Review: A Court of Mist and Fury

A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I'm surprised I never reviewed this on my first go-around two years ago. In a way I'm glad, because I apparently gave it a five star rating, and I had written some gushy review I'd be feeling pretty damn embarrassed right now.

This was the audiobook version, and that bears mentioning because I severely disliked the book narrator. I don't believe that had any impact on my downgraded rating, more that emphasized a growing dislike for Feyre and Rhys that really started in "A Court of Silver Flames." Why it started there I can only chalk up to the fact that their behavior is so egregiously bad in that book that it's hard to ignore. I apparently did ignore it my first trip through this book, but now that I look at it, it's there in spades.

I should also mention that I listened to this audiobook right after the ACOTAR one, which I think held up quite nicely. Feyre isn't nearly as insufferable there as she is here, and I can only chalk that up to human Feyre being drastically different that (overpowered) Fae Feyre. It's especially interesting when you take into consideration that I think that is also largely the reason behind the degradation of Feyre's relationship with Tamlin, hero of book one.

I will be very plain in saying that the main issue I have with this book is twofold - first, I feel a little betrayed over Tamlin's complete personality 180 here, because his arc from snooty Fae lord to a guy that fell in love with a human girl was so satisfying; Sarah J Maas didn't just turn that on its ear, she kind of stomped all over it. The bigger issue lies with the fact that the aforementioned character 180 is based solely on retconning and hypocrisy.

Let me explain the retconning first - There are behaviors an attitudes exhibited by Tamlin here that directly contradict what was laid out in book one. The most glaring example is the Tithe. Tamlin was quite clear about being a progressive high lord, and expressly states to Rhys at one point that he doesn't enforce rank in his court (Rhys even mocks him for it); The Tithe is all about rank, and this change is just written off by Maas as a need for order and tradition in the wake of everything Amarantha put them through. I could almost understand the need for order, but the fact that the Tithe expressly focuses on rank and punishing those that are poor doesn't make much sense for a court that is trying to recover from oppression (the solution is to oppress them more?!).

You could also say that Tamlin's personality itself is retconned - he flies off the handle at the drop of a hat here whereas in book one he's shown to have a grip on his temper (even if it's tenuous and requires a concentrated effort, he does not have any outbursts like he does here, even though there's plenty of reason to). Let’s play a little devil’s advocate though. I can attribute that one up to the fact that he's dealing with trauma and as a result his nerves and psyche are frayed so he might have as good a grip on things as he did before. The overprotectiveness towards Feyre largely makes sense as well when it's taken in the context that he did see her die in a pretty brutal way. The fact that he was much more lenient towards her as a human in book one (letting her have the run of the grounds, amongst other things) is chalked up to the fact that he wasn't totally in love with her at that point so he didn't care as much. I kind of call bullshit on that because even if he didn't love her, she was his last chance to break the curse so letting her get into dangerous situations would not have worked to his advantage. He was at least in love with her enough at the point that he sent her away right before Under the Mountain, ruining his chance of breaking the curse because he loved her too much to put her in danger, which is more counterproductive than controlling.

In any case, he's obviously a man that's wrecked by everything he saw Under the Mountain, to the point where he has horrible nightmares, spends hours in beast form, prowling the manor and checking for invaders - he's kind of gone full tin-hat crazy. The fact that this turns him into a controlling, emotionally abusive a-hole I think has less to do with the fact that it's a logical reaction to trauma (which it certainly can be) and everything to do with the fact that it's necessary to justify Feyre running right into Rhys's arms. Something that drastic was needed because Rhys spent the entirety of book 1 being a dick, and we were reminded at every turn how bad the Night Court was.

So yeah, the retconning is pretty bad, but its use as a plot device is necessitated by the fact that Rhys now needs to be the hero, and as such is completely inviolable. So how do you redeem a guy like that? You basically go back and explain away excuses for pretty much every objectionable behavior he exhibited (and there are a lot). The problem with that is, the wrong things done for the right reasons are still WRONG THINGS. You could say Tamlin is controlling Feyre out of a sense of deep love, which he is, but that doesn't give him the right to ignore her pleas and lock her in the house. Rhys, however, gets a pass on sexually assaulting Feyre (forcing her to give him lap dances), drugging her, publicly humiliating her, forcing her into a bargain to save her life, all because he meant well and was really trying to help. I obviously excused all of this on my first pass, but re-reading here with the intention of looking closer, I found that it's all bullshit and that none of it holds water. If Rhys is as magnanimous as he wants us to believe, why didn't he just heal Feyre without getting something in return? The drugging her was done so that she wouldn't have to remember the public humiliation. The public humiliation was done for the sake of keeping up his villain act so he could somehow undermine Amarantha - which never actually happens, mind you, even though he accuses Tamlin of being the one who sat on his ass for fifty years. Speaking of Tamlin, so many of the bad things Rhys does in book 1 are done as a direct result of his jealousy of Tamlin for having won Feyre's love. And the best thing about that is that all the petty shit Rhys pulls solely as an effort to get under Tamlin's skin, not only directly affects Feyre in a negative way (the lap dancing?) but is also written off as okay because he loves Feyre and they're mates.

The hoops that Maas jumps through just to make Feyre justified in running off to Rhys are kind of unbelievable. I guess she figured the only way she could make Feyre not seem like a slut for running to Rhys so soon after leaving a guy she literally died for is to make the latter into the worst guy possible, no matter how much that conflicts with how he was portrayed in book 1. This just comes off as either lazy or due to lack of skill - was it easier and faster to show Tamlin being a dick, or was she not talented enough to write the story of a relationship that naturally dissolves in the wake of extreme trauma (How many couples have just drifted apart after losing a child, or something similarly awful?). That certainly would have made sense, but I guess it wouldn't have been as exciting, nor would we get any of the "go-girl" woman power situations we see with Feyre. And the funniest thing about all of this is that Feyre leaving Tamlin doesn’t need to be justified, because she’s a grown woman an can do what she wants, but we apparently need to excuse her behavior because she’s a heroine and needs to perfect? Which is fucking hilarious because winds up being one of the worst people in the series.

All I'm saying is that having Tamlin be an asshole is certainly one way to get her into Rhys's arms, but it becomes problematic when you have the guy she's running to exhibit almost all of the same behaviors as the guy she's running from - but it's okay. Because reasons. That, in a nutshell, is my issue with this book, and it's largely what becomes the issue with the rest of series - Rhys and Feyre repeatedly hold their precious inner circle to standards they themselves do not hold.

I'd like to say that Tamlin's descent here really should be redeemed by the end of ACOWAR, but Maas continues to kick him when he's down, multiple times in ACOFAS and ACOSF. There doesn't seem to be much point in that other than the fact that she's a sadist. If she doesn't grant him a redemption arc in the same vein as Nesta (or Rhys even) all she's really saying is that some people don't deserve forgiveness, but fuck it she's not going to offer any valid explanations as to why. Rhys literally killed people as part of his act, ffs, something Tamlin NEVER does, but he's somehow beyond redemption, up to this point anyway. I thought she wrote a rather nuanced depiction of various mental health issues (depression, low self-esteem, poor self-image) with Nesta in ACOSF, but I even take issue with that because although Nesta is "redeemed" in the eyes of the inner circle, she's still treated far worse than anybody suffering from (such obvious) mental trauma should be - It's like Rhys and co are incapable of recognizing bad behavior that's a result of a cry for help/traumatic events and instead only see the bad behavior. This is in direct contrast to Rhys's bad behavior, which is done in the name of a noble cause (even though he does have trauma himself) and is promptly excused. I guess my point is that, based on Maas's own textual examples, Tamlin deserves the same redemption arc as Nesta and Rhys, and to not show that says nothing positive about mental health recovery, not to mention it's bleak as fuck and sadistic.

As for my own petty, minor, Rhys-esque grievances, I will say that the vaunted Chapter 55 is cringeworthy on a read-through, and does not hold up in the least. Consider it a gateway to smut - as you read more, you'll realize there's better smut out there. Also, if I had to hear the phrase "the most powerful high lord" in history one more time I was going to scream. And now that we're in to the whole mating thing, it's really only downhill from there.

View all my reviews