I read ACOTAR and reached peak escapism

Welcome to 'Rositta Reads'! I'm happy to welcome you all to read the very first post that marks the beginning of this blog and today Rositta Reads...

'A Court of Thorns and Roses' -one of the most popular YA fantasy books at the moment, so I just had to write a review on it. Sarah J Maas certainly has an obsession with faeries but hey, so do we. 

So let's talk about it. (Warning: I may spoil the next few books too so if you haven't read those...get out of here :) ). After a long dry spell where I barely had the time to read since my mental health was crumbling all around me ( I blame my iGCSEs), ACOTAR was among the first few books I read after seeing some fanart on TikTok. 

I'm reading the book once again as I write to be objective and I'm beginning to realize how much the author wanted to emphasize the fact that Feyre is miserable. Feyre is our main character by the way, and I was only mildly interested from chapter 1. I mean, a badass huntress is my cup of tea, but the plot was sluggish and uneventful initially. It only got moving when she hunted down a wolf and a deer. A deer and a wolf. A wolf hunting deer. A deer hunted by a wolf hunted by Feyre. Okay, that is closer to what happened.

But leaving the plot aside, Sarah J Maas can do many things but world-building is not one of them. In my opinion at least. There are so many creative ways an author can introduce their world to readers. Maybe a creative map and prologue which ends with a dramatic prophecy before we meet our main character. I would like that a lot. But frankly, the worst way to build your world is a massive info dump in the main character’s inner monologue. And that’s exactly what happened in ACOTAR. But do not worry, I got you, here is the summary of what exactly their world consists of:

There are humans. Then, there are faeries. These faeries are NOT like Tinkerbell but more like......I'm not sure, but no cute charms at all. They are immortal and apparently hate iron (a lie), cannot tell lies (also a lie) and can be killed using the wood from ash trees (not a lie). They're also cruel and arrogant and there is a big wall separating the human world from Prythian (Faerie land! Yippee). So, before this wall was there, faeries reigned, and humans were their slaves until about 500 years ago when the humans yelled ‘Vive la résistance’ and started a full out war for freedom. Along with the help of some ‘not so bad’ faeries, the humans won the war and both parties signed a treaty dividing the world among themselves. Conditions include -- faeries will not hurt humans, no enslavement, great wall which shouldn’t be crossed etc. And while most humans moved away from this wall, some settlements stayed behind including, of course, the village Feyre is staying in. Beyond this wall is the Kingdom of Prythian divided into 7 courts- Summer, Spring, Autumn, Winter, Day, Dawn, Night. Each court had a super-powerful High Lord ruling over it except (we soon find out), the whole of Prythian is enslaved to a super-evil queen (High Queen). This High Queen 'Amarantha' took control 50 years ago by gathering the high lords and stealing their powers with a neat magic trick. That’s where our gal Feyre comes in of course. Since I’m struggling to put together Feyre’s story over here I’m going to quote Feyre herself from one of the later books:

 “I was born to a wealthy merchant family, with two older sisters and parents who only cared about their money and social standing. My mother died when I was eight; my father lost his fortune three years later. He sold everything to pay off his debts, moved us into a hovel, and didn’t bother to find work while he let us slowly starve for years. I was fourteen when the last of the money ran out, along with the food. He wouldn’t work—couldn’t, because the debtors came and shattered his leg in front of us. So I went into the forest and taught myself to hunt. And I kept us all alive, if not near starvation at times, for five years. Until … everything happened.”

Cue applause. I couldn’t have put it better myself.

And the ‘everything’ started when she hunted the wolf which turned out to be a faerie from Prythian. Anyways, a big monstrous Fae bursts through her door to avenge his friend (the wolf) and gives her two choices: she can get killed right now or live out her mortal life beyond the wall in Prythian. Our main character chooses option two cause if she chose option one, we wouldn't have a trilogy, you see? 

Anyway, she goes to Prythian and it turns out to be pretty cool at the Spring Court, which is where the wolf was from. Everyone there has masks stuck to their face because of some ‘blight’ but we’ll get to that soon enough. The big monster wolf/beast turns out to be the High Lord of the Spring Court ‘Tamlin’ and another character we meet is Lucien, courtier and emissary. He is originally from the Autumn court has lost one eye (is that relevant? It will be soon). Now he has a cool mechanical eye, and he is also way cooler than Tamlin in general. The charisma he exudes in this first book is significantly absent from the rest of the series and I can't help but wonder why Sarah scrapped that. Feyre and Lucien did have way more chemistry. At the very least there was tension. Tamlin, on the other hand, had the personality of a walnut and his way of flirting with Feyre goes something like this:

‘They watched me, too closely to be casual. Tamlin straightened a bit and said,

“You look … better than before.”

Was that a compliment? I could have sworn Lucien gave Tamlin an encouraging nod.

“And your hair is … clean.”

Perhaps it was my raging hunger making me hallucinate the piss-poor attempt at flattery.’

OKAY FEYRE BE SPITTING FACTS because that was indeed a piss-poor attempt at flattery. Like ‘your hair is (dot dot dot) clean?’

  And of course, even though Feyre was given a free pass card from poverty and misery, she insists on wanting to go back and contemplates escape. Her family is well cared for, they have money and food and so does she now, they treated her horribly and this is a deal that works out for both sides. Was this just for the plot then? Yes, because you see this story is based on a retelling of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and she slowly starts to fall in love with Tam-Tam and decides the Fae aren’t so bad after all. Then, we meet Rhysand, High Lord of the Night Court and close worker of the evil queen at a festival and later on, he shows up to threaten the Spring Court. Worried for Feyre’s safety, Tamlin sends her home. And all for the sake of love, she comes back to Prythian and goes Under the Mountain (evil queen’s abode) to save Tamlin after he is taken hostage. Turns out Evil Queen Amarantha is in love with him and Feyre makes a deal to either solve a riddle or face three trials over three months to free him. Amarantha is very intent on killing Feyre because she could be the one to break the curse. You’re probably wondering what curse? I’m wondering the same thing. After Amarantha stole power, she held a masquerade where she asked Tamlin to become her consort, but he rejected her and insulted her greatly. Once again, I must quote from the book:

“The entire Spring Court was to attend, even the servants, and to wear masks—to honor Tamlin’s shape-shifting powers, she said. He was willing to try to end the conflict without slaughter, and he agreed to go—to bring all of us.”

 “When all were assembled, she claimed that peace could be had—if Tamlin joined her as her lover and consort. But when she tried to touch him, he refused to let her near. Not after what she’d done to Lucien (some eye-plucking was involved). He said—in front of everyone that night—that he would sooner take a human to his bed, sooner marry a human, than ever touch her.

“You can guess how well that went over with Amarantha. But she told Tamlin that she was in a generous mood— told him she’d give him a chance to break the spell she’d put upon him to steal his power.

“He spat in her face, and she laughed. She said he had seven times seven years before she claimed him, before he had to join her Under the Mountain. If he wanted to break her curse, he need only find a human girl willing to marry him. But not any girl—a human with ice in her heart, with hatred for our kind (Check!-Feyre did hate them all at first). A human girl willing to kill a faerie.” (The wolf she killed)

“Worse, the faerie she killed had to be one of his men (another condition- check), sent across the wall by him like lambs to slaughter. The girl could only be brought here to be courted if she killed one of his men in an unprovoked attack (check)—killed him for hatred alone” (check- she really, really did hate them back then)

“Amarantha knows humans are preoccupied with beauty, and thus bound the masks to all our faces, to his face, so it would be more difficult to find a girl willing to look beyond the mask, beyond his faerie nature, and to the soul beneath. Then she bound us so we couldn’t say a word about the curse. Not a single word. We could hardly tell you a thing about our world, about our fate.”

So that’s the curse and now Feyre makes one last attempt to break it with the riddle and trials. Frankly, I solved the riddle easily enough because the answer is the most cliché thing ever. Here’s a tip, if you’re ever faced with a cryptic riddle, just go for it, and say ‘lOVe’. You will strike gold. Feyre manages to complete all three tasks with the help of some cryptic clues left for her in conversations Tamlin and Lucien had. This whole book is so convoluted but I admire Feyre for recalling all those conversations and figuring it out because I have a difficult time remembering what I had for breakfast yesterday. In the end, she manages to solve the riddle but gets her spine snapped for her efforts. But no worries, because evil queen dies and Feyre comes back to life as High Fae and the whole thing could have been the perfect ‘happily ever after’. But apparently not. There are two more books after all.

All the components required to make this plot exist are one too many and while this was an okay read that helped me spend my weekend doing something other than taking depressive naps, most of the time it was uneventful. And I’m a stickler for action. Feyre’s mind is rather…boring too. 

Some things that did go well in this book though- 

1. The unintentional tension between Lucien and Feyre at first was amusing. 

2. I was relieved Feyre didn’t break the original curse in time because that would be rather cliché. In fact she didn’t even realize there was a curse until it was too late. So, it was not completely predictable. 

3. The fandom often jokes about Feyre’s paintings. Her paintings are mentioned throughout the book but in such an abstract, dramatic way that it is either on level with Michelangelo or a three-year-old messing with finger paint. The thought of Feyre drawing a sun in one corner of the frame and dramatically adding a smiley face to it while having philosophical thoughts about life had me cracking up.

4. I’m also secretly glad it doesn’t just end with this ‘happily ever after’. I was curious to explore this world further and see how Sarah J Maas deals with the question ‘Does happily ever after always work out in the aftermath of such traumatic events? Can we continue to love someone when such things change the both of us into different people? Can we still love a person when the part of them we fell in love with is long dead?’ 

Overall, I would rate this book about 3 stars. 1 star for the hilariously horrible flirting, 1 star for the hopefully kindergarten style painting, and a final star for unrealistic, convoluted curses that manages to be impressive by how much it bewilders me. Minus one star for Tamlin having no personality other than claws, neck-biting and playing the fiddle. And minus another star for long inner monologues that scrambled my brain with horrific vengeance.