A Court of Thorns and Roses
After reading Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass and being thoroughly disappointed, I had my doubts when it came to A Court of Thorns and Roses. I was afraid that it would be a waste of time, money and energy but ultimately decided to give both the book and Maas a chance – and I’m extremly glad I did.
Living in the mortal realm, Feyre is the one to provide food for her family. They’re very poor and live solely on what she can hunt in the woods. But during a cold and harsh winter, Feyre has to kill a wolf in order to get the doe he was about to swipe from her. Feyre thinks nothing of it, even if the wolf was unnaturally large it didn’t seem to be a faerie, and she lives in peace for one day before a beast breaks into her home and demand her to either be killed on the spot or brought back to his lands in exchange for the life she took when she killed the wolf. Feyre, who realizes that the beast is among the High Fae, leaves her home to live out the rest of her life at his estate. The world is split into the mortal realm and the faerie lands, divided by an invisible wall. The faeries and High Fae’s, aren’t supposed to mix with the humans but when Feyre killed the wolf, a magical creature indeed, she broke the Treaty, written after the War between mortal humans and the immortal faeries, and she has to honoring it, without knowing what’s riding on her presence in the magical land of Prythian.
This book was more than I could ever have imagined. It’s a retelling of Beauty and the Best and very finely done as well. Maas has woven a story about Feyre, a huntress who has her family to support, and Tamlin, a High Fae with a heavy burden on his shoulder and an arsenal of secrets. Despite Feyre’s attempts to not fall for Tamlin she can’t help but love him and the life she carves out for herself at his home. But Tamlin’s secrets are dark enough to kill them both in an instant if it comes to that and Feyre doesn’t know that she’s the only one who can save him.
The story is very much like Beauty and the Best but at the same time it’s entirely its own. The world is split into humans and magical creatures, with the latter either being faeries, the lesser kind, or High Fae, the more human-like kind but with infinitely more power than the faeries. Prythian is divided into eight courts, all ruled by a High Lord – the most powerful of them all. Entering into Prythian has always been non-existing in Feyre’s mind since both faeries and High Fae are nothing but coldhearted evil creatures who slaughter humans for fun. She’s terrified at having to go with Tamlin into the land but it doesn’t take too long for her to start to feel safer around him. The story is so finely crafted in every aspect that I was in awe while reading it. It’s truly one of the best books I’ve read, not just this year but in my life.
I’ve heard a lot of praise for A Court of Thorns and Roses yet it didn’t stop my suspicions. Throne of Glass was also much loved when I read it and I didn’t like it at all. My problem with it wasn’t just the story itself, which had potential but didn’t reach anywhere near it in my opinion, but mostly the characters and the writing. That’s all in the hands of the writer and while I know a writer is constantly evolving I was still skeptical of A Court of Thorns and Roses. Now that I’ve read it I can say that while I won’t return to Maas’s Throne of Glass series, I will definitely continue with A Court of Thorns and Roses (which luckily is part of a trilogy). The writing was on a whole new level and Maas really made me feel like I was in the story in a way very few writers manages. She wrote in a way that made me see, made me feel, made me smell, made me taste everything Feyre encountered and I was amazed at how much Maas had matured since Throne of Glass.
The character department, my other worry, was also something Maas excelled at. She wrote a believable character in Feyre who was incredibly real and easy to connect to because she seemed so real. She made mistakes and fought with all she had to fix it the best she could and while I was constantly annoyed with the main character in Throne of Glass, Feyre was someone I really liked. Other characters, like Tamlin and his friend Lucien, also had a very real feeling to them and was easy to connect to. It’s been a very long time since I lived in a story the way I lived in A Court of Thorns and Roses and even though it’s extremely painful to look up from the pages only to realize what a dull and ordinary world I live in, it’s amazing to have a book like that in your hand, that can take you someplace else with just a swipe of your hand. It’s truly like magic.
The entire story had a more mature feeling than both Throne of Glass and most Young Adult novels has. Feyre is nineteen and I liked that she was older than most Young Adult heroines, who seem to be around sixteen or seventeen. Feyre was a grown-up and so was Tamlin, which made their relationship more mature and I liked that Maas had no problem with not shying away from it the way many authors who write Young Adult novels does. She told their love story from a grown woman’s perspective and it made the whole thing feel even more real than if she had smoothed over everything Feyre felt with disguised, subtitle words. At the same time, whenever something bad or absolutely disgusting happened, Maas wasn’t afraid of writing that down either. She told the story in a very raw, very real, way, no matter how gruesome or sexy it was and it felt like a fresh breeze in a world of always having to make the edges smooth so we don’t appear to brusque. But the world is raw and why not tell it exactly the way it is? I applaud Maas for this, I’m truly so happy she didn’t tell the story any other way than this, because it’s not often at all that I encounter an author who has the guts to write the truth like this.
The only thing that bothered me at times was that Feyre had a thing about repeating herself. After a while I wanted to tell her that I knew exactly what was awaiting her and all that had happened before, because she’d already mentioned it thrice before. And, without spoiling anything, there was a character that disappeared very suddenly from the story not to be heard from again. I have a feeling this person will reappear in the next installment, but if it doesn’t happen then I’m annoyed at how that was handled. But I trust that Maas has something up her sleeve when it comes to this, too.
All in all, I was amazed at how good I thought the book was. It was in fact so good that I skipped reading it for days because I didn’t want it to end. It was painful when I saw how little was left of the story, but I console myself with the fact that I can go back to it however many times I want in the future – and I know for a fact that I will. This was an incredibly good book, one that I can’t recommend enough, one that will sweep you away and give you a nerve-wracking adventure, a spicy romance and a very dark and frightening turn of events. I think you should give this a chance, regardless of who you are or what you like to read because this, this is a really good book.
Living in the mortal realm, Feyre is the one to provide food for her family. They’re very poor and live solely on what she can hunt in the woods. But during a cold and harsh winter, Feyre has to kill a wolf in order to get the doe he was about to swipe from her. Feyre thinks nothing of it, even if the wolf was unnaturally large it didn’t seem to be a faerie, and she lives in peace for one day before a beast breaks into her home and demand her to either be killed on the spot or brought back to his lands in exchange for the life she took when she killed the wolf. Feyre, who realizes that the beast is among the High Fae, leaves her home to live out the rest of her life at his estate. The world is split into the mortal realm and the faerie lands, divided by an invisible wall. The faeries and High Fae’s, aren’t supposed to mix with the humans but when Feyre killed the wolf, a magical creature indeed, she broke the Treaty, written after the War between mortal humans and the immortal faeries, and she has to honoring it, without knowing what’s riding on her presence in the magical land of Prythian.
This book was more than I could ever have imagined. It’s a retelling of Beauty and the Best and very finely done as well. Maas has woven a story about Feyre, a huntress who has her family to support, and Tamlin, a High Fae with a heavy burden on his shoulder and an arsenal of secrets. Despite Feyre’s attempts to not fall for Tamlin she can’t help but love him and the life she carves out for herself at his home. But Tamlin’s secrets are dark enough to kill them both in an instant if it comes to that and Feyre doesn’t know that she’s the only one who can save him.
The story is very much like Beauty and the Best but at the same time it’s entirely its own. The world is split into humans and magical creatures, with the latter either being faeries, the lesser kind, or High Fae, the more human-like kind but with infinitely more power than the faeries. Prythian is divided into eight courts, all ruled by a High Lord – the most powerful of them all. Entering into Prythian has always been non-existing in Feyre’s mind since both faeries and High Fae are nothing but coldhearted evil creatures who slaughter humans for fun. She’s terrified at having to go with Tamlin into the land but it doesn’t take too long for her to start to feel safer around him. The story is so finely crafted in every aspect that I was in awe while reading it. It’s truly one of the best books I’ve read, not just this year but in my life.
I’ve heard a lot of praise for A Court of Thorns and Roses yet it didn’t stop my suspicions. Throne of Glass was also much loved when I read it and I didn’t like it at all. My problem with it wasn’t just the story itself, which had potential but didn’t reach anywhere near it in my opinion, but mostly the characters and the writing. That’s all in the hands of the writer and while I know a writer is constantly evolving I was still skeptical of A Court of Thorns and Roses. Now that I’ve read it I can say that while I won’t return to Maas’s Throne of Glass series, I will definitely continue with A Court of Thorns and Roses (which luckily is part of a trilogy). The writing was on a whole new level and Maas really made me feel like I was in the story in a way very few writers manages. She wrote in a way that made me see, made me feel, made me smell, made me taste everything Feyre encountered and I was amazed at how much Maas had matured since Throne of Glass.
The character department, my other worry, was also something Maas excelled at. She wrote a believable character in Feyre who was incredibly real and easy to connect to because she seemed so real. She made mistakes and fought with all she had to fix it the best she could and while I was constantly annoyed with the main character in Throne of Glass, Feyre was someone I really liked. Other characters, like Tamlin and his friend Lucien, also had a very real feeling to them and was easy to connect to. It’s been a very long time since I lived in a story the way I lived in A Court of Thorns and Roses and even though it’s extremely painful to look up from the pages only to realize what a dull and ordinary world I live in, it’s amazing to have a book like that in your hand, that can take you someplace else with just a swipe of your hand. It’s truly like magic.
The entire story had a more mature feeling than both Throne of Glass and most Young Adult novels has. Feyre is nineteen and I liked that she was older than most Young Adult heroines, who seem to be around sixteen or seventeen. Feyre was a grown-up and so was Tamlin, which made their relationship more mature and I liked that Maas had no problem with not shying away from it the way many authors who write Young Adult novels does. She told their love story from a grown woman’s perspective and it made the whole thing feel even more real than if she had smoothed over everything Feyre felt with disguised, subtitle words. At the same time, whenever something bad or absolutely disgusting happened, Maas wasn’t afraid of writing that down either. She told the story in a very raw, very real, way, no matter how gruesome or sexy it was and it felt like a fresh breeze in a world of always having to make the edges smooth so we don’t appear to brusque. But the world is raw and why not tell it exactly the way it is? I applaud Maas for this, I’m truly so happy she didn’t tell the story any other way than this, because it’s not often at all that I encounter an author who has the guts to write the truth like this.
The only thing that bothered me at times was that Feyre had a thing about repeating herself. After a while I wanted to tell her that I knew exactly what was awaiting her and all that had happened before, because she’d already mentioned it thrice before. And, without spoiling anything, there was a character that disappeared very suddenly from the story not to be heard from again. I have a feeling this person will reappear in the next installment, but if it doesn’t happen then I’m annoyed at how that was handled. But I trust that Maas has something up her sleeve when it comes to this, too.
All in all, I was amazed at how good I thought the book was. It was in fact so good that I skipped reading it for days because I didn’t want it to end. It was painful when I saw how little was left of the story, but I console myself with the fact that I can go back to it however many times I want in the future – and I know for a fact that I will. This was an incredibly good book, one that I can’t recommend enough, one that will sweep you away and give you a nerve-wracking adventure, a spicy romance and a very dark and frightening turn of events. I think you should give this a chance, regardless of who you are or what you like to read because this, this is a really good book.