A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas: A Book Review
Genre: Fantasy
The second book to A Court of Thorns and Roses, A Court of Mist and Fury corrects the mistakes of its predecessor. Taking the story of Beauty and the Beast one step further, Maas shows how “love can be a poison” and how relationships grow, break, and strengthen.
From the beginning of A Court of Thorns and Roses, I did not like Tamlin and saw how much chemistry lay between Ferye and Rhysand. To my surprise, Maas was able to grow the story without cheapening the sacrifices Ferye made in the first book. In fact, the character of Ferye had so much growth compared to the first book I was praising the book gods and thinking about how necessary the lessons she learnt needed to be heard. Without giving too much detail, Maas shows how abusive love can be while also showing the different between love and infatuation. Without being condescending, Maas gives Ferye the chance to work through her feelings in terms of Tamlin and Rhysand – two vastly different aspects of love – while acknowledging both faults, giving both the grace of explanation (or excuses), as well as showing how painful either could be. Throughout all of this, Maas is also able to show the affects of trauma and depression. Describing it as a feeling of not feeling, Maas’s words sat a little too close to home at times, but made Feyre (and Rhysand, but mostly Feyre) completely relatable.
I can find only two faults in the story. One: Feyre masters her gifts a little to easily. I would have loved to see more struggling of trying to connect with the different powers especially with the shape-shifting (and the pain that went along with it). Two: I wish Feyre would have made Rhysand suffer a little bit more. While I did love the monologue from Rhysand, I feel like the character of Feyre would have pulled it out a little longer. I get that she already answered the question for herself early, but I feel like the character would have more to say than just “you love me?” at the end of that.
Not a fault, but I also wished that Rhysand would have at least followed her at least one time just to have the detail towards how their relationship merges and feeds each other. I think Maas missed an opportunity on that there.
Also not a fault against Maas, but there were sections where the editor missed leading to points being taken off. Missing words, plot incongruity, syntax inconsistencies, and pronoun disagreement as huge nopes for me in terms of reading. Quite frankly, I find it annoying as well as frustrating. It is one of the reasons I decided to do the point breakdown. To me, having a great plot with great characters isn’t worth five stars unless they have the writing and editing to back them up. Of course, I also recognize that some people don’t think like that – hence the breakdown.
| Plot: | 10 / 10 |
| Characters: | 10 / 10 |
| Writing: | 8 / 10 |
| Editor: | 8 / 10 |
| Total | 36 / 40 |
Title: A Court of Mist and Fury
Author: Sarah J. Maas
Edition: Hardcover
Published: 2016
Publisher: Bloomsbury
ISBN: 9781619634466
If you want to get it: Amazon; Barnes&Noble
Rosey Reviews 