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4.36 AVERAGE
4.36 AVERAGE
Everything I wanted to happen, happened. Well maybe not everything
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
funny
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
can they tone down the shagging for gods sake
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Maas, what the fuck, why did you get so thirsty?!
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
sad
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
2021 Popsugar Reading Challenge: A book with a gem, mineral, or rock in the title.
No joke, I was planning to read an entirely different book with silver in the title. Cue me going down the google rabbit hole trying to figure out if silver is a mineral and ending up on a pdf of every known mineral ever. Turned out silver was a mineral. But it also turned out my library request for this book came through. So here we are.
Since I've been trying to leave long-ish, thoughtful reviews for my reads for this challenge I feel like I need to do the same for this book. I'm going to put the rest of it under a spoiler cut. Fair warning I am not, as such, all that much of a fan of this series and this book didn't change that. The first book was fine but nothing that would compel me to read the rest. Except, I found out that the second book had the main character end up with a new love interest and I was fairly intrigued by that. Unfortunately, I ended up very annoyed with the "mate" bound and how it seems to contradict the series' theme of free will. Also unfortunately, that book led me to being very interested in the fate of Nesta (and Elain to a lesser extent) so ... here I am. Several books later.
The tl;dr version of my review is "this book had some of my favorite moments in the series ... but also some of my least favorite."
And now, thoughts on A Court of Silver Fire in no particular order:
1. The sex scenes are bad. Not necessarily because of cringe euphemisms, not even because I found them repetitive (although I did.) Rather, they're frustrating because they chuck out characterization and context until all you're left with physically perfect characters having perfect sex. I get that perfection is often part of the fantasy in smut but... Personally, for me, vulnerability and context are the hottest things in sex scenes. It's not that exciting reading about body part A going into body part B. Other than the winter solstice sex, all the sex scenes are basically the same in tone. You could probably isolate them from the text and it would be very difficult to remember which scene took place when. In this book we have 1. makeup sex, 2. so glad to be alive sex, 3. hurt/comfort sex, 4. quick fuck before we're horny sex, 5. trying to seem like we aren't catching feelings sex. And on and on and on. All fun scenarios to explore, and sometimes sex scenes are a gift that allow the writer to show off things about their characters that might not come up ordinarily. And yet, the sex scenes are all about how good they both feel, how big Cassian's dick is, how nice Nesta's breasts are, and lots and lots body fluids. It all comes across as very mechanical, even though some of these scenes take place under very emotional circumstances and very specific contexts.
Here's an example of what I meant. At one point Nesta thinks about how Cassian is sizing her up like a predator. Whatever, pretty standard stuff. The fae dudes are alpha males, SJM uses this description a lot. Except, here's the thing; just a few hours ago Nesta had nearly been eaten alive by a monster, aka an actual predator. A lot of people wouldn't feel too excited about being sized like a predator moments after this. But it's also possible Nesta does find this exciting. Maybe she has a danger kink. Or, more negatively, maybe she has a death wish. This is what I mean about how sex scenes can actually have a lot of embedded characterization. Especially with someone like Nesta who is so fierce and guarded, but also enjoys sex. Something that, again, can make you pretty vulnerable. If it makes her feel vulnerable that says something. If it doesn't, that can also say something.
But that line doesn't mean anything. It's just a throwaway line. So many of the sex scenes are throwaway lines.
2. Okay, so, so the death of Nesta's father is one of Nesta's driving motivations. And, interestingly, it's because her grief is complicated. She loves him but she's also furious at his passivity when they needed him the most. Part of her grief over his death appears to be because they never fought it out and resolved things and she's still angry at him (and herself). This is actually one of the most compelling parts of the book ... at least in terms of what it does for Nesta. I'm not that interested in her father because he's a cipher.
Likewise, Nesta and Feyre have always been at odds with each other. Throughout the series they've clashed and fought. Sometimes in convincing ways, sometimes in unconvincing ways. They're still one of the more compelling relationships in the series, in my opinion. I was spoiled for the subplot about Feyre's pregnancy crisis, so I assumed some of Nesta's mixed feelings about her father would actually flow into her complicated feelings about Feyre's imminent death.
Except there's almost no urgency about Feyre's death except the last few moments of her life. Before that, we pretty much just get Rhys have circles under his eyes. Nesta telling Feyre the truth (trust me, I'm getting to that) does cause problems ... but it's much, much more about how it upsets Rhis more than Feyre. Nesta certainly doesn't try to resolve things with her sister before she dies, even though trying to have those conversations while knowing her sister is dying could have been interesting.
It's seriously so strange... Feyre's death is pretty much a given. And yet the characters do things like: sleepovers, snowball fights, obstacle courses, lots and lot of sex, preparing Nesta for a fake date with Eris, buying each other presents, and on and on and on. Life does have to go on even during tragedy. It's also possible to be in denial. But the way the book is written... it honestly just feels like that ticking time bomb is forgotten until it needs to be remembered again. It never feels urgent even though we're told over every so often that it is a big deal. Feyre and Nesta never even really talk after Nesta confesses things to Feyre. Even though - once again - there are so many thematic parallels between Nesta's issues with her father and her sister.
It's honestly impossible for me to forgive this subplot (again, I'll get to it) but the least SJM could use this situation to have more complex conversations between Nesta and Feyre. She had set that up so well and ... nothing.
3. Okay. Right. Rhys hiding that the pregnancy will kill Feyre.
This whole damn found family hiding that the pregnancy will kill Feyre.
The inner circle punishing Feyre for telling her sister (HER SISTER.) what was likely to happen.
Yeah, it's really bad. It's really, really bad.
Look, I've read a lot of books that have characters due terrible that are much worse than this series. However those books don't emphasize freedom and autonomy to the degrees these characters do. This is very much something that it is told and not shown, though. To be honest, Rhys lying to Feyre about her pregnancy is a culmination of behavior from previous books. He's manipulated her and lied to her many times and so this wasn't really a surprise. Also, Rhysand and Feyre have always struck me as being more than a little obsessed with the miracle of their own love affair. They basically promised a death pact together, not seemingly thinking about what might happen in a scenario like this. It's believable.
But I still hated it. There's been a lot of sexism throughout the series but like ... fae mates aren't a thing that exist. It's not my trope - not as its outlined in this book - but I could set my brain aside a lot of the time. This scenario, though, is something that has happened in history. There are people still alive who weren't informed of a terminal diagnosis until they had their husband come along with them to the doctor's office. None of them worried about giving birth to a child with wings, no. Reproductive coercion, however, is a very real thing and I believe the scenario in this book qualifies. They found out pretty early on that the fetus might kill Feyre. She deserved to be able to make a choice about whether she would carry the child to term or not. And Nesta didn't deserve to be demonized for telling her sister. Yes, even if she did so in anger.
I do appreciate the series for recognizing that Feyre was an abusive situation in the second book and allowing her to leave it. However, the more I read this series the more I feel series ends up repeating the myth that only violent abuse is real abuse.
4. Amren gets her own complaint too because she's so unforgivable here. Why is Amren - a 5000-something-year-old eldritch horror - constantly making creepy comments about Nesta having meaningless sex? Why did I have to read her saying degrading things about Cassian sticking his dick in Nesta and how dangerous that could be for him? Why did the book make Nesta beg her for forgiveness?
Oh and don't forget that Amren ended up disliking Nesta because Nesta treated Feyre badly. Even though Amren is also treating Feyre badly. She's literally hiding Feyre's terminal illness from her. Make it make sense!
Or at least acknowledge the character's hypocrisy. It's not, as such, terrible to give character's flaws! Hell, I'd likely enjoy this series if the author wasn't portraying them as the best and most flawless friends ever. But she does. And so behavior like this becomes incredibly grating. So many things in this series would be livable if we were just allowed by the prose to see the characters as flawed (having a tortured past is not necessarily a flaw. More on that later.)
5. I started thinking of this book as being about youtube influencers that happened to have magic. This is because the books' setting just becomes more and more unbelievable. It's been vaguely ye olde medieval Europe form the start.. but in this book we also have characters talking about lactic acid, discussing traumas like they've been using a self-care app, and gifting each other things that are basically blue tooth sound systems. There's a lack of place and a lack of urgency, and yet every so often we hear character backgrounds that are quite dark relative to the world we deal with day-to-day in this book. It's odd. Not a dealbreaker. Could even be endearing in a book with better characterization. I might not even notice or care if the characterization was better.
6. All that being said ... I read this for Nesta, and I got a lot of good Nesta content. I'm not at all happy with how the inner circle treated her. Rhys and Amren are on my shit list forever, in fact. However, I got some fun emotional fights with Elain (of all people.) I got Nesta forming friends of her own. It was genuinely fun to read about her training, and working in a library, and re-connecting with music in this book. We've seen this plot in the series before but... well... Nesta has actual flaws. The reasons for them make sense, and they genuinely impact her life. It was really fun to see her grow and for her to end in a better place than she has in all the previous books. It all felt earned and satisfying compared to the ends of basically every other book in this series.
And I loved her making new friends. Some of the most beautiful passages involved her thinking about Emerie and Gwyn. Nesta has always seemed at odds with what the narrative is trying to push her into doing. In some ways she's falling into the usual fae things; she has a mate now, she's buddy-buddy with the inner circle, etc etc. But she still mostly felt like her own person at the end. Maybe because of her new friends. Maybe because, in spite of myself, I mostly enjoyed Nesta/Cassian. I hope she can remain a challenge to the status quo, at least a little bit.
7. YES I'll probably read another book if it comes out. I know, I know. If it deals with Elain then I will be compelled to check out that book. This is mostly because, thus far, Elain has been resistant to the mating bond. I have zero thoughts on Elain/Azriel versus Elain/Lucien. But if the series manages to explore what it's like to have a mate, but to not feel romantically driven to them then... well. That could be interesting, no?
8. Okay, that was a very long review for a very long book. All I can say for sure is I'm fascinated by this series successes and failures.
No joke, I was planning to read an entirely different book with silver in the title. Cue me going down the google rabbit hole trying to figure out if silver is a mineral and ending up on a pdf of every known mineral ever. Turned out silver was a mineral. But it also turned out my library request for this book came through. So here we are.
Since I've been trying to leave long-ish, thoughtful reviews for my reads for this challenge I feel like I need to do the same for this book. I'm going to put the rest of it under a spoiler cut. Fair warning I am not, as such, all that much of a fan of this series and this book didn't change that. The first book was fine but nothing that would compel me to read the rest. Except, I found out that the second book had the main character end up with a new love interest and I was fairly intrigued by that. Unfortunately, I ended up very annoyed with the "mate" bound and how it seems to contradict the series' theme of free will. Also unfortunately, that book led me to being very interested in the fate of Nesta (and Elain to a lesser extent) so ... here I am. Several books later.
The tl;dr version of my review is "this book had some of my favorite moments in the series ... but also some of my least favorite."
Spoiler
And now, thoughts on A Court of Silver Fire in no particular order:
1. The sex scenes are bad. Not necessarily because of cringe euphemisms, not even because I found them repetitive (although I did.) Rather, they're frustrating because they chuck out characterization and context until all you're left with physically perfect characters having perfect sex. I get that perfection is often part of the fantasy in smut but... Personally, for me, vulnerability and context are the hottest things in sex scenes. It's not that exciting reading about body part A going into body part B. Other than the winter solstice sex, all the sex scenes are basically the same in tone. You could probably isolate them from the text and it would be very difficult to remember which scene took place when. In this book we have 1. makeup sex, 2. so glad to be alive sex, 3. hurt/comfort sex, 4. quick fuck before we're horny sex, 5. trying to seem like we aren't catching feelings sex. And on and on and on. All fun scenarios to explore, and sometimes sex scenes are a gift that allow the writer to show off things about their characters that might not come up ordinarily. And yet, the sex scenes are all about how good they both feel, how big Cassian's dick is, how nice Nesta's breasts are, and lots and lots body fluids. It all comes across as very mechanical, even though some of these scenes take place under very emotional circumstances and very specific contexts.
Here's an example of what I meant. At one point Nesta thinks about how Cassian is sizing her up like a predator. Whatever, pretty standard stuff. The fae dudes are alpha males, SJM uses this description a lot. Except, here's the thing; just a few hours ago Nesta had nearly been eaten alive by a monster, aka an actual predator. A lot of people wouldn't feel too excited about being sized like a predator moments after this. But it's also possible Nesta does find this exciting. Maybe she has a danger kink. Or, more negatively, maybe she has a death wish. This is what I mean about how sex scenes can actually have a lot of embedded characterization. Especially with someone like Nesta who is so fierce and guarded, but also enjoys sex. Something that, again, can make you pretty vulnerable. If it makes her feel vulnerable that says something. If it doesn't, that can also say something.
But that line doesn't mean anything. It's just a throwaway line. So many of the sex scenes are throwaway lines.
2. Okay, so, so the death of Nesta's father is one of Nesta's driving motivations. And, interestingly, it's because her grief is complicated. She loves him but she's also furious at his passivity when they needed him the most. Part of her grief over his death appears to be because they never fought it out and resolved things and she's still angry at him (and herself). This is actually one of the most compelling parts of the book ... at least in terms of what it does for Nesta. I'm not that interested in her father because he's a cipher.
Likewise, Nesta and Feyre have always been at odds with each other. Throughout the series they've clashed and fought. Sometimes in convincing ways, sometimes in unconvincing ways. They're still one of the more compelling relationships in the series, in my opinion. I was spoiled for the subplot about Feyre's pregnancy crisis, so I assumed some of Nesta's mixed feelings about her father would actually flow into her complicated feelings about Feyre's imminent death.
Except there's almost no urgency about Feyre's death except the last few moments of her life. Before that, we pretty much just get Rhys have circles under his eyes. Nesta telling Feyre the truth (trust me, I'm getting to that) does cause problems ... but it's much, much more about how it upsets Rhis more than Feyre. Nesta certainly doesn't try to resolve things with her sister before she dies, even though trying to have those conversations while knowing her sister is dying could have been interesting.
It's seriously so strange... Feyre's death is pretty much a given. And yet the characters do things like: sleepovers, snowball fights, obstacle courses, lots and lot of sex, preparing Nesta for a fake date with Eris, buying each other presents, and on and on and on. Life does have to go on even during tragedy. It's also possible to be in denial. But the way the book is written... it honestly just feels like that ticking time bomb is forgotten until it needs to be remembered again. It never feels urgent even though we're told over every so often that it is a big deal. Feyre and Nesta never even really talk after Nesta confesses things to Feyre. Even though - once again - there are so many thematic parallels between Nesta's issues with her father and her sister.
It's honestly impossible for me to forgive this subplot (again, I'll get to it) but the least SJM could use this situation to have more complex conversations between Nesta and Feyre. She had set that up so well and ... nothing.
3. Okay. Right. Rhys hiding that the pregnancy will kill Feyre.
This whole damn found family hiding that the pregnancy will kill Feyre.
The inner circle punishing Feyre for telling her sister (HER SISTER.) what was likely to happen.
Yeah, it's really bad. It's really, really bad.
Look, I've read a lot of books that have characters due terrible that are much worse than this series. However those books don't emphasize freedom and autonomy to the degrees these characters do. This is very much something that it is told and not shown, though. To be honest, Rhys lying to Feyre about her pregnancy is a culmination of behavior from previous books. He's manipulated her and lied to her many times and so this wasn't really a surprise. Also, Rhysand and Feyre have always struck me as being more than a little obsessed with the miracle of their own love affair. They basically promised a death pact together, not seemingly thinking about what might happen in a scenario like this. It's believable.
But I still hated it. There's been a lot of sexism throughout the series but like ... fae mates aren't a thing that exist. It's not my trope - not as its outlined in this book - but I could set my brain aside a lot of the time. This scenario, though, is something that has happened in history. There are people still alive who weren't informed of a terminal diagnosis until they had their husband come along with them to the doctor's office. None of them worried about giving birth to a child with wings, no. Reproductive coercion, however, is a very real thing and I believe the scenario in this book qualifies. They found out pretty early on that the fetus might kill Feyre. She deserved to be able to make a choice about whether she would carry the child to term or not. And Nesta didn't deserve to be demonized for telling her sister. Yes, even if she did so in anger.
I do appreciate the series for recognizing that Feyre was an abusive situation in the second book and allowing her to leave it. However, the more I read this series the more I feel series ends up repeating the myth that only violent abuse is real abuse.
4. Amren gets her own complaint too because she's so unforgivable here. Why is Amren - a 5000-something-year-old eldritch horror - constantly making creepy comments about Nesta having meaningless sex? Why did I have to read her saying degrading things about Cassian sticking his dick in Nesta and how dangerous that could be for him? Why did the book make Nesta beg her for forgiveness?
Oh and don't forget that Amren ended up disliking Nesta because Nesta treated Feyre badly. Even though Amren is also treating Feyre badly. She's literally hiding Feyre's terminal illness from her. Make it make sense!
Or at least acknowledge the character's hypocrisy. It's not, as such, terrible to give character's flaws! Hell, I'd likely enjoy this series if the author wasn't portraying them as the best and most flawless friends ever. But she does. And so behavior like this becomes incredibly grating. So many things in this series would be livable if we were just allowed by the prose to see the characters as flawed (having a tortured past is not necessarily a flaw. More on that later.)
5. I started thinking of this book as being about youtube influencers that happened to have magic. This is because the books' setting just becomes more and more unbelievable. It's been vaguely ye olde medieval Europe form the start.. but in this book we also have characters talking about lactic acid, discussing traumas like they've been using a self-care app, and gifting each other things that are basically blue tooth sound systems. There's a lack of place and a lack of urgency, and yet every so often we hear character backgrounds that are quite dark relative to the world we deal with day-to-day in this book. It's odd. Not a dealbreaker. Could even be endearing in a book with better characterization. I might not even notice or care if the characterization was better.
6. All that being said ... I read this for Nesta, and I got a lot of good Nesta content. I'm not at all happy with how the inner circle treated her. Rhys and Amren are on my shit list forever, in fact. However, I got some fun emotional fights with Elain (of all people.) I got Nesta forming friends of her own. It was genuinely fun to read about her training, and working in a library, and re-connecting with music in this book. We've seen this plot in the series before but... well... Nesta has actual flaws. The reasons for them make sense, and they genuinely impact her life. It was really fun to see her grow and for her to end in a better place than she has in all the previous books. It all felt earned and satisfying compared to the ends of basically every other book in this series.
And I loved her making new friends. Some of the most beautiful passages involved her thinking about Emerie and Gwyn. Nesta has always seemed at odds with what the narrative is trying to push her into doing. In some ways she's falling into the usual fae things; she has a mate now, she's buddy-buddy with the inner circle, etc etc. But she still mostly felt like her own person at the end. Maybe because of her new friends. Maybe because, in spite of myself, I mostly enjoyed Nesta/Cassian. I hope she can remain a challenge to the status quo, at least a little bit.
7. YES I'll probably read another book if it comes out. I know, I know. If it deals with Elain then I will be compelled to check out that book. This is mostly because, thus far, Elain has been resistant to the mating bond. I have zero thoughts on Elain/Azriel versus Elain/Lucien. But if the series manages to explore what it's like to have a mate, but to not feel romantically driven to them then... well. That could be interesting, no?
8. Okay, that was a very long review for a very long book. All I can say for sure is I'm fascinated by this series successes and failures.