Hello… It’s me? Am I really catching up with my monthly readings and posting within a week? Welcome to April reading recap! I don’t want to brag too much about this achievement consider in April we only had one reading:
- “A Court of Thorns and Roses”, by Sarah J. Maas.
A book of 515 pages. And now, the usual reading stats which will be a bit obvious this time:
Even though I’ll try my best to share this book without spoiling it for you, I’m still leaving a spoiler alert. From this moment on, this post isn’t safe if you’re planning on reading “A Court of Thorns and Roses” for the first time. Move along on your responsibility!
“A Court of Thorns and Roses”, by Sarah J. Maas
(Goodreads | Storygraph)
After my friends and I went crazy about the Empyrean series, we thought we needed to stay in the fantasy genre. Mostly because “Iron Flame” left a huge book hangover on all of us (you can read more about it in last week’s post here).
“A Court of Thorns and Roses” starts with a girl hunting in a forest during the winter. She initially aims for a deer but, when she sees a wolf also looking at that deer, she sees an opportunity.
After successfully killing the wolf, she takes it to the market where a mercenist gives her enough money for a few weeks for her family of two sisters, a father and her.
Coming from a successful and rich merchant family, who, after her mother’s death and a few bad businesses of her father, lost everything.
As they’re in their hovel hanging around, a wolf barges in, destroying it and claiming Feyre must accompany him. It appears that the wolf she had previously killed was Fae and, the treaty between humans and them, demanded so. Feyre is assured her family will be taken care of and let know Feyre went away to take care of a sick aunt.
As she arrives at her destination, the Spring Court, Feyre is provided with beautiful clothes, enormous amounts of food and a life of enjoyment.
She starts growing closer to the High Fae that went to get her, Tamlin, the High Lord of the Spring Court.
Living this luxurious life and hearing about a threat in the human world, Feyre can’t keep herself from returning to her family. She embarks on a new journey and is surprised to see her family back in a noble house, with her father’s business back on track. She now struggles to fit in the high society that left her family to starve in the previous years. Feyre also realises that Nesta, her older sister, might remember more about the truth of her disappearance than she was supposed to.
Feyre decides to return to Spring Court, only to find it with signs of attack and empty. When she finds Alis, Tamlin’s servant, she learns about a curse he lived under and how she wasn’t able to release him from it.
After knowing about Amarantha, Hybern’s most lethal general who happens to hate humans, took the entire court to Under the Mountain; she decides to not follow Alis’ advice and goes there to save them all.
Upon arrival, she is quickly captured and taken to Amarantha, with whom she makes a deal to release all the faeries and let them freely return to their courts. She must win three trials, on full moon nights or answer correctly to a riddle.
The first is a fight against a gigantic blind worm; the second is to choose from three doors, the one that will save her (which, as an illiterate, doesn’t go right and Rhysand, High Lord of the Night Court, has to come for the rescue); and lastly, to cold-blood murder three faeries. After killing the first two, she is surprised to find the last one is Tamlin. But she recalls, from a few overheard conversations, that he has a heart of stone. Taking Feyre to go for the kill, knowing she won’t kill him.
When the third and last trial is successfully finished and Feyre is also able to answer Amarantha’s riddle, she is brutally murdered by the angry general. With the rage of the moment, Tamlin kills Amarantha.
The seven High Lords of Prythian decide to join their regained powers to relive Feyre as an immortal.
She wakes up next to Tamlin, back in Spring Court, in her new immortal body and reality.
The fact that this reading was so close to the Empyrean Series didn’t help its cause. I was with a huge book/saga hangover, I was constantly mixing up names and the Empyrean Series are just amazing books.
It was such a slow, difficult reading for the first 400 pages (out of the 515 total ones…). The only thing that kept me going were my friends telling me the first book suffering was worth it. From someone currently reading the second volume, “A Court of Mist and Fury”, I can tell you it was worthy.
One thing that shocked me and I wasn’t expecting at all was the amount of violence and how visually described it was. I was waiting and hoping for way more romantasy (and smut, let’s be honest) and way less violence. Please do insert a clown emoji here.
The book got so boring with such dull characters that I found myself loving Rhysand and Amarantha, who brought some action into the boredom. In the end, Amarantha isn’t 100% evil but, in fact, evil as a consequence of what was done to her and to her sister (reminding me a lot of Medusa).
In the case of Rhy, even though he’s obliged to be Amarantha’s whore, we can see his sweetness as he takes care of Fey the best way possible Under the Mountain.
In the end, we have 400 pages of context of a fantasy world, characters, powers, etc.; only to have the last 100 pages full of action squeezed in. I’m starting to feel like this is a common tactic in sagas since I also felt it while reading “Iron Flame”, by Rebecca Yarros (you can read my thoughts about it here – in March’s reading recap). Most of the book is boring and, in the end, we have so many things happening and such cliffhangers that we are made into reading the second volume.
As I’ve already mentioned, it has worked for “A Court of Mist and Fury” but I need Sarah to give me something better. I want to be a part of BookTok’s craziness over this saga.
And let’s not forget… That ending? I was livid. It felt outrageous to have such a dull “happy ever after” book after everything everyone went through…
A 2.5 star reading out of 5.
As you were already expecting, this finishes April reading recap.
It was a complicated month in terms of readings. I was so book-hungovered and couldn’t stop thinking about the Empyrean series that I couldn’t connect with ACOTAR.
In the end, it’s okay if you read one, five, ten, twenty or fifty books a month. The only thing that matters is that you’re enjoying yourself and your readings!
Which was the last book leaving you on a reading slump? Or book hangover? Let me know in the comment section!