A review by zatannacomic
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

medium-paced

1.0

If it weren’t for a friend asking me to read this, I wouldn’t have read this for any money in the world. 

Is this the book that started the romantasy genre? Because this book is so bad… This was boring and frustrating. This is way too long. After 13 chapters nothing to further the plot has actually happened. Okay, you are forever imprisoned with people with masks stuck on their faces for some reason - what is next? If your story starts after the 50% mark, then cut the first 50%… 

Feyre is a weak version of Katniss Everdeen and Cinderella. Practically unliked by everyone for no reason at all. She also misinterprets anything anyone ever says. She’s of course beautiful, but doesn’t know that herself and of course she’s a fantastic fighter taking on faerie creatures that she didn’t even know existed with ease. Okay, girl boss! 

The beast - to continue our fairytale allegory - is named Tamlin and is like any good fantasy book male love interest of course - distant and secretive, but somehow charming. How he is supposed to be cursed - since this seems inspired by beauty and the beast - takes a long time to be explained. These masks fused to the faeries faces and the fact he can turn into a wolf is not even a good ‘beast’ comparison. He is not cursed. He is a conveniently attractive man stuck at a masquerade ball. 

Of course there is a second love interest and of course he is handsome and arrogant but also helping her, for no reason it seems - there is a reason, but I’d probably have to read the next book for that and I’m not doing that. To be fair the pages where he appeared, were the most interesting, because some story was actually being developed. I liked Lucien though, I’ll give the book this one compliment, I guess. 

How these people are supposed to be in love with each other is beyond my knowledge. Feyre refused to even consider that Tamlin doesn’t loathe her for half te book and then one day just completely switches to being devoted to helping him - even if she barely knows whats going on- and Tamlin is a blank canvas, so nothing interesting is going on there. And of course there is something of a love-hate relationship going on with Rhysand… not a single original idea was found in this. 

The world building is make-believe. Nothing in this world building gets defined. Everything just gets a name and you get to fill in how everything actually looks or works. Why something is a problem or why something exists, is not explained. It’s also not that this information is kept behind to be important later - no, it just appears when it’s convenient to the plot and then doesn't ever show up again. The essence of the story is explained to Feyre at the 70% mark. Could nothing of that monologue be worked into the story, so we might have gotten invested earlier? 

The pacing in this book is atrocious. The first 50% was so boring. Chapters where the story was moving forward are being interrupted by chapters where not a single interesting thing happens. The most important element of this book, some sort of game with tasks, is introduced in the final 25% of the book. Nothing before this really gave away how we would get to the end. This could have been fleshed out so much better. 

You may wonder if I liked anything about this book. Well yes! Lucien. Beside him… no, I disliked the entire thing.