So after hate-reading most of Sarah J. Maas’ Throne of Glass series last year (haven’t been able to get through the last one yet), I decided to embark on reading her Court of whatevers series, because I needed something fluffy and vaguely risque. (Important note: I do NOT mean it dismissively when I say something is fluffy. Just because it is written largely for teenage girls does not mean it is therefore automatically inferior!) I actually enjoyed it much more than I expected–at least until I got halfway through the third book and just lost interest. Anyway, due to its inclusion of multiple fairy tales, this one falls under the #Remix category.
PSA. British readers, the first book is currently on sale for Kindle for 99p, if you’re interested.
I won’t bother explaining the whole plot, especially as this is a popular one for Cannonballers, but the first book is a riff off of Beauty and the Beast. There’s some nice homages to the original story, especially with her family and the shapeshifting Fae, but once Feyre (*eyeroll*) decides she is actually in love with Tamlin, the story changes to riffing off of… uh… Tam Lin. Two remixes in one, I guess.
Major spoilers follow for Book 1 and Minor spoilers for Book 2, so this is probably more a review for people who have already read the books instead of those who want to know if it’s for them. Unless they’re okay with spoilers (I’m not).
This series is VERY Maas. There’s a lot of similarities with the Throne of Glass series. She falls back on a lot of the same techniques:
- Enjoy the first book? Well, tough luck, cookie, because the second book is going to throw away everything you liked, nerf the love interest, and completely change the whole thrust of the plot!
- Squad.
- EVERYBODY gets a love interest! At least one! No lonely beds in these books!
- Did you want just a fluffy romance with far more sex than should probably be in a YA novel? Too bad! The world’s coming to an end, suckers!
- Go read my review of TOG for the rest of my annoyances; I just reread it and I think it was a pretty decent annoyed review.
And now I want to address all my points to show how, actually, I have to admit that this series was better than TOG.
- Court of whatsit is actually far more successful at rebooting the plot and the love interest than Throne of Glass (justice for Chaol; Rowan was a big jerk and I hope he gets killed in Book 7 because he sucks, but at least Dorian gets a sexy witch lady who is far more interesting than Celina/Aelin). Tam never really did it for me that much, and Rhysand was far cooler from the beginning. ALSO I appreciated how Maas created an actually non-toxic lover in Rhys: he’s very respectful, he never makes Feyre do anything she doesn’t want to do, etc. Just too bad she had to completely change Tam for that to happen. I think it could have been done much more subtly.
- The squad is actually more interesting in this one. I felt like they were all different and contributed something unique. (Aaaand then Book 3 began and the squad got even bigger and I started feeling like I was drowning in squad members, kind of like how I don’t want to read TOG Book 7 because there’s so many freaking POV points that I feel like I’m swimming.)
- BUT at least Maas sticks exclusively to Feyre’s POV. Yay for first person limitations.
- IT’S OKAY FOR EVERYONE TO NOT BE IN LOVE, SARAH. Perhaps I’m really insistent on this one because of writer’s guilt; I have similar tendencies in my own writing and have to actively be like “that’s enough complicated romances for one trilogy, Taylor”.
- The world-ending stakes is still annoying for me. This might be a personal thing: in fantasy in general, I’m just REALLY over world-ending stakes. They never seem to feel as real as actual personal stakes. I realize that you eventually have to come up with a plot for the books to continue, but it’d be nice if it were more like “hey, let’s have some nice Faerie court political intrigue and figure out what to do about the humans” instead of court political intrigue just being a means to BATTLE THE EVIL FORCES FROM BEYOND.
- Other bonuses:
- Feyre, despite her stupid name, is not nearly as annoying as Celina/Aelin.
- Maas doesn’t actually use the phrases “huff a laugh” and “my knee barked in pain” nearly as much in these books as she does in TOG! Thank goodness. She probably had other verbal tics, but they clearly didn’t annoy me as much because I can’t remember them.
All that being said, I still crashed out halfway through Book 3 because I looked at Goodreads and it seems like this is going to be one of those enormous series that just keeps gaining characters until I no longer care about any of them. So, a question:
Fellow Cannonballers: Is this another epic 7 book series, like Throne of Glass? Or is there a satisfying ending to the third one (i.e., can I finish the third one and then just stop)? Because I’m going to be honest, if there’s 4 more books to get through, I’m never touching this one again. I want to avoid spoilers so I don’t want to just wikipedia them…