A Court of Thorns and Roses

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I am not going to parse my feeling on this one. And spoilers will abound because I cannot be bothered to pretend I care about spoiling this book for anyone.

I hated 99% of this book. I hated it so much that I ripped through it as quickly as I could in the vain hope that perhaps something could redeem it. Spoilers: no such redemption ever happened. Seriously. It took until 70% of the way through this for me to find one thing I liked about the writing, characters, or setting. (For the curious, that one thing was the punishment Amarantha meted out to Jurian for destroying her sister. It was the first thing I found original and interesting and cruel enough to merit Amarantha's reputation. Amarantha herself did nothing in person to interest me whatsoever. Cookie cutter villain to the nth degree. And her motivations made me want to puke.)

In broad sweeps, my feelings are thus: None of these characters had an ounce of originality. The setting could have been interesting, but was lingered over in all the wrong spots and used in none of the good ones. The plot PLODDED on and on and on. (I was so freaking bored waiting for something to happen. Even when things were happening I was bored because I knew what was going to happen.) The writing was... weak, at best.

In short, I haven't felt this way about a book since the Eragon novels by Christopher Paolini. What could have been an intriguing twist on an age-old story is instead rife with paper cut-out characters, descriptions of clothing and OMGEMOTIONS, and a plot so thin I could've blown it apart with a breath. Even the answer to Amarantha's riddle was obvious (duh, it's love, because of course it is, don't you know LOVE IS THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING). And I haven't even mentioned the insanity that was the insta-love story between Tamlin and Feyre, or the much hinted at love triangle to come with Rhysand. Which is a shame because Rhysand was the only character I had a shred of interest in even if he is just a typical antihero. Maybe she won't go there with the love triangle (I haven't read the sequel yet), but I doubt it. Everything else has conformed to the worst stereotypes of young adult fantasy-romance, so I'm not going to hold my breath.

Did I mention how much I loathed Feyre? She was unimaginably stupid, even for an uneducated teenager slave to her emotions. Her inner monologue was so frustratingly repetitious that I often felt like Maas wrote this as a NaNoWriMo novel and was struggling for word count. And, oh, her feeling about things completely turned on a dime at several points with little to no build-up to her changing her mind. She's the NARRATOR. We're IN HER HEAD. I feel like the main character's move from loathing the fae to falling in love with the High Lord of the Spring Court might have been a tad more believable.

I'm ripping this to shreds for a few reasons. One is that all the people I know who like young adult novels loved this series. How could so many people be wrong, I thought naively to myself as I pulled this off the library shelf. Two is that as soon as I realized the premise of this book was a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast fable, my interest was piqued. Too bad that contributed to the book's predictability and mundanity. I'll take Robin McKinley's Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast or Rose Daughter over this any day.

The third and most important reason I am not holding back on my wrath for how awful I found this book is that I am a writer. I am writing young adult fantasy with romance. I cannot believe things like this not only get published, but are nearly universally loved. This is not good romance. These are not good characters. None of this was good writing. I'm going to give Sarah J. Maas the benefit of the doubt and hope some of her other books are better and that is why people love her so, but... Guys. Really? In some ways, this gives me more hope of being published. In other ways... not so much. If THIS is what readers want? Ugh.

....okay. Enough of my ranting. Time for me to get my hands on A Court of Mist and Fury. Yeah, I'm gonna keep reading. I've heard the sequel is better. And I'm nothing if not persistent.



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