A review by whyohchai
A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas

dark emotional medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I enjoyed this book in many ways, for taking
a traditional love interest and turning it on it's head and showing how the type of men we romanticize in media are in reality, controlling and unhealthy, for taking the protagonist's trauma seriously and exploring how deeply she would be affected by it and how difficult it would be to work through it, and the emphasis that is placed on Rhys being attractive because of how he supports Feyre and considers her right to choose to be sacred, wants her as his full equal, and works to see and understand her and to be vulnerable enough to show her the parts of him that he is ashamed. He's also a interesting, dynamic love interest in many ways.


But the author really struggles with characterization point blank (the characters are mostly deeply bland and we do not understand who these people are and why they care for each other), character development, can't handle balancing plot with romance and struggles deeply with world building and even basic things like the description of the world and paintings around them, and worst, the author uses
character retcon and assassination as a crutch instead of doing the work to show a more nuanced and complicated take on abusive relationships and the way a person's true character takes time to show/how our rose-tinted perception of a person can hide their flaws, and also constantly undermines her own ham-fisted feminist takes (having Rhys repeat the word "choice" 10,000 times in the books to convey he's a feminist JUST IN CASE YOU MISSED IT -- though his very actions contradict this but the author just glosses over it because she does not have the writing skill to create a true feminist partner!! ) by ignoring the fact that for example, Rhys in this book and going forward in multiple circumstances hides information from Feyre and does not in fact fully respect her personhood and her right to make her own decisions. Placing Feyre in a deeply traumatic and dangerous situation in the Crone's Hut, without her knowledge, and driven by a paternalistic view of how and when he believed Feyre should address her trauma, was abusive and controlling.
The author also still leans too much on an archaic framing of gender and heteronormative relationships, despite some efforts to do the opposite, which results in corny dialogue and interactions, and the idea of "mates" which undermines all of the romance in the entire series, and also a concept is deeply unclear and problematic (it's based on breeding? and is generally positively framed
even though Rhys' parents were mated and his father was  abusive?).


Also, this series is fantasy and has a plot in the way a person wearing bunny ears on Halloween is a rabbit. Feels like serious mis-advertisement. 
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