Exactly why I stopped reading the books, even though I enjoyed the stories at first. Thereâs so much potential there, but itâs all wasted by her insistence on unoriginality and in clinging to whatever norms the ya genre has already established.
We Need to Talk About SJM
I was recently anonymously asked what exactly my issue with Sarah Jane Maas is, and ended up writing what was essentially a thesis paper about it. Unfortunately, Tumblr pulled a Shitty Website move and deleted everything I wrote under the âread moreâ tab, so Iâm compiling my reasons here on a masterpost, for your reading leisure.
EDIT: Read more tab continues to not work for me, so I apologize to all of you who have to suffer through this. Iâll tag is as a long post accordingly.
Letâs get started
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Reason 1: She preaches messages that no young girl needs to (or should) hear.
Granted, I know the a lot of the YA genre are adults who are no strangers to smut and arenât phased by toxic behavior in characters. But on the same token, a lot of the YA genre is fueled by young girls age 12-20. Now Iâm not going to sit here and pretend like girls in that age range arenât reading/writing smutty fanfiction or dating. I know they do, I did, most of my friends did. But at that age, young girls are still trying to figure out who they are and who they want to be, including in terms of relationships. Thatâs where my problem with Maas comes in.
Maas writes, almost exclusively, toxic relationships - at best. Straight up abusive at worst. At one point in ACOTAR, I had to put the book down because I was so disgusted by what happened. Rhysand assaulted Feyre. Iâm not kidding. He kissed and groped her against her will, telepathically asked whether she was wet about it, and wondered aloud what she looked like naked. The entire goal of doing this was to piss Feyreâs then-boyfriend off, and for Rhysand to assert his dominance as a Fae lord or whatever the fuck (yâknow, like rapists do). Feyre was left shaking, nauseated, and scared for her life. But the worst part? It was written like this was something sexy and desirable. Literal penetration was all that stopped this from being a horrifying rape scene, and I couldnât believe Maas wrote about it like some hot erotica. It wasnât romantic. It wasnât cute. It was disgusting, violating, and I was furious when I read it (especially given Feyre actually ends up with Rhysand eventually. What the fuck).
In Throne of Glass - and subsequent sequels - there are couples (namely Rowan and Aelin) who quite literally spit on each other, punch each other, and bite each other. No, not âlove nipâ bite, I mean âIâm trying to tear your skin offâ bite. But weâre meant to believe theyâre endgame, meant to be, and a totally healthy relationship. Letâs not even get into emotional abuse and manipulation, because holy fuck does every single character in these books act like a goddamn villain if we were to go over that in detail. All you need to know is that âif you donât do xyz then Iâll leave and never come backâ âwhat made you think I cared about you? Youâre nothing to me. Just kidding, I love youâ and similar sentiments are rampant in these series.
While weâre here, what is up with this âmatesâ nonsense? Every character pairing we see by the end of the ToG series has a âmate,â and swears off everyone theyâve had before, claiming them to be âfalse mates.â This whole âmatesâ business sounds a lot like somebody desperately trying to reassure their insanely jealous partner that they donât still have feelings for their ex. Thatâs not healthy! Thatâs not okay! Your exes helped you narrow down your search. They helped you understand yourself more and what you want (or donât want). And yâknow what? Itâs okay to have happy memories with an ex. Itâs okay to not hate your ex. Telling young girls that all that matters is their future husband (which erases LGBT+ girls, as well as straight women who donât want to get married) is harmful as hell, and contributes to the idea that a girl is only âcompleteâ when she finds her âsoulmate.â
Girls 12-20 really do not need to be given the message that itâs normal - nay, romantic - for their partners to hit them, humiliate them, or assault them. You may be saying, âClara, come on, girls know fiction isnât reality and no girl is actually going to stand for that kind of thing in real life.â But I canât tell you how horribly my own view of relationships was corrupted for several years after all the books I read as a tween where the protagonist had to defend her flirty boyfriend from the advances of other girls. I didnât trust boys not to cheat on me. I didnât trust my girl friends not to try and steal a boyfriend. I thought girls who dressed up and wore makeup and dated a lot were sluts. It took me years of conscious effort to unlearn those ideas. Fiction can and does influence the reader. So again I say: teaching girls that itâs âhot and sexyâ when men literally abuse you is not a message a 12-20 year old should be hearing. Ever.
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Reason 2: What exactly does Maas want her readers to be?
Yâknow, Maas thinks Caelena/Aelin is a role model for young girls. But hereâs a brief list of things Celery/Alien has done throughout the Throne of Glass series:
1. Tried to smash a flower pot over a girlâs head for showing interest in courting Prince Dorian. Despite said girl literally being present at the castle for that purpose and Caelena was not.
2. Very nearly murdered Dorian for absolutely fuckall reason, and then she got mad at Chaol for trying to stop her (keep in mind: Chaol and Dorian are supposed to be best friends. So like⌠yeah, heâs gonna come to Dorianâs defense).
3. Straight up said, âif I get bored being queen Iâll just go and conquer more lands for my kingdom.â Imperialist there much, Aelin?
This is Maasâ role model material? Half the shit she does from Heir of Fire onward could be described as âwar crimeâ and the other half could be described as âselfish.â Maas seems to think that a shit ton of half-baked âwittyâ lines and a few âbadassâ fight scenes completely makes up for having an amoral character as the protagonist you want to flaunt around as an icon for young girls.
It would be one thing if Maas said, âI donât want anyone to be like Celery/Alien. Sheâs not a good person and I want my readers to be able to identify how and why she isnât a good person. The moral is what not to be like.â But she does the opposite and claims time and time again that Celery/Alien is some kind of feminist warrior, when in fact Celery/Alien is the very epitome of white feminism and false feminism. Sheâll be all kinds of gung-ho for herself, but as soon as another woman mentions her own unique problems or lifestyles, Celery/Alien thinks sheâs a âwhiny bitch,â âdumb slut,â or something similar. Celery/Alien ends up looking down her nose at basically every other female character. The lack of female friendships in Maasâ books is frankly astounding.
No girl needs to be Celery/Alien. Celery/Alien is not a role model, she is not a feminist, she is not a figurehead of a well developed female character or even a compelling antihero. Sheâs sexist, sheâs misogynistic, she has serious anger issues, sheâs manipulative, sheâs abusive. This is not who young girls should be looking up to.
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Reason 3: Maas has no place in the YA genre.
Iâm not really sure I need to elaborate much on this. Let me give you a scenario:
Imagine youâre at a book signing for your fans. Theyâre mostly girls 15-20, so you kind of just sign their copies without thinking much about it. But then a smaller girl comes up to the table, you ask her age, and she says âIâm ten.â A 10 year old girl is standing in front of you, clutching her copy of your book where you wrote and published the scene, âhe buried in to the hilt and roared. Over and over he spilled inside of her, the lightning outside flashing soft and lovely long after he stilled.â
Look me in the eye and tell me that shit is appropriate in the YA genre. At all. Ever.
You wanna write romance? Go for it. It can be cute! It can be healthy! It can be intriguing! But this? This? This is just⌠erotica. If youâre publishing stuff like this in the YA genre, in a book that isnât even on the âtween/teen romanceâ shelves, then you better be ready to take full responsibility for teaching 10 year olds what a blowjob is, what an orgasm is, what BDSM is, what a fucking foot fetish is.
I know JK Rowling isnât the most popular right now, but even she did better than this. The first 3 Harry Potter books you can generally find on the childrenâs/middle grade shelves. They were cute, fun little adventures about wizards and magic and fantastic creatures. Books 4-7? Those are on the YA shelves. People are dying, magic is dangerous, fascist organizations are on the rise â it isnât fun for Harry anymore. It isnât about the wonders of magic. Itâs about life or death, war, and fear. So yeah, of course those book arenât going to be on the childrenâs/middle grade shelves! Theyâre dark! Theyâre scary! That kind of material shouldnât be advertised as appropriate for younger kids!
Maas never extended that courtesy. Maas took her books full of badly written erotica and plopped them down right where all the rest of the completely tame YA books went, because she wanted the sales. She didnât care if she was exposing kids who were too young to explicit sex scenes. She never posted a disclaimer, she never posted any kind of warning on social media when the books came out. Nope. She just silently took advantage of the market knowing sheâd get more sales in YA. But it has no place in YA. Itâs not YA. And I donât think Iâm ever gonna be okay with that.
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Reason 4: Diversity? Never heard of it!
Maasâ books are so incredibly white and straight that itâs painful. Rowan and Aelin? White and straight. Feyre? Rhysand? Chaol? Dorian? Manon? Hey, you guessed it! Theyâre all white and straight (despite Chaol, Dorian, and Manon being heavily LGBT+ coded for like, the entire series till the last book)!
âHe looked at his friend, perhaps for the last time, and said what he had always known, from the moment they met, âI love you.ââ (Queen of Shadows)
Hello? Sarah Jane? Iâm all for male friendships, but thereâs male friendships and then thereâs actual romance. Chaol and Dorian are about as gay-coded as they could fucking get. And this isnât even the only time this happens! Check this out:
âDorian surged from his chair and dropped to his knees beside the bed. He grabbed Chaolâs hand, squeezing it as he pressed his brow against his. âYou were dead,â the prince said, his voice breaking. âI thought you were dead.ââ (Queen of Shadows)
But wait, thereâs more!
ââIâm not leaving you. Not again.â
Dorianâs mouth tightened. âYou didnât leave, Chaol.â He shook his head once, sending tears slipping down his cheeks. âYou never left me.ââ (Queen of Shadows)
I mean come on, Sarah!
Also, Manon. My girl Manon hated men, pretty explicitly, for the entire series. In case you donât believe me:
âThere were few sounds Manon enjoyed more than the groans of dying men.â (Heir of Fire)
Oh, and other characters even imply Manon has never had a heterosexual relationship in her fucking life. See:
ââThat golden-haired witch, AsterinâŚâ Aelin said. âShe screamed Manonâs name the way I screamed yours. How can I take away somebody who means the world to someone else? Even if she is my enemy.ââ (Queen of Shadows)
Tell me thatâs not gay as fuck. I dare you.
Manon had a whole lot of love to give women! She was always affectionate towards other women. Particularly Elide. This is a woman who was about as lesbian as you could get. Had no interest in men, every interest in women, rejected typically expected roles for women (getting married and having kids, etc.) but guess what happened? Guess what fucking happened?
This warrior who was friends with and rode on a big fuckoff wyvern completely and totally submits to Dorian as her lover. I donât mean that metaphorically. They literally do some BDSM shit where heâs her âmasterâ and she âkneels to himâ or whatever the fucking fuck. This entire thing pissed me off more than Chaol and Dorian being all âno homo bro,â because Maas used every possible symbol and subtext for Manon being gay, and then said âjust kidding!â Her relationship with Dorian came out of nowhere. All of a sudden she was just as thirsty for mediocre dick as Aelin.
At this point I honestly have to wonder if Maas is really this ignorant or if sheâs - dare I say it? - taunting her readers who have complained about the lack of LGBT+ representation. Maas has, historically, not reacted well to people criticizing her work. I would not put it beyond her at all to intentionally queer-code characters only to turn around and rip the rug out from under her readers by pairing them up in heterosexual relationships. And not only is that shitty writing, but itâs⌠really malicious and rude.
Of course then thereâs the issues with racial representation. Again, Maas doesnât even try. She includes 13 characters of color only to immediately kill off all of them in a suicide pact. So thereâs that. Not sure I need to say more than that.
Maas knows what diversity is, but as per her famous quote, âI just donât want to force diversity into my books.â So. Yâknow. Writing a black or gay character (or!! God forbid, both black and gay!!) is asking a little too much of her, apparently. She doesnât want to force anything as unbelievable as someone who isnât white or straight, donâtcha know? In these books about fae people and dragons and gods fighting mortals and explicit erotica, an LGBT+ character or a character of color is high fantasy, not YA. *Sarcasm*
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Reason 5: The woman canât write.
This is pretty straightforward. She cannot write. My proof? She plagiarizes the living fuck out of everything she can to avoid actually writing her own original work.
1. âYouâre gonna rattle the stars.â - from Disneyâs Treasure Planet
2. âThe Queen Who Was Promisedâ - from GRRMâs ASOIAF, where Dany Targaryen is often toted as the exact same thing. Oh, and The Prince Who Was Promised prophecy in ASOIAF also mentions Azor Ahai being âthe Heir of Fireâ so, uhâŚ. yeah.
3. Aelin basically being Aragorn. Lost royalty spends years as an outcast, denies their claim, teams up with elves (fae in Aelinâs case) to defeat a greater evil, becomes known as the peopleâs champion, falls in love with an elf (fae) and makes them their consort, crowned by the people, ends their coronation scene with a âyou bow to no oneâ (Iâm not kidding).
4. Nehemia dying for Aelin and it later being revealed that Nehemia was âgroomingâ Aelin to face great evil, and potentially give her life to stop it. How much you wanna bet Maas tried to give Aelin a name as close to âHarry Potterâ as she could get?
5. Manon lighting a series of beacons across a mountain range to call for aid during war. I mean seriously? This is one of the most iconic scenes in Peter Jacksonâs rendition of Lord of the Rings. Itâs moving, itâs powerful, itâs awe-inspiring. And Maas knew it. So she just⌠took it. I donât have a lot of respect for writers who canât write their own moving scenes.
6. Kingsflame blossoms, which only bloom when the rightful monarch is on the throne. So⌠the White Tree of Gondor. Got it.
7. The Hand of the King being a royal court position. Like⌠jesus. GRRM, come get ya world-building, SJ stole it again.
8. A paralyzed Chaol has a specialized saddle made for him, because he wants more than anything to ride a horse again. GRRM! Please! Sheâs taking Bran Starkâs story now!
And besides all of these horribly plagiarized points, thereâs nothing even slightly compelling about these books. Thereâs literally zero substance, and the last few books in both the ACOTAR and ToG series have been nothing but a smut-fest. Plot who? We donât know her.
Trauma, both physical and mental, is erased at the drop of a dime (Aelin lost physical scars, Chaolâs paralysis was basically cured, series of events that shouldâve left characters absolutely fucked just⌠didnât phase them). The battles are rushed and sloppily written, and Maas has a particularly nasty habit of focusing on exactly the wrong people in the middle of what should be an action packed scene. Instead of showing alliances forging and plots being made behind peopleâs backs, instead of showing us people gearing up for battle by saying tearful goodbyes to their infants and spouses, Maas shows us Rowan and Aelin banging on a beach, or a tree, or a ship, or wherever the fuck they happen to be at that moment.
None of these characters lose jack shit. There is no sense of urgency or stakes, because we knew since Heir of Fire that Aelin and her precious uwu fae âmateâ would be just fine. Why? Because nobody shipped Rowaelin as hard as Sarah Jane Maas did. Consistently the only people who suffer in these books are background characters (who, coincidentally, are almost always the characters of color and LGBT+ characters). By the end of Kingdom of Ash, literally everyone is fine. And paired off to be married, too! Because a happy ending isnât a true happy ending if it doesnât end with Babies Ever After and everyone in a heterosexual relationship, of course, right?
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Reason 6: World-building doesnât even go here! Sorry, she just wanted to be a part of something.
Maasâ world-building is⌠how do you say⌠shitty. New lore pops up in every book, having never been mentioned before, and is for some reason of utmost importance (but only for this book. Itâll be forgotten again as soon as it isnât relevant). Religions who? Culture where? History what? None of these things exist in Maasâ world. None.
Now before anyone jumps down my throat with âbut The World of Throne of Glass is coming out this year!!!1!1!!â let me gently establish something. Speaking as a fantasy author: if you do not have your most basic world-building - that being religion, culture, language, and history - already established, then you have no business making a âworld ofâ book to cover all the bases your ass never bothered with in the original series.
I said what I said.
Tolkien and GRRM are masters of world-building because they spent decades working to forge their worlds before they ever put a pen to paper and wrote their stories. Not to toot my own horn, but my own fantasy series has been developing for almost 7 years now. What am I doing with it? Iâm outlining governments in different societies, why people came to worship what they do, and Iâm making a fucking world map on my bedroom floor (that now has cat paw prints on it, so itâs not exactly final product material anyway).
I give not a single hoot for Maasâ âThe World of Throne of Glass.â She could be saying anything she wanted to and it would all just have to be canon, because sheâs establishing what this world is after already finishing her series. Yes, it does piss me off, because itâs pretty obvious she didnât have a clue what her world was, or who was who, or why things were the way they were. She made shit up as she went along, nothing more. There was no grand scheme. There was no planning, and it shows.
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TL;DR:Â I have a lot of issues with Sarah J Maasâ writing, including her world-building and handling of diversity. But most of all I despise the potential impact she has on the YA genre and on the young girls reading her work. They deserve better than this. They deserve better than Sarah Jane Maas.
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