A Court of Thorns and Roses

Book Title: A Court of Thorns and Roses

Author: Sarah J. Maas

Series: A Court of Thorns and Roses #1
Date Started: May 9th 2015

Date Completed: May 22nd 2015

Genres: Fantasy, Romance
Quality Rating: Four Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Three Stars

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

I don't want to say this - but I'm really disappointed. I've been conflicted over whether its exam stress, or hype, or expectation from previous books; and while they might be contributing factors, the issues I had with A Court of Thorns and Roses are actually problems in my eyes, regardless of the circumstances. I'm really disappointed.

The use of first person as the initial thing that struck me as strange in the writing. It did seem quite out of place and a strange choice for a fairytale story - the wonderful, haunting thing about traditional fairytales is they're very detached and so the eeriness and twisted culture is so cold. But the really big problem for me was that I was immediately forced into a very narrow and quite frankly irritating view of the world. I wanted to see so much more than what Feyre perceived. I don't like first person at the best of times, but having Feyre as the narrator nearly killed me. There were constant contradictions about literally everything to try and make her seem clever and stubborn, but it pushed it far too hard to the point where I just really disliked her.

The story seemed a bit too typical for the wonderful world of Sarah J Maas. There were quite a few cliches, particularly around the romance and the final tasks. It was a shame, since I could see a really nice basis for a wonderful fairytale world - and perhaps that might be developed in the rest of the trilogy, but for the time being it was a very YA depiction of traditional fantasy. This was to do with the narrowed narration - but to be honest, even the faerie riddle I solved within thirty seconds of reading it.

My biggest issue was around the sexual harassment addressed in the book. I really respect Maas for extending the maturity of her books by including sex and harassment more heavily in her stories, but the way the latter was dealt with in this book wasn't right to me - especially not when it seemed to be justified by an unnecessary love triangle for the rest of the series. It seemed to be used just as a way of making the characters feel distressed, and ultimately to introduce drama for the following books - it was treated like an unnecessary plot device and that bothered me.

However, something good I do have to say about the book (I'm still sad that that's the case) was the ability for the book to be a story in its own right, as well as establishing things for the rest of the trilogy. Things definitely aren't finished, but it stood on its own two feet well enough to be entertaining story-wise.

I think it was partly the YA feeling around the characters that interfered with the fairytale atmosphere. They definitely aren't the worst characters, but part of me felt they belonged in a brighter world because of the way they reacted to things and lived their everyday lives - the potential darkness of the story didn't quite match up in my opinion (but I could again blame this on the first person narration).

I didn't like Feyre. At all. She was so unbelievably stupid, even after spending months and months in this new world around faeries. It gets pointed out so often and is so obvious, but time and time again she's just an idiot, and it doesnt even always advance the plot or do anything at all - I did become quite bored eventually.

Tamlin I didn't mind, but his sulking at Feyre's treatment really got on the wrong side of me, and I didn't really understand the chemistry between them. They were too quickly trusting of each other, but of course the narration had to claim that they were suspicious of each other.

Lucien was the only character who I really enjoyed reading about: he seemed to have more than one dimension and an interesting backstory.

The pacing of this novel jumps around quite a bit, but there weren't any points where I struggled to put it down. In fact I found it quite hard to read in bigger chunks (though admittedly that was probably the exam stress heaped on top of it). Even so, for such a long time span, the pacing was never particularly fast or energetic. For the story this was good, because the world needed its development - but listening to Feyre ramble got on my nerves very quickly.

It's not what I expected from Maas, and it's not the kind of fairytales I grew up with and was excited to read in a newer form - but it is something slightly different in the YA universe. There's still the romantic conventions that should appease readers not so into their fantasy, and traces of traditional fairytales for the opposite audience. But overall I was disappointed - I hope (and know) others aren't as crestfallen as myself, so if it sounds interesting, I would encourage you to try it.

Image Source - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22839894-a-court-of-thorns-and-roses