#y'all just don't vibe with Feyre and you hate her for the reason you love another character lmao

[romanticatheartt]

So let me get this straight...

People are mad, that Feyre is a High Lady because Rhysand saw the potential in her and didn't hesitate to make her a High Lady? And the reason you're mad about it, it's because Viviane deserves more to be one because she was ruling Winter Court for 50 years?

BE MAD AT KALLIAS!!! He's an idiot for not making her the High Lady till now!!! Why you have to bring Feyre down for it???

And y'all hate Feyre for having a child because she said she didn't want one once upon a time and said she'd like to have Rhysand all to herself? But Vivian and Kallias mating bond snapped exactly around the same time Feyre's and Rhysand's bond snapped, I don't see people criticise Viviane for having a child with her few months of husband/mate...

[checkoutmybookshelf]

Cul-de-Sacs are Bad Writing

Ok, I have to be honest with y'all here. I didn't QUITE throw this book at the wall, but I WANTED TO. I don't know what HAPPENED with this book. ACOTAR was aggressively fine, if poorly paced and plotted, and ACOMAF was actually fun to read and enjoyable. Then we get to ACOWAR and the pacing and plotting problems are back with a goddamn vengeance, there are chapter cul-de-sacs that go nowhere and add nothing to the story or the character arcs, and SJM has this GODDAMN INFURIATING HABIT of just...picking up words that have specific meanings in specific contexts, going "that sounds cool" and dropping them places that make my extremely well-read, allusion-alert brain tweak in some extremely painful places because you can't just...APPROPRIATE WORDS LIKE "SERAPHIM" AND "MYRMIDONS" WITHOUT MEANINGFULLY RECONTEXTUALIZING THEM!!!! Not to mention that SJM murders the stakes of this book in their cradle. I swear to cauldron, this book was actually inexcusably bad. So let's talk A Court of Wings and Ruin.

So this is both your SPOILER WARNING and your heads up that this will be a RANT REVIEW. If you loved this book, this is not the review for you. Do not come crying to me that you weren't warned if you read past this point. This is also a CONTENT WARNING because there will be mentions and discussions of sexual assault because every SJM villain is also a rapist for SOME REASON.

I don't even know where to start with this book. I suppose...I suppose we could start with a few of the things I didn't hate. Oh, and the one thing I actually did like. That seems like a good way to begin.

The one thing about this book that I actually genuinely enjoyed was getting the foundation for Nessian. I was actually interested in Nesta's emotional journey because she had some goddamn agency in it. Like yes, she was yote into the cauldron against her will, but she never let go of her agency and she MADE it give her something in return. Like, yes girl, tell me more. Explore that. Dig in. And also, yes, I too am interested in the man-bunned jock who, when he is adulting, is a general and baddest bat boy on the battlefield. I enjoy their evolution from schoolyard hair pulling and insult slinging to actual partnership on and off the battlefield. I almost get a "he fell first, she fell harder" vibe from them, but their dynamics aren't fully cooked yet so don't quote me on that. Nessian was the best part of this book for me.

I also appreciated the setup and payoff of Nesta getting to absolutely annihilate the King of Hybern. There was something deeply satisfying about her taking his head off slowly and brutally for what he did to her and Elain. That was a great moment, even if the broader scene was in a part of the book where the stakes had long been dead and buried and the Nessian stakes in particular felt a little...hollow...as a result. Still loved the visceral, hands-on revenge murder for Nesta. Why yes, I did major in early modern drama and yes, I do have a thing for revenge tragedies. What gave me away?

Finally, can we PLEASE give Nesta the goddamn credit she deserves for single-handedly saving the High Lords alliance meeting? Because Feyre fucking blew it. She fireballed and everyone was about to bail and Nesta single-handedly saved the damn meeting through sheer force of personality. Girl understood the stakes and was the only one in the room who managed to get past the petty political and emotional bullshit and keep that big picture in mind. Nesta is a queen in her own right and frankly? She's a better Rhys than Rhys is in terms of actually trying to create a better world.

Sadly, we must now move on from the things I liked to the things I didn't hate. And there were actually a few, although they're more moments and little pieces of themes and character than actual themes and character arcs, because this book does actual themes and character arcs TERRIBLY. But. I didn't actually hate Amren getting to be high fae at the end of the book. Amren's whole deal was that she had to choose to be someone else to get out of the prison, and in the years she has BEEN Amren, I think she discovered that she really likes being Amren. The fact that she gets to be high fae Amren at the end of the book, that she gets to be the person she chose and likes? I can't not get behind that. The way we got there was inexcusably monster ex machina and SJM leaned WAY too hard on resurrections (Not even joking, when I was reading this, I live-reacted at my sister going "WTF AMREN!!" and her response was literally "give it five minutes, she'll be back".) in this book, but the core of "Amren gets to be the person she chose and liked" was good. I didn't hate that.

This might seem petty, but another thing I didn't hate was Feyre constantly crashing into trees, walls, and the ground while learning to fly. Some of these moments were genuinely comedic, some of them were nice little arrogance takedowns, and sometimes it was really just nice to see Feyre hit a hard surface at speed because lord knows I wanted to fling objects at her more than a few times this book. The pitfalls of learning to fly also felt real, grounded, and appropriately frustrating, so I didn't hate those scenes.

I also can't say I hated Feyre systematically dismantling both Ianthe's and Tamlin's credibility in the Spring Court. Was it shortsighted and ultimately counter to the larger goals of the book? God yes. Was it petty AF? Hell yes. Was it really straining the credibility of Feyre as "the people's hero"? YOU FUCKING BET YOUR ASS IT WAS. But all of that said...my God it was satisfying to watch Feyre show back up to the Spring Court and take it apart piece by piece. It's wildly unfair to Tamlin, but SJM seems to have appointed this poor 20-something with generational and personal trauma, leadership responsibility, no experience and no help as the series punching bag, and I can't fix that. All I can do is enjoy the petty assholery of Feyre taking his entire world apart (and shooting herself in the foot as she does so). (I was less enamored of Feyre beating Ianthe's hands into pulp instead of killing her. I am aware it was for plot reasons, but that was possibly the dumbest decision she could have made.) So while the early chapters of the book were objectively a Tamlin character assassination, those early chapters paced decently well and were fun in a petty, set-it-on-fire-to-watch-it-burn kind of way.

Another thing I super did not hate was Lucien. Lucien has always been an interesting character, and he shows himself to be capable of critical thought in this book, which we love to see! Then of course SJM writes him out for 85% of the book, so there's not a lot of time and space to love him.

Ooh, I also liked Bryaxis. Cool idea, great vibes, and I'm very much here for Feyre STILL NOT BEING ABLE TO INTERNALIZE NOT MAKING DEALS WITH FAE OR ELDRITCH HORRORS. Like...girl. You were warned multiple times, but now you have shadow kitty wanting pets. Did not hate anything about that.

Which...I think rather takes us to the end of the things I didn't hate about this book. Yikes, that is a short list. So if you're a Feysand stan or adored this book and somehow made it this far, I am going to respectfully suggest bailing now. I did not enjoy the rest of this book, and I'm going to explain why. If you're cool with that, we love to have you. If not, we will catch you next time.

For everyone who is still here, let's dive into ALL THE THINGS ABOUT THIS BOOK THAT WERE INEXCUSABLY BAD. And we're going to have to start with Rhysand, because dear god, what the hell happened. (And yes, I ended that sentence with a period. That sentence doesn't deserve a question mark.)

I thoroughly enjoyed cocky asshole Under-the-Mountain Rhys. He was a dick, he knew it, but he also had a sense of...idk, almost fair play that worked for him. I also am a big proponent of if you're going to write a cocky asshole, they better ENJOY that shit. "Hello Feyre, darling" was an A+ moment. It was the epitome of cocky asshole who knows he's a cocky asshole and enjoys it. I was tentatively on board with secret feminist Rhys in ACOMAF, but then we get to this book, and I just straight-up could not with traumatized bat bitch who was willing to completely toss his ideals out the window and retraumatize his found family for...reasons. In no particular order, these are the things I took issue with where Rhys was concerned:

Repeatedly traumatizing Mor and then INVALIDATING her very reasonable responses to him full-on not giving a fuck if the Darkbringer legion raped and pillaged their way across a battlefield, bringing Eris Vanserra into a meeting without warning her, opening Velaris to the night court, and invalidating her (heavily implied to be) sexual trauma and abuse by saying he'd have worked with Amarantha so she should work with whoever he tells her to. Like...holy shit Rhys, you say you're over here to help women recover and heal from these kinds of traumas, so WHAT THE HELL IS MOR TO YOU? All of this was shitty and Mor lets him off the hook way, way too easily. I'm not going to, though. Rhys was actively playing "my trauma was worse than yours" with Mor and that's a SHITTY thing to do to literal family--both blood and chosen.

Rhys letting Feyre off the hook for invading Lucien's mind. Let's be super real here: Feyre has been kind of a bad friend to Lucien from minute one. She has no boundaries, no ethics, and is possibly the worst person to have her particular set of powers. But it's not like she's getting EFFECTIVE HELP AND GUIDANCE from the one other person with that particular skill. She apologized to RHYS about it and he accepted the apology and told her she wouldn't cross the line again. Like...Sir. That was LUCIEN'S APOLOGY to either accept or reject, and I no longer love that you don't have ethics around this power use either. Shaky magical ethics are NOT GOOD. Adhere to them or don't, as is appropriate for a character, but like...have them well-established and strong. (It is possible I read Arrows of the Queen at too formative an age, but y'know, magical ethics are a thing I think about!)

Rhys's self-sacrifice obsession. This is one of those "your mileage may vary" things, but it absolutely did not work for me as a reader. I am too steeped in the "Dying for people is easy, it lets you off the hook" mentality to appreciate Rhys over here constantly going "If there is a price, I will pay it with my life." It also made fixing the cauldron REALLY fucking frustrating for me, because they had the five minutes to get the rest of the inner circle over there (or literally any of the other high lords or people with magic) to help. There was also an opportunity for a found family save, with Rhys going for the sacrifice play and the fam going "Hell no." But no, we had to LIE TO OUR WIFE and DIE. For all of about five minutes before we do a Twilight where "OH-EM-GEE FEYRE NOW YOU TRULY UNDERSTAND HOW I FELT UNDER THE MOUNTAIN" because apparently empathy isn't something Feyre is capable of...? I keep getting told not to try to logic this book, but some of this just defies even vibe reading, you guys.

I found Rhys a STRUGGLE and deeply unsympathetic this book despite a tragic backstory that should have done a lot of heavy lifting. Like, he's had some genuinely harrowing and traumatizing experiences. But then he invalidates other people's trauma and is super willing to INFLICT it on people. And he's not even got the courtesy to ENJOY it, so then I'm just over here drowning in angsty man pain that is in no small part of his own making...like there were moments I genuinely went "Did Rhys and Harry Dresden go to the same school of man pain?" I lack patience for this kind of non-self-reflective nonsense these days. I understand being protective of family and wanting your family to be ok, but Rhys gets smothery and toxic in ways that I am not here for.

Since a fair amount of my issues with Rhys are how he treats Mor, I think that makes for a decent segue into my issues with how Mor is handled. These come in two somewhat intertwined branches. The first is Mor's treatment of Nesta. The second is how SJM handles Mor's sexuality.

I'm going to say right here and right now, these books were DYING for LGBTQIA+ representation. These books are SO heteronormative, and adding representation would have been lovely...except that I would argue that the rep was handled poorly, leaned into harmful stereotypes, and poked holes in both Mor's characterization and the narrative structure of the book. I'm not here to disbelieve Mor when she says she prefers women, but finds pleasure with both men and women. I believe Mor. What I do think is that SJM coded Mor as straight for two and a half books, and that last-second pivot does a couple of things.

First, it calls Morrigan into question as a reliable narrator out of absolutely nowhere. Nowhere in ACOTAR or ACOMAF do we get a sense that Mor is an unreliable narrator. She has her perspective and biases, as any character does, but nowhere do we get the sense that she is hiding anything or lying. The inner circle TRUSTS her, that is established and shown. To suddenly have her go "Yeah, I've been lying to Cassian and Azriel for 500 years, and every time Azriel gets too clingy I sleep with a man where he can see to remind him to back off" is deeply toxic and this is sort of...never addressed? Not to mention that until this point, I had read Mor's leaning into open sexuality as a way to take agency and control after what her family did to her, and the reveal that she's bi kind of changes that into the "promiscuous bisexual who is often toxic" stereotype, which like...HATE THAT for Mor. The writing directly undercut something I was reading as strength and made it stereotype-y and toxic, and I hate that. And the book doesn't even address it! I could see a plotline in which Mor recognizing and addressing this toxicity and evolving herself and her relationships with the inner circle to a point where she is out, happy, healthy, and supported, and her boys are just happy she trusts them enough to be her whole self with them, but the book doesn't do that. It just reiterates stereotypes and keeps Mor with one foot in the closet and one foot out of it. LET MORRIGAN BE HAPPY AND HEALTHY AND HER WHOLE SELF!!!

And for the love of god have her stop actively being nasty and aggressive at Nesta over Nesta's interest in Cassian. That was uncalled for on every possible level. Before we get the bi reveal, it was the tired, toxic, girls fighting over a man thing. Afterward, it's another really ugly layer of Mor trying to keep Cassian trapped as a permanent buffer between her and Azriel. Literally nothing about this dynamic is good, but again, the book just kind of...presents it and does nothing with it. And I really don't love that because the potential for strong communication and growth in the inner circle dynamics was THERE and it was INTERESTING and then it was SQUANDERED in favor of the Feysand show. And it's not like there are any other characters to give another perspective on this--we just have Helion who also falls into that bisexual stereotype. So I would have loved some more representation here, but the representation we got was...not ideal.

I also have a bit of a bone to pick with the Illyrian wings. They got SO SET UP as delicate and difficult to fix if you fuck them up. But then all three of our bat boys have them absolutely shredded in this book and like...it's not fun but it's also not given the weight I'd have expected from how they were built up in ACOMAF.

We cannot talk about this book without also talking a little bit about the bigass High Lords Alliance Meeting. This thing got SO HYPED in the first half of this book. Like it was constantly being talked about, planned, and reiterated in terms of its importance. I was expecting an actual discussion about politics and alliances and the practicalities of working together to defeat Hybern. And in SJM's defense...we do get a little bit of that. But MOSTLY what we get is high-school level sniping, aggravated assault, and FEYRE FUCKING FIREBALLS BERON. Which pretty much could have torpedoed the meeting except for Nesta. NGL y'all, I was SO LET DOWN by this whole series of chapters. But at least these chapters had actual effects on the story...unlike the next bunch of scenes and chapters.

The latter half of this book, and particularly once the war gets going properly, this book is FULL TO THE GODDAMN BRIM of cul-de-sac scenes and chapters that go nowhere and affect the status quo not at all. Big standout examples of this include Elain getting kidnapped by Hybern and Rhys being dead for like five minutes.

Elain getting kidnapped by Hybern was literally just payoff for Feyre's flying lessons. Which didn't end up mattering anywhere else. Az and Feyre do a quickie side quest to rescue Elain and some random girl and Az gets his wings shredded, but it's ok, they have healers and he can *checks notes* MAGICALLY PATCH WOUNDS LONG ENOUGH TO GET BACK. Sure. Whatever. At this point I didn't even care, nothing mattered and there were no stakes. They get Elain back. It's fine.

Rhys was dead for less than ten minutes. Holly Goddamn Short could have brought him back easier than she brought Butler back. And it's not like we genuinely thought that Rhys was going to die after all that, this isn't that kind of book. Literally I'm so pissed off though, because SJM full-on did the whole, "Now you know what I went through when you died under the mountain, Feyre" thing. Like...is empathy not one of her skills? Or is Rhys so insecure that he can't imagine empathy without a 1:1 experience relationship? I hated this so much because it was dumb, it isn't how EMOTIONS work, and frankly? Why didn't Rhys want to SPARE her that experience? Because it sounded like it sucked.

I also need to address the Jurian/Mirayam/Drakon/Seraphim thing. It was underdeveloped as hell, doesn't come to a satisfying ending, and "OOPSIE POOPSIE OUR SHIELDS DON'T HAVE FRIEND FILTERS" so they were exactly where they were meant to be the whole damn time was fucking infuriating. This either needed development or to be left in draft, and at this point I don't care which.

Finally, the end of this book just felt limp. We half-assedly attempted to get everyone to renegotiate the treaty, and then went back to Velaris and broke out the good stuff. It is possibly the limpest ending I've read in a longass time.

This book didn't need to be this long. There was too much padding and not enough development, and a lot of it was just infuriating. The Mirror of Ouroboros was super underdeveloped, the character dynamics got driven into the ground, and the writing was deeply problematic on a bunch of technical levels. I have NOT forgiven the use of "twisted" or "Seraphim" or "Myrmidon" wildly out of context. These terms do not just...decouple from their connotations and contexts because SJM think they sound cool and yeet them at a book. The truly infuriating thing was the squandered potential after ACOMAF, because I genuinely enjoyed that book. I can't say the same of ACOWAR.