by Sarah J. Maas ★★★★☆
Well, I finally did it. After years of resisting calls to read A Court of Thrones and Roses, or "ACOTAR" as it's affectionately known by fans, my hand was finally forced. One particularly insistent friend would not take no for an answer, especially after she saw how much I enjoyed both Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, and she gifted me not just Book 1, but the entire 5-book box set. How do you say "no thank you" after that? You don't. I finally broke down and went in with an open mind. And you know what? I'm glad I did.
It wasn't a cover-to-cover tour de force by any means, though. In fact, the first half of the book generated more eye rolls than appreciative nods. A Court of Thrones and Roses introduces us to Feyre (pronounced FAY-ruh), a human living near the border of faerie lands, and scraping to put food on the table for her two sisters and crippled father. Her situation and growling stomach turn her into an accomplished hunter, and she one day kills an unnaturally large wolf. It turns out that the wolf was actually a shapeshifted faerie, and his brethren come to exact their revenge. Rather than killing Feyre or her family, they whisk her away to the faerie land Prythian, where she will live out the rest of her days.
You know that scene in Beauty and the Beast, where the Beast is trying to get Belle to come to dinner, and struggling to be nice? This one. That's basically the first half of the book. It felt completely derivative of that story, but I later came to learn that the derivation was intentional—Maas has said in an interview that it "started off as a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, East of the Sun and West of the Moon and Tam Lin. These days, it's more of an original fantasy novel, but there are still plenty of nods to my initial source of inspiration." (from USA Today). A successful retelling needs to take the story in new and interesting directions, and for the first half of ACOTAR, those new directions were in relatively short supply.
The second half, however, is where things do branch out and get significantly more compelling. I won't ruin any of the surprise if you're one of the few who has yet to read ACOTAR, but the story shifts, improves, and barrels ahead to a satisfying climax.
Speaking of climaxes, I was expecting a spicier novel than what I got. Don't get me wrong, it's there—I mean, this is a book that includes the sentence "I was moaning his name when he sheathed himself inside me in a powerful, slow thrust that had me splintering around him." But I was expecting it to be rampant throughout the novel based on reviews, and it wasn't, which for me was a good thing. The spice level is much more akin to what you'd find in Fourth Wing, and possibly even less. There were 2-3 romantic scenes in over 400 pages—present, but not egregious. That could change in future books in the series, given the level of buildup and "reluctant Belle" portion of the first half of the book, but we shall see.
And I will see! I'm officially hooked and will be continuing the series to see what else lies in store for Feyre and the faeries. Maas does an impressive job of creating characters who are wholly good or very evil, but her true skill lies in those she develops that are in between. Those in the grey area were the most compelling and the ones I'm most eager to spend more time among. Pair that with an impressive page-turning plot line (once it got going), and this was a winner. The first half is something more in the 3-star range, but the second half is a 5-star finish, and assuming Book 2 (A Court of Mist and Fury) continues on the second half trajectory (as I expect it to), I'm excited to continue on the adventure.
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