Title: A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses #1)
Author: Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Fantasy, fantasy romance
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication Date: 2015
Format: Hardcover
Length: 414
Read if you like: Beauty and the beast, rags to riches, fae, slow burn romance, enemies to lovers, magic competitions

Rating:

I often credit the A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) series as the series that got me back into reading. It’s a compulsively readable, easy-to-understand fantasy story with a lot of my favourite tropes and an interconnectedness across books that Maas has become well-known for. Maas’ latest release, House of Flame and Shadow, is due to hit shelves this coming January, so I decided to re-read both ACOTAR and Crescent City before the release. Since I’ve never formally reviewed either series here, I figured I’d take the opportunity to do so as I make my way through the audiobooks.

ACOTAR holds a special place in my heart because of the time in which I was reading it. In this reread, I found that the story itself also held up for me. The characters are equal parts enthralling and frustrating, the plot unfolds slowly and methodically, with an interdependent aspect to events that isn’t apparent until the end, and the slow-burn romance is beautifully executed. This series is one of my all-time favourites, and I loved it in an audiobook format. If you love a fantasy romance story with huge potential, I’d recommend this one any day.

Fair warning: spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn’t read this book.

The Book: A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas

ACOTAR begins by introducing the main character and heroine Feyre Archeron, the youngest among three daughters to a fallen merchant family who now lives on the brink of destitute poverty and starvation. Since her family’s fall from grace, Feyre has been forced to provide for her two sisters and her father, all of whom are practically useless in their ability to contribute to their new life circumstances, by hunting prey in her local woods. If Feyre isn’t successful in her hunts, her family isn’t able to eat, and so their survival becomes a burden for her to bare. She lives from day to day, without any hope of her circumstances improving, just looking far enough ahead to be able to put another meal on the table for her family to keep them going through another season.

During one of her hunting expeditions, Feyre takes down a massive wolf. The wolf is so majestic and huge that she’s concerned he might be a Fae, a magical creature and member of the country of Prythian, which shares the border with her mortal land. When the wolf is faced with Feyre, he refuses to move, and Feyre cannot resist the urge to take down the beast, knowing its pelt will provide enough income for her family to survive another season. She launches an arrow through the wolf and proceeds to claim it, assuaging her guilt and concern with the knowledge that her family will be cared for.

Feyre brings the pelt to their local market and manages to make enough money to keep the Archerons temporarily comfortable, but upon returning to her home with her sisters, they are soon interrupted by a massive, snarling beast who claims that the wolf that Feyre killed was, in fact, a Fae, and he has come to claim the blood debt owed to him for the slain creature. He offers Feyre the opportunity to return with him to Prythian to live out the rest of her days in his lands in exchange for leaving her family alone. Feyre is terrified but agrees to keep her family safe. They leave immediately.

Upon arriving in the Spring Court, Feyre comes to learn that the beast’s name is Tamlin and that he is not a beast, but a regular Fae male who can transform himself into one. She fears she’s been brought to his court to be a slave of some sort, but within a matter of days, she quickly learns that Tamlin has no intent to enslave her. Instead, he offers her a safe space in his home, the ability to wander his grounds, meals whenever she pleases, and the ability to own her own time. For the first time in her life, she feels cared for, like she has everything she needs, and while she’s initially desperate to get back to her family and provide for them, Tamlin soon assures her that he has provided for them himself, ensuring that they have enough resources to live far better lives than she had ever been able to provide. While she contains a hatred for the Fae species as a whole, born out of a lifetime of terrifying tales and being ripped from her home, she quickly comes to learn that the Fae are nothing like she thought, and Tamlin himself slowly begins to earn her trust.

While Feyre is adapting and softening towards Tamlin and his court, she learns that there is a blight on their land that is spreading, bringing monsters and ruining everything it touches. No one at the court can adequately explain where the blight came from and why it’s spreading, but Feyre lives in absolute fear of the ramifications it will have for Prythian and the mortal world. She tries to piece together what’s going on but never feels like she has the full picture.

As Feyre is finally adjusting and beginning to fall for Tamlin, she integrates herself more and more into his life at the Spring Court. She even sneaks out to participate in a Fae ritual that leaves her cornered by several shady Fae creatures before she’s saved by a dark, handsome stranger who sends her back to the estate. This also serves as the first night that Tamlin admits his lust for Feyre, and that he has feelings developing, and she begins to fall even harder.

A day comes when the dark stranger who saved Feyre returns to the Spring Court estate. Tamlin does his best to hide Feyre out of fear of her discovery, but the man, named Rhysand, is one of the most powerful faes in the realm and serves the dark and twisted leader of Prythian, Amarantha. He discovers Feyre is there and announces that he is bound to inform Amarantha of her presence, so Feyre gives him a false name and when he leaves, Tamlin insists that Feyre be returned to the mortal realm for her safety. Feyre is devastated, particularly as Tamlin admits that he loves her, but she’s so confused and hurt that she doesn’t return his words. She returns to her mortal home to find her family returned to their riches, just as Tamlin had promised, and tries to return to her mortal life.

While attempting to move on from her experience in the Spring Court, Feyre comes to find that the woman she pretended to be to Rhysand, a mortal woman that she had known from her town, was stolen and her entire family had been murdered. Feyre finally understands how dangerous Amarantha truly is and is gutted to think she’d left Tamlin alone, while also sacrificing the mortal girl she pretended to be. With the encouragement of her sister Nesta, Feyre decides to return to Prythian to find Tamlin and hopefully also find the girl she condemned, but when she arrives at his estate, she finds the entire place trashed and Tamlin gone. One of the servants informs her that the Court had all been taken under the main mountain of Prythian where Amarantha holds her own Court as punishment for not breaking a spell cast 50 years prior that required a mortal girl with hatred for the Fae to fall for Tamlin. While Feyre did, in fact, love Tamlin, she never admitted it, and so when his time to find a mortal lover was up, his entire Court was taken to Amarantha. Feyre asks the servant to bring her under the mountain so that she can face Amarantha herself and tell Tamlin she loves him, hoping she isn’t too late.

Once she arrives under the mountain and meets Amarantha, Feyre is forced into a series of challenges to secure Tamlin’s freedom, but Amarantha is cruel and unyielding and the challenges drag on forever while breaking Feyre in the process. She finds an unlikely ally in Rhysand, who helps her to survive in the ways that he can, and she does everything in her power to best Amarantha as she works through the tasks she’s set. Feyre is forced to do things that will stain her soul forever, and by the end of the book, she is forever changed in many ways.

The Review

I love this series. The world that Maas has created, full of Fae and magic, feels like a loose retelling of Beauty and the Beast in this first book, but with adult twists that bring a more visceral, intense experience. The setting is gorgeous and well thought out, and the dynamics between the characters are laced with prejudices that originate from a long history of conflict between the two realms. Each character carries their own traumas and challenges, and the whole book is really a slow unfolding of both events and personalities that only make sense in the last quarter as things start to come together.

Plot wise, so much happens in this book. I feel like it’s split between what happens before Feyre goes under the mountain, and then what happens after.

Before she goes under the mountain, I found Feyre a little annoying if I’m being honest. She’s outrageously stubborn in her prejudice and while she has reason to be, I found myself getting impatient with her as the plot progressed. That said, she does eventually adapt and become a strong lead, and that’s when the story always hits a turning point for me.

After Feyre goes under the mountain is my favourite part of the book. We finally get to understand more about the Courts and the key players that are involved, and we get a glimpse into the cruelty of the ruling Fae, Amarantha. There’s also ample opportunity for the Fae around Feyre to show who they are, and it leaves you with very different impressions of each of them from what you may have assumed from Feyre’s time in the Spring Court.

There are aspects to the character dynamics that never sat well with me, but as the series unfolds, I realized that those aspects were intentional, and it feels even more masterful to me that Maas was able to evoke those feelings that I couldn’t sort out without me realizing what she was doing. I remember finishing this book for the first time and being like, “I loved the slow burn, but something is off about Tamlin” and that feeling becomes a very important one in later books.

Even on my second read-through of this, I still found the book immensely enjoyable. I originally rated it 5 stars, and on this second read, I felt like that held true. It isn’t the strongest book in the series in my opinion, but that’s also really easy to say with the retrospective knowledge I have now after having read them all. I still think I would have given it the same rating even if I hadn’t read it before.

ACOTAR is a series that continues to build through every book, only getting more epic as it goes. If fantasy romance is your thing and you haven’t read this series, it’s always one that I’ll highly recommend.

Now, onto A Court of Mist and Fury!