A Court of Thorns and Roses
By Sarah J. Maas
By the Cauldron…I really wanted to like this book. I really did. It hits so many checkmarks; adventure, faeries, a strong female lead and, to top it all off, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I hadn’t read anything else by Maas, but I’d heard great things about Throne of Glass, so I had fairly high expectations going into this one. *Sigh* Well, let’s get to it.
**************************************SPOILERS BELOW**************************************
The original Beauty and the Beast tells the story of Beauty, who trades her life for her fathers and becomes mistress of a castle belonging to a mysterious and hideous Beast. She spends several months inside the Beast’s enchanted castle in luxury. Eventually, the Beast allows her to go back to visit her family. As a parting gift, he gives Beauty a magic mirror to see what’s happening back at the castle. She begins to feel guilty about leaving the Beast and gazes into the mirror to see the Beast is dying of heartbreak. Beauty rushes back to the castle to confess her love, and the tears she sheds over him break the curse; Beast turns back into a handsome prince.
A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACoTaR) starts out in a similar way with our Belle, Feyre, living in a small cottage with her two sisters and father. When his trade ships disappear, her father loses everything, so Feyre must now hunt to provide for them. One day, she is out hunting and comes across a faerie in the shape of a wolf. Feyre shoots him, not for self-protection or food, but because she blames faeries for the poor state of humanity. She skins the wolf and takes the pelt back to sell it. That night a monstrous, wolf-like Beast appears and says that according to the ancient Treaty between the faeries and humans, she now owes her life to the faeries. To satisfy the Treaty, she can either die or live out her life in the Beast’s mansion. So…
Feyre agrees to be taken to the mansion and the Beast turns back into a tall, blonde, muscular “High Fae” named Tamlin. However, it’s okay because he has a masquerade mask on, so he could be a total beast under there with a crooked nose or something. Just like the original tale, Feyre starts to look past the square of fabric on his face, and they fall in love throughout the slowest 250 pages I’ve ever read.
The Plot:
It was slow. Maas did grab my attention immediately when Feyre went hunting in the woods. Also, I really liked the trip to the market and Tamlin’s arrival at the cottage, but after that it was like nothing had happened. She went to lunch and dinner a lot… they involved something about a starlight pool and staring at Tamlin’s muscles.
I turned to my boyfriend one night and asked him why on Earth I didn’t like this book. The answer was simple: there is nothing truly going on. It was obvious that there was some sort of curse, which Feyre barely acknowledged and did little to investigate. She paints often. Feyre and Tamlin have a couple conversations in which they bond over how they felt growing up alone. We’re told that they have a lot more conversations together, and then BAM! They’re in love, but he sends her away.
She’s home for a couple days (just enough time for me to wish that Nesta, her sister, was around all the time). Feyre finally decides to jump into action and rescue Tamlin from the evil Amarana… Amarantha? My eyes always glazed over the end of her name. She discovers that Amarannana has killed another girl, Clare, from her village, believing Clare to be who Tamlin was in love with. Of course, Amarannina is madly in love with Tamlin. The girl had obviously been brutally tortured before being hung on the wall. Feyre feels horrible because she had given the girl’s name to Rhysand, a High Lord serving Amarranini. Apparently, since Rhysand knew that Clare wasn’t Feyre, it was okay to let Clare be tortured to death and for Tamlin to do nothing while it happened. Tamlin managed to do a lot of nothing while Feyre goes through Amaranninni’s three trials. We’re told he’s being quite to keep his people safe, which is understandable, but he clearly has no plan to step in and save Feyre as she’s smashed against metal grate and almost eaten by a worm.
In the original fairytale, the Beast is hideous. In almost every version since, the Beast has been trapped as a giant, hairy monster so Beauty must look beyond all that to the person he is. Potential Stockholm Syndrome aside, this was my favorite part of the original story. ACoTaR replaces the Beast’s monstrous appearance with a mask and Feyre’s vague hatred for all faeries. There’s not a specific reason for this. Faeries and humans fought centuries ago, at the end of which humans won their freedom. Now there are rumors about faeries possibly killing humans, so I understand Feyre having some animosity for them, but I didn’t buy the personal burning hatred. Maybe if faeries had recently held her town captive, sunk her father’s trade ships, or had some hand in her mother’s death, I would have believed it more. But as it was, it made sense that her hatred would fall away quickly as she got to know Tamlin and the other faeries because there was no good reason for her to hate them in the first place. Consequently, I didn’t see her acceptance of the faeries as the accomplishment the book seemed to think it was.
The Worldbuilding:
This was probably the most disappointing part of the book for me. However, I will admit this may have partly been due to some personal preferences. When I pick up a book about faeries, I expect whimsy, strange riddles, ordinary things being turned inside out and upside down. Faeries are tricksters. Cunning and strange, they have made sport of humans for centuries. In ACoTaR, you could have easily swapped out ‘High Fae’ for 'French Aristocrats', and almost nothing would have changed. The fancy coaches, manicured gardens, and fancy dresses would all be the same. Since the original story was written by a French author, this element is simply following tradition; most versions have kept the Beast as some member of the French gentry. But again, this is supposed to be about faeries, magic, and madness. I want whimsy goddammit!
For me, the part that captures the spirit of faeries best is when Tamlin sends Feyre home to protect her, and she discovers her family now living in extravagant wealth. Her father and younger sister believe Feyre was visiting a sick aunt, but Nesta knows better. She never believed the glamour that Tamlin had put on them; she even went as far as to try to find Feyre in faerie territory. I loved how haunted Nesta was, having to watch her father and sister live a life she knew was a lie, how she seemed to have one foot in another world with her blank expressions and peculiar ways. I also loved how she managed to see through the glamour when almost no humans can and how Feyre thinks this is because of her sister’s ‘iron will.’ I took this as a play on faeries’ traditional weakness against iron. I wanted more like this play on words.
What I said above is more about the tone of the book… as for the rest of the Worldbuilding, it was standard for faerie YA right now. Different faerie courts ruled by different types of weather or times of day i.e., Dawn Court, Spring Court, Night Court, etc. (Was I the only one hoping that there would be a People’s Court?). There were other lands, both faerie and human. The big baddy, Amranuni, was from the ancestral land of the faeries.
Magic just kind of happened with no real defined magic system, but even the randomness of the magic seemed especially convenient at times. I am perfectly happy with books that have magic with no defined system. I think this is how books like Stardust and Howl’s Moving Castle work. Magic pushes and pulls the characters in different directions, so it’s never clear how it is going to behave or where to find it; chaos over order.
On the other hand, books like Mistborn and The Demon King present meticulously defined magic systems, so the reader almost always knows what a character can do in a given situation. The magic in ACoTaR had its moments of wild magic with Fire Night, the will-o-wisps, and the starlight pool. The characters mention a lot of random magical things, like a ribbon made of rainbow.
Then, Amarooni was able to steal everyone’s magic with a potion that turned their hearts into stone, trap a man in a ring, and throw people across rooms? Tamlin can send things into alternate dimensions, (he shortens the dinner table, so he can be closer to Feyre) but later Rhysand accuses Tamlin’s magic of being nothing more than brute strength and shape-shifting? So, can all High Lords send people into other dimensions even with diminished magic? If all the High Lords are just hanging out Under the Mountain, why couldn’t they just POOF Amarannu into another dimension? The magic was just not well-defined… I didn’t know who could do what when. Everyone could heal people, but people still had scars; it just didn’t fit together. I know this is only the first in a series, so there is potential for Maas to develop this as she goes along. I just would have liked to see more of this in the first book.
The Writing:
The writing itself wasn’t bad. I noticed the air of a new writer working between the pages, which I thought was strange as I believed Maas was an established author when this book came out. I later found out she had written this book much earlier in her career. In parts of the book, it shows. There are some metaphors that don’t quite work. Specifically, a metaphor involving batter cake springs into my mind but overall, I didn’t have much trouble with the writing. It didn’t blow me away, nor was I lost in lyrical prose, but it was perfectly readable.
The Characters:
Feyre: Okay, for the last time, just because a female character has a bow and arrow does not make her a badass. I don’t know how many times I have to say that. Feyre starts out likeable enough. She hunts to take care of her family, even if her family comes off as mean in a cartoonish way. For most of the book, she lets herself be strung along, not taking a lot of action. She does try to get some answers at first by trapping the creepy future seeing faerie but quickly turns her attention to painting. From there, it’s a blur of days spent painting and dinners with Lucien and Tamlin. It’s not until the third act that she decides to do something by going after Tamlin. Also, what the hell was she guessing all the times she tried to solve Amaranna’s riddle? The answer is love. Seriously? How did she not try that earlier?
Tamlin: Tall, muscular, blonde, powerful, has a mask. Brooding, deep, misunderstood, #Complicated. What can I say? He was fine. Not fine but just fine. He spends the first half of the book unable to talk to Feyre about his curse and the second half not speaking to Feyre to protect her from Amarinno. He watches silently as Feyre almost gets eaten by a giant worm and smashed around in a cage, but the thing that really ticks him off is when he sees Rhysand’s mark on her arm. That’s what gets to him? Really? It’s not like he helps Feyre out of danger, because she almost dies over and over. However, after seeing her with another guy, he’s suddenly making out with her in the hallway. Just no. I was okay with Tamlin before this, but after he let Clare be tortured to death and almost let Feyre die, I was done.
Lucien: I liked Lucien. He was more laid back than everyone else despite his tragic past. He joked with Feyre and risked his neck to heal her. I’d like to see more of him.
Rhysand: As High Lord of the Night Court, he was a jerk at first but one you were obviously supposed to like. Lucien even calls him Amarino’s Whore. As it turns out, he was looking for ways to take down Amarauna and free his people the whole time. He even comes to visit Feyre in her cell to heal her, for a price. Feyre agrees to spend one week a month at the Night Court after she is freed, which smells a lot like the makings of a love triangle to me. I liked Rhysand, for the most part, until he started having Feyre accompany him to the balls. I didn’t get it. He had already told the guards to leave Feyre alone, what was wrong with letting Feyre stay in her cell at night? Rhysand is taking Feyre to the balls to upset Tamlin enough to make him beat up Amaranna once the curse is broken? Okay. So, why does he have to drug Feyre every night so that she blacks out and dances up on his lap? But it’s okay because he only puts his hand on her waist? No. I’m pretty sure Rhysand is being set up as part of a love triangle, so I just hope he does less creepy stuff in the future.
Nesta: Mean girl at the beginning, cold as ice and hard as stone by the end.
The Romance:
This should be the heart of the story (no pun intended), but I didn’t really believe in Tamlin and Feyre. I felt like a lot of the time they spent together was glossed over, so I didn’t see them getting to know each other. It changed so quickly from hatred to liking to undying all-consuming love. It wasn’t insta-love, but it didn’t feel like enough time was spent on developing their relationship.
Overall, this book wasn’t bad, but it wasn't great. 2 ½ stars.