Review: A Court of Silver Flames

A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ah. It’s so good to be back in the Fae lands of Sarah J. Maas, where all the males are beautiful, ripped, and roar when they come, all the females are beautiful and delicate-yet-strong, all characters are over-powered to the point of it being ludicrous, and nothing bad ever happens, at least to those in our sacred Inner Circle. Oh, and I almost forgot the copious amounts of fucking. Lots and lots and lots of fucking. Fucking and fucking and fucking.

It’s formulaic as shit, predictable and trite, and I looooove it.

There’s nothing earth-shattering about this latest addition, and it goes much the same way pretty much all of SJM’s books go. I think people have been clamoring for the story of Nesta and Cassian for a long time, and now that it’s finally here, it winds up being......a lot like the story of Feyre and Rhys. Broken girl mends herself through the love of a good man, and exhibits yet more world-shattering power and saves her friends from certain death through the power of love and family and togetherness. Blah blah blah.

So yeah, formulaic, but the strengths of this book come not in adhering to a proven formula, but in the ways she dares to step away from that. I can’t express enough how much I appreciated how SJM actually tried to go there with Nesta’s depression, her self-loathing, and the way she deals with all of that. The trauma, the inner monologue - I think any of us that have been there ourselves knows what it’s like, knows how easy it is to lash out and hurt before you can be hurt, to withdraw, to lose hope.

Given all of that it was somewhat disappointing to see the whole thing tied up in a neat little bow at the end, like pretty much all of the ACOTAR books have been so far. Mental illness isn’t neat, and it kind of doesn’t just go magically away. It helps if you have a good support system, which I’m sure a lot of people will say Nesta had, but I challenge that. They largely treated her like shit.

Granted, she wasn’t the easiest person to deal with, even before she was turned Fae, but all three Archeron sisters experienced trauma, and all of their experiences were unique, and all of them deal with it in different ways. Which is why I find it so fucking rich that when Nesta was so obviously hurting, all Rhys and co seemed to be able to do was get pissed at how Nesta’s troubles were affecting them, and tarnishing their perfect, shiny lives. Elain, in the meantime, goes all catatonic and they do nothing but support her, but Nesta reacts to a similar trauma in a different way that they all deem wrong, and all but turn their backs on her. And Nesta just winds up not only hating herself more for it and for how she reacts to it, but then winds up apologizing for it. I nearly threw up in my mouth over that. Even Cassian, who mostly supports her through all of it, winds up treating her with utter disrespect after she tells Feyre about the whole baby situation. I think she was pretty justified in all of that, tbh. True, she lashed out, but, the vaunted Court was again talking out of both sides of their mouth, and they got called out, and didn’t like it.

Now that that’s off my chest, some assorted musings:

1. SJM is like the queen of hyperbole. Everything is the biggest or most powerful in a million billion years, and our heroes are the best and the brightest and the most beautiful, and they have all the money and all the richest, bestest things. It’s exhausting. They’re no nuance, no real conflict, and no real risk. Our heroes ALWAYS find a way out of it, and it’s almost ALWAYS because they are insanely overpowered. So whatever conflict there is is usually explained away by convenient plot devices usually in the form of crazy-powerful magical objects or powers and abilities that are vague enough that they conveniently fill any plot holes or situations that would otherwise be difficult to work out of. No Breaking for SJM, she’s taking the easy way to the top of Mt. Illyria, or whatever that damned mountain is.

2. The hypocrisy of the main characters here is nothing short of ASTOUNDING. Tamlin is a bad baaaad man because he tries to keep Feyre caged, but she just rolls over and is all “K hun” when Rhys tells her she can’t do things or go places because she’s pregnant, or when he literally shields her (didn’t Tamlin do something similar?) to keep her from doing things or from other people touching her. Like where do you get off, bro? What’s the difference here? They are complete masters of projection as well, and they love to call people out for doing shit they do themselves. The aforementioned shielding is love when Rhys does it, but abusive when it’s Tamlin. Tamlin and Beron are bad High Lords because they don’t give a shit about their people, but Rhys and Feyre can make a ridiculous bargain that will kill the other if one of them dies, thus leaving their ENTIRE COURT leaderless and any potential future children without either parent. But it’s love, and it’s Rhys, so it’s okay. Elain completely withdraws as a result of Cauldron-related trauma, and she’s treated with kid gloves because she’s sweet and gentle, but Nesta does pretty much the same thing and she’s treated like trash and given ultimatums. These people are literally the worst. THE WORST.

3. Some people are worthy of redemption (Nesta, obvs.) but Tamlin is not. Why? I’m still not sure, because when you look closely at it, they are both dealing with different situations in very similar ways - the lashing out, withdrawing from the world, the self-loathing. Why are people willing to eventually reach out to Nesta, but not to Tamlin, when the guy so very obviously is in need of help? Why is she worthy of it, but he’s not? I don’t really have a good answer for that, other than the fact that SJM seems to take this perverse pleasure out of torturing Tamlin and making him as pathetic as possible. And before anyone comes at me with the “oh he was abusive to Feyre, and he was misogynistic, and he held her back” and any number of other things, he was just as traumatized as anyone by what happened with Amarantha, and what happened earlier in his life between him and Rhys. Except Tamlin had literally no support system, and wasn’t surrounded by friends and people who loved him to help him out of his bad situation. He opens himself up to Feyre, and then basically goes crazy with paranoia over potentially losing her to the point where he winds up driving her away. So yeah, he reacted in the wrong way, and he did it to himself, but why is nobody seeing his behavior as the cry for help it obviously is? The abused often become abusers themselves when they have no support systems to show them the way out, so for all SJMs realistic portrayals of mental health struggles, she is embarrassingly ignorant on this one. Tamlin needs a redemption arc, fight me.

4. Poor Lucien. He’s essentially a decent guy, and nobody is willing to call out Elain for being straight up rude to him. I’m not asking her to just immediately accept the whole mate thing, but there’s no reason to ignore him the way she does. I guess a lot of people are assuming that the next volume in the series will be Elain’s story, and I have my suspicions about what will eventually happen between her and Lucien. I’m not sure if there’s really something going on with her and Azriel - I mean, I think it’s pretty obvious that she might have a thing for him, but I’m not sure it’s reciprocated, and there’s that whole unrequited (never gonna happen) thing between Azriel and Mor. One major thing makes me think that there’s no way Elain and Azriel are going to end up together, and that has to do with the “changes” Nesta made during her bargain with the Cauldron that saved Feyre and allowed her to have her bat-baby and Nesta to eventually have little future Cassians. She pointedly mentioned that she only requested those changes for her and Feyre. Not Elain. I know this is all predicated on the assumption that Elain and Azriel would eventually have children were they to end up together, but I feel like it’s a rather obvious omission on SJMs part. Also, I’m not 100% sure how this whole mate thing works, and I can’t recall any examples of the mating bond being rejected or one person “mating” with another when someone else recognizes them as their mate....or whatever. I suspect that there’s something to the fact that the three Archeron sisters have issues with recognizing their “mates” right away because of their former humanity, so I feel like there’s hope for Elain and Lucien. EDIT: so I read the Azriel POV chapter and that clears up a lot...but I also feel like it kind of came out of nowhere? It was weird, and it made me feel even worse for Lucien. Let me be clear, I don’t think Elain owes him anything based on the mating bond, but she at least owes him an explanation and some basic respect, just because that’s the decent thing to do. If she’s not interested, just say so.

5. The smut - can’t leave without mentioning the smut. The smut was pretty good, great at times, but I think there was so much of it that you eventually become numb to it. I mean it had been building between these two for so long that it was extremely fulfilling to FINALLY get there, but then after 8 millionth description of them fucking it just got kind of boring.

6. This book made me hate Rhys. If you were ever in doubt of him being a sanctimonious, self-righteous, super-woke SJW, then this should pretty much convince you. I am a little disturbed by the willingness of everyone in the Inner Circle to just accept whatever he says. That’s not loyalty, that’s cultism. Look no further than Trump and the cult of MAGA to see what behavior like that buys you. You should be calling out your leaders when they act like assholes....isn’t that why you’re there? Don’t get me wrong, Rhys is Rhys, and even if he is arrogant as fuck, I’d 100% still bang, but I just wish SJM took him off that pedestal a little more. He had lots of obvious fuck ups here, but they were brushed under the rug. I wish someone would just grow a pair and call him out on his bullshit for once. I mean, Nesta did it, but everybody basically ganged up on her after, so.....

7. SJM has no idea how to write realistic people. Her, more than any other writer I’ve ever read, has every single person in her world being impossibly beautiful, impossibly perfect, and overwhelmingly powerful. She’s been called out a ton for her lack of racial representation, but I’ve always kind of felt you write what you know and what you live. I’m not gonna lie, until an author tells me otherwise, I assume most female characters in books look like me, and the men look like someone I’d find attractive. It’s what I know. So I don’t necessarily blame her for not having more POC in her books because she’s a white woman and I’m not sure it’s the place of white women to write about the experiences POC have - it seems disrespectful to write about something you can’t possibly understand. And it always comes off as cheap to have the token POC in a book - it’s ALWAYS obvious, and always disingenuous. Rather, I think diversity would be better served by providing better opportunities for POC writers to promote their material, giving them equal air time, equal respect, and equal chances. I’ve never understood the push for racial diversity in books if it’s not natural and genuine. It dilutes the significance and importance of having it there in the first place. Do you want token representation or real representation? So while I don’t necessarily knock her for not having enough POC in her books, I think she does a real disservice to her largely female audience not so much with her lack of body diversity, but instead with her over-emphasis of physical beauty and certain aspects of physical idealism (slender figures, bigger breasts, blue/green eyes). I’m not asking her to inject token plus-size characters into her books, just that it grates after a while, you know? These are my personal insecurities though, so it’s difficult to have them kind of thrown in my face every other word. I suspect it might be much the same for POC readers looking for more personal representation, but I haven’t lived that so I can’t speak to it. I think this is my thing to get over, and I really shouldn’t be looking to others for validation or to feel better about myself. I largely feel like authors and creatives in general owe us NOTHING with regards to their art; it’s theirs to craft as they see fit, and ours to like if we choose to do so. I guess what I’m trying to say is that more diversity would be great (whether it’s racial or body diversity), but it means squat if it’s not coming from a place of authenticity.


Despite all of this, I devour these books like McD’s fries and Diet Coke - probably bad for me, no real nutritional value, but fuck it they taste good.

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