered term. It’s not just about feminism and toxic social norms though.
It’s also an issue of self-esteem and self worth and I guess desiring unconditional love for their main character in the same way the author does. That’s the kind of downside to “Kill Your Darlings.” Oddly enough, maybe Maas was trying to play around with that idea IDK. Since Feyre supposedly has this theme exploring love, it’s stupid but it vaguely makes sense that she “earned” their love by saving them or something?? I guess? Like you can tell the narrative is trying to imply that Feyre fucked up a lot but she survives because she eventually stops relying on just her ummm supposed hunting skills and focuses on her connection to these people in her life (it’s not actually there; this is the implication given.)
I feel as if Maas is mocking her protagonist a lot of the time and tries to present her as if Feyre worked very hard for what she gets while also refusing to really put any effort into that side of things? The author and the character both. So it’s this disjointed mess that gaslights in new and interesting ways. It really is the Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girl Boss side of the Mary Sue spectrum lol. I mean that is kinda what you mentioned but it goes beyond that here.
I don’t feel as if Maas loves Feyre so it seems disingenuous to me when she tries to present this perspective. And maybe that’s her attempt to show depression as it is since it’s a struggle with loving yourself and hating yourself, internalizing all the bad things in your life as this ugly pit that’s so hard to climb back out of. However, I’ve never loved Feyre and while I can’t know for sure how many people prefer ACOTAR over her other series, the one recommendation post I saw on reddit had at least a handful of people saying they liked the other two series better. I suspect some of that could be from putting this weirdly gross and gritty lens onto Feyre and this supposed world without any real nuance or skill.
Eh anyway I’m so glad this book is almost over and while I’m certainly curious about the sequels, I don’t know if I even want to read further recaps on this shit. I kinda dislike the hate spirals I fall into with this kind of train wreck content. I mean other people should definitely still recap those books if they want to and I might even give into curiosity anyway. I’m just talking about myself here lol
er I meant to say kind of the downside and the NEED to “Kill Your Darlings” which I’m pretty sure I got from Limyaael’s Fantasy Rants.
Sorry if anything I said didn’t make much sense. I’m operating on limited sleep here.
I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding (some intentional) about what “kill your darlings” is supposed to mean.
All too often it’s used to tell budding writers, “That thing you loved best? It actually sucks. Get rid of it.” Or “if you don’t torture your characters as much as you can, you’re not a Serious Writer.”
The only interpretation I’ve ever found truly useful is this one: Say you have some element in your work that you think is really cool and you put a lot of work into. If you can’t make it fit into the larger work, or it throws off the mood or story beats… cut it.
There was one hilarious joke in Into the Spider-Verse that got cut, despite everyone loving it, because it ruined the mood of one scene.
That’s exactly what “kill your darlings” means: if something doesn’t work for the story/plot/development/characterisation – it doesn’t matter if it’s brilliant, funny, hot, fascinating etc. – it has to go.
“One by one, the High Lords come forward and put their little drops of light on Feyre’s chest. Every single High Lord.”
I’m guessing Maas is my age (late 30’s) because I too was very moved by that climactic scene in the first Pokemon movie in the Year of our Lord 2000. (It’s the first movie I ever cried at — I was 13, lol. It still makes me cry.)
Bwa ha ha ha ha! WAS FEYRE JUST ASH KETCHUM THIS ENTIRE TIME?!?!
I wouldn’t be surprised. I wouldn’t! She supposedly was into Sailor Moon too. I’m sure she watched other popular anime way back when.
Ash Ketchum would be a much more loveable and kind hero, for sure.
Oh absolutely! Ash was stubborn too and made a lot of mistakes as well but at least he was also a ten year old (forever *cough* I mean way back then.)
ha ha also now I’m gonna have the Hanamusa ship (aka Jessie x Delia) on the brain so thank you for that. It’s a crackship but it’s ten million times better than the supposed love story in this entire series even with Maas switching love interests on purpose. I can confidently say that without having read these books for myself lol. 😀
I was also moved! And Maas is… yeah, around 37 or so, give or take a year.
Fifty years into a reign of terror and Amarantha’s only ride-or-dies are the Attor and some goblins? Riiiiiiiight. Because nobody ever wants to cozy up to power. Nobody actually agreed with her stance on the issues. Nobody was horny for/infatuated with the beautiful badass. Only the UGLY PEOPLE truly supported her.
The important thing is that she got stabbed in the face so now Feefee is definitely the prettiest!
Also we never actually saw Amarantha torture anyone except Feyre (as far as I know) so it’s possible she outsourced it to some other pretty sadists. I mean I guess she tortured Lucien but we also have canon confirmation that she made Tamlin do that which could count as double-torture except we know he’s going to become a jerk-ass retroactively so who knows?? And for all I know, Tamlin and Rhys are the ones who tortured and murdered Clare for Amarantha.
Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole thing was a set-up and Amarantha just thought she had most of their power but the High Lords used this as a cover-up to do whatever they wanted. All we have is their word and Rhysand’s word. And supposedly Feyre is briefly seeing through his eyes but she doesn’t get any access to his memories as far as I know.
I know supposedly the Attor beat this shit out of Feyre that one time but I still insist he’s a Gargoyle with the head of a bat-eared Pug and a snake tongue. Who wouldn’t find him cute?!
Hell, who doesn’t like goblins? They’re excellent little shits.
lol wait I’m thinking of a French Bulldog basically. So the head of a French Bulldog with the tongue of a snake and some bat wings, maybe some scales for fun idk.
Oh God. They brought her back to life with Convenient Death Reversal Sparkles. Isn’t that what they used in every 90s English-dubbed anime series?
Yes but I will brook no insult to the Mewtwo movie. That was cinematic poetry! >:c
Wait. This Big Sacrifice for which they’re all suddenly Oh So Grateful… didn’t that just now involve killing two completely innocent people? And we’re to believe that not one person was like, “Look, that’s my cousin she stabbed, so how ’bout instead of the Pokemon Tears we just build her a nice memorial?”
Between this, Clare Beddor, and the briefly-mentioned business about Tamlin sending scores of his own people to get killed, I’m getting some serious Lord Farquaad vibes from this book.
It’s even worse that it would have been more impactful for Amarantha to have brought out only one fairy for Feyre to kill and then reveal that it was Tamlin. It was just gratuitous murder/angst porn to have those previous two exist at all when we could have cut straight to the gut punch of the protagonist realizing the villain was telling her to free her lover by killing him. She could then have her realization that he actually had a stone heart and therefore this was the one place she could stab him where he’d probably survive it, etc. Especially with the begging fairy and Clare, it feels like Maas thinks that the more people die in your book, and the more horrible their deaths are, the more mature and impressive the story is.
IKR? There was absolutely no reason to put two nameless extras in that scene.
SJM probably read acclaim for other authors who had tons of characters die and/or have awful things happen to them, and thought, “ooh, that’s how I’ll prove that I am a Serious Author.” She missed that those acclaimed authors will actually have the damage be permanent, and don’t confine the damage to nameless extras*.
*Clare Beddor counts as a nameless extra for the purposes of this discussion, since she’s only mentioned once before she gets snuffed, and never appears alive.
Tbf Feyre does reflect on her guilt over the two innocent faeries a lot in the next book. Controversial opinion, but imo that’s one of the few parts that’s actually done well in ACoMaF. She finally realizes that these Fae don’t just exist for her benefit, that they have lives and loved ones, and that killing them had messed up consequences, and it keeps coming back to haunt her.
That said, I haven’t read the resolution of her guilt around it yet; it’s possible that that part is done badly enough that I’ll have to take everything back XD
Another thing: Feyre should not have a good-looking corpse here. Wasn’t Amarantha doing the “telekinetically lift victim and then start messing up their body” thing? That corpse should look like one of Vecna’s victims from Stranger Things.