Feyre lives near the wall that seperates the mortal lands from the faerie realm. To keep her family from starving, she needs to hunt and ends up killing a magical creature. To pay for the life she took, she gets imprisoned in a faerie court and slowly but surely falls for her captor, a creature she's been taught to hate for her whole life.
"There are good days and hard days for me - even now. Don't let the hard days win."
This book is phenomenal. Honestly, I don't even know where to start. I had super high expectations when I started it since the sequel was one of my most favorite books in 2015 and it took me a while until I could finally start reading, so I already heard of all the positive reactions and reviews. Still, this novel managed to suprise me because I didn't expect it to be that amazing. I'm really mad at myself for having trouble getting into the story at the beginning since I feel like I could've enjoyed it even more if I was able to dive right into it, but to be fair that was completely my fault because sometimes I just get distracted super easily. Anyway, basically everything about this novel is fantastic. The plot is fast paced, thrilling and varied, there are a lot of small (or bigger) plot twists you don't necessarily see coming and it's pretty much impossible to stop reading. It is certainly very interesting to see how PTSD and trauma plays a big role in this book and I think it's important to have these aspects in a novel like A court of mist and fury, not only beacuse it makes the story and its characters so much more realistic, but also because it's necessary to talk about these things a lot more. I really liked the ending and while it isn't truly a cliff hanger, Sarah J. Maas knows exactly how to end a book, so her readers will definitely pick up the sequel as well and I'm already so looking forward to reading the third book in the series. Her writing is, as always, absolutely beautiful, compelling and especially vivid, so I instantly had pictures of all the characters and places in my mind and had no trouble at all imagining the story in my head. A skill Sarah J. Maas has certainly mastered is world-building. She introduced so many new places and each and every one was absoultely stunning. Honestly, if I had the chance to travel to Prythian, I'd take it instantly and never come back. And that's exactly what I want in a high fantasy book: I want to read about a world that's very different from our own, with buildings that seem over the top and beautiful nature and that's exactly what I got in this book. The only thing I didn't enjoy in this book are the sex scenes. It's not that I think they're disgusting or anything, they're just so cringeworthy and, at least for me, extremely uncomfortable to read. I just feel like a creep staring into someone else's bedroom window while reading these scenes. I totally don't mind one or two of these scenes in a novel, but in A court of mist and fury are at least half a dozen of them. I honestly wished there was less focus on the romance, but to be fair I have to say the book definitely improved in this aspect since in comparison to the prequel A court of thornes and roses the romance is certainly less primary and the focus lies on the plot line.
To be honest, I'm in a bit of a conflict regarding Feyre as a character. At the beginning of A court of thornes and roses I couldn't stand her because she made stupid choices and just did the opposite of what experienced characters advised her to do and as a result got everyone into trouble, but as the story continued she developed and I ended up liking her quite a lot by the end of the first book. For the second book, it was the exact other way round: I began with liking her, but sadly started disliking her more towards the end. It's not like I absolutely hate her, but she's just not one of my favorite characters either. Apart from, like I mentioned before, still sometimes making stupid decisions and ignoring advise she tends to be quite arrogant and just starts randomly villainizing people. She's sometimes a bit annoying and frustrating as well since when she wants something for quite some time and then actually ends up getting it, she suddenly doesn't want it anymore. I also don't understand her morality: killing your rival's family is (obviously) evil, but killing his family in return as revenge is totally fine? Okay. Aside from my personal opinion about her I definitely have to admit that she goes through huge character development and is, especially in the second book, a really strong and independant character. I loved how many new characters are introduced, but at the same time I was a tiny bit sad the characters who appeared in the first book didn't get that much "screen-time". To be honest, I don't really care about Tamlin, but I did miss Lucien a bit. Learning about a lot of characters' backstories was super interesting and adds a lot to the complexity and dimension of the characters. While I really enjoyed how basically all the good characters are very complex and "gray" characters, I was quite disappointed to realize all the villains are very one-dimensional and just completely evil. None of the truly bad guys has any other motivation than the usual thirst for power and all of them are basically 100% evil without any part that's at least remotely good. Because of this, I wasn't very impressed with any of the villains and thought they're quite boring. Anyway, I fell in love with all the new characters, but if I had to choose my favorites, I'll probably go with Rhys and Mor. I'm not gonna lie, I'm definitely looking forward to meeting even more new characters in the third book.
Even though this review may sound a bit negative it certainly isn't meant to be. Sarah J. Maas showed with this book again how brilliant she is and I'm everytime suprised to see how she manages to get better and better. I can't encourage you enough to pick up A court of thornes and roses and A court of mist and fury and if (in the unlikely case) you haven't read Maas' other series, The throne of glass series, go do that now. You definitely won't regret it.
Rating: 5/5 ✹
Can I just say how incredibly cute this little Feyre bookmark is? I just had to show it off in another picture, so have a look at my adorable bookmark (and the beautiful spines of course).I genuinly didn't want this review to become that long, so thanks for reading it anyway. I hope you enjoyed it, and have a fantastic day!
Leah
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