ananya_b 's review for:

A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas

3.5

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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This was certainly an improvement to the series after the wild ride that was ACOMAF. There was a lot going on plot-wise, and the pacing kept me hooked till the last page. Maas has also developed her characters and their relationships better than in the last book — for instance, I like how

this book shows Tamlin to be deeply flawed and toxic, but certainly not an outright villain; or how

Nesta gets progressively warmer and more humanised. However, I would also have loved to see Feyre apologising and trying to make it up to the people she hurts through her decisions and mistakes, instead of just admitting it to herself and then forgetting about it.

The language is more flowery than in ACOMAF, but Maas's style of writing quickly gets repetitive and annoying — I lost count of the number of times "a trail of corpses/destruction/dead bodies was left in his/her/its wake." It's easy to overlook these flaws, though, for a book that's beginning to wrap up Feyre's story — and it's definitely worth a read.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, Torture, Violence, Blood, Death of parent, Murder, War, Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Body horror, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual content, Kidnapping, Grief, Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Animal death, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Infidelity, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Sexual violence, Slavery, Vomit, Gaslighting, Alcohol, Classism