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sapphic-at-dusk · 2 years

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Epic 'A Court of Silver Flames' Rant *Big Spoiler Alert*

Sarah J. Maas has a bit of an issue with romanticising extreme thinness. This was an issue in ACOTAR as well. When Feyre was literally starving, she described it in this weird way where she was basically just saying she was pretty and skinny, and she did the exact same thing with Nesta in this book when she achieved an unhealthy level of thinness from undereating due to trauma and alcoholism. Cassian looks at her and thinks that she's "too damn thin", but then goes on to describe how attracted to her he is and how her breasts are still large and inviting, so I guess it doesn't matter? Fucking weird.

The pregnancy subplot had very strong pro-life/anti-abortion undertones and it was scary. Feyre was literally carrying a pregnancy that ensured her death and NO ONE TOLD HER EXCEPT NESTA. Her entire inner circle of family and friends, plus her healthcare provider decided that it was totally fine to just not tell her that having this baby would literally kill her. They actively WITHHELD this information from her, when she could have been saved earlier by abortion, or at least given the KNOWLEDGE that she and the baby were going to die if she carried this baby to term. I presume that there would be some way to conduct an abortion given all of the magic available to the faeries, or even just surgery combined with their healing abilities. They have contraceptive teas, so I think it'd be likely that they'd have some kind of medical abortion options. I just found it so disgusting that none of them thought it was important to tell her. Also, she got over everyone withholding this information from her very quickly. She basically forgot it even happened when she could have DIED. Just a terrible plot overall and it reflects really badly on the characters. It made me lose respect for all of them. Also, Nyx is a terrible baby name.

People's reactions to Nesta telling Feyre about the risks of the labour are TERRIBLE. They completely shun her and Rhys literally wants to kill her just for telling her sister the truth about her life being put in jeopardy for this dumb winged baby. They make Nesta go hike in the snowy mountains for days as punishment for telling her sister vital information about her body. What the fuck is that?

Originally, I thought Nesta's power would be used to abort the foetus but she literally ended up using her power to generate life… like what? That is literally the opposite of her power. It makes no sense that she was able to use her power to do that, unless it was just the Mother that did it. But it seemed, based on Nesta asking the Mother how to use her power to save them, that Nesta was the one using her power to do it. What the fuck was the point of giving her the power of death if she just ended up bringing people back to life? They could've used Feyre's healing powers, but apparently she was 'too weak' from the blood loss. She could've been healing herself closer to the start to prevent so much blood loss. This whole plot point just made no sense and really degraded the appeal of Nesta's death power that was built up to so much throughout the book, which she loses after committing this act anyway.

Aside from the terrible pro-life undertones of this plotline, why is Feyre having a child? She is like 21 years old at the time of pregnancy and 22 years old by the time she gives birth, and IMMORTAL. She could have a child WHENEVER, so why does she choose to do so at such a young age when her lands are on the brink of war. Feyre will literally have no maturity difference between her child in 18 years by immortal standards, and even then it's a young age to have a child. It's just weird. I thought based on the bone carver's vision and Feyre's reaction to it at the time that they would have a child far into the future, not literally like a year after the war with Hybern. Just what the actual fuck? Also, it's hinted that Nesta will soon have a child with Cassian too, which is just annoying. At least Nesta takes precautions to prevent the same issues that Feyre had from happening to her, but Nesta's 25, and she has an entire immortal lifetime ahead of her. It makes no sense for any of the sisters to be having children at this age with so much time ahead of them. Rhys is 500+ years old and just having his first child, meanwhile Feyre is only 22 and risking her life to carry out a death sentence of a pregnancy. It makes sense for faeries to start having children at Rhys's age, because they're probably bored out of their minds at that point and have experienced most of what life has to offer. They would likely be searching for some kind of purpose as well, so it makes sense for him and Cassian. But Feyre and Nesta? Not at all. I think it really undermines the feminist messages (which are inconsistent anyway considering Feyre getting with a guy that repeatedly sexually assaulted her) in the books to have the sisters just end up making babies with their mates as soon as possible. There are countless things to do with an immortal life, and they just decide to do the most generic thing they could possibly do, as soon as possible. It's disappointing, as are many things in this book.

Tamlin's rage at the pregnancy is talked about but not shown at all. Peak telling not showing. Also, just generally, why the hell does Tamlin become such a little bitch? He was literally the main love interest in the first book and was a pretty decent guy, then suddenly just became a possessive asshole and then became a complete villain eventually. You'd think he'd still love or care about Feyre enough to wish her happiness, even if he wishes they were still together.

By the way, why on Earth was Feyre fucking Rhys unprotected in Illyrian form? Did they not consider the risks of that? Have they been having unprotected sex all the time? WHY? They have easy, accessible contraception options, and even if they wanted to have unprotected sex regardless because they were trying for a baby, it would have been so easy for them to just NOT have sex in Illyrian form. They literally just wanted to fuck unprotected with some weird "wingplay" despite the risks and I hate it. Also, Cassian mentioned wingplay during some smut scene and I am scared.

Feyre's suicide pact with Rhys was dumb. What's the point of them both dying if one of them dies? It just causes so much more grief, and then there's no High Lord or High Lady for the Night Court. At least Amren protests against it and says it's dumb, because it really is. It makes even less sense with Feyre's death being seemingly imminent due to all of their terrible decisions in regards to her pregnancy. We love romanticising suicide and death.

Speaking of Amren, I've never really liked her much, but her personality strikes me as more realistic of the faeries that have been alive for hundreds of years than the other personalities in the inner circle. Morrigan, Cassian and Rhys all act like people in their 20s or 30s despite being hundreds of years old. Amren talks down to everyone because she is way older than all of them and has probably lost a decent amount of her morality due to how long she has been alive, but the others show no signs of that immortal arrogance or lack of morality. Rhys was kind of evil in the earlier books to Feyre (remember the whole sexual assault thing?), but other than that, they basically all act perfect nowadays, aside from how they treat Nesta and withhold information from Feyre. It's just weird for them all to be acting so young when they're so old in reality. Also, why are all these twenty-something women getting with 500+-year-old men? This age gap is worse than Twilight. Realistically, if these faeries actually thought and acted like ancient beings, they would not be fucking with 20-something-year-olds. They would be so different that they would find their younger counterparts immature at best and worthy of death at worst. I feel like it'd be likely for them to regard the newer faeries as easy tools for manipulation and to try to use them as slaves/servants/workers, or just otherwise manipulate/use them, not to get into legitimate romantic relationships with them. But for some reason, all the old faeries act like 20-year-olds, so the relationship age gaps aren't as apparent and don't seem as weird as they really are. I think it reduces the appeal of immortal characters a lot when they just act like normal humans.

Feyre, as usual, is too perfect (and not in a good way). This has kind of been an issue in all of the books, but seemed to be accentuated by Nesta being the focus of this book. Everything Feyre has, Nesta does not have. Everyone prefers Feyre to Nesta (except for maybe Cassian). It makes sense because Nesta is a bitch 99% of the time before her development in this book, but Feyre is just way too perfect. At least Elain had the flaw of not fighting to help their family during poverty and being generally kind of clueless, weak and timid, but Feyre just doesn't really have any character flaws and it's boring and annoying. Her only real flaw that I can think of is how she babies and favours Elain and treats Nesta like she's her property. A good example of Feyre being too perfect is the question of how she has such skills in painting. She used to just paint little flowers in their cottage, and she's been busy under the mountain and fighting wars and shit, but somehow she's just a master painter who can paint perfect portraits of things she hasn't even seen with her own eyes. I know she had some time to paint whilst she was at the Spring Court, and I know she's likely had maybe a year to paint at the Night Court without any imminent danger threatening her, but that is nowhere near enough time to become some master painter that can just perfectly capture people's portraits and scenes from life. Her skill in painting is totally unbelievable and just a bit ridiculous given how little time she's had to work on it.

Elain is not focused on AT ALL, which is so incredibly disappointing. She was treated as less than a side character. I really hope we get a book focusing on Elain because she has seer powers (which seem more interesting than Nesta's vague 'death powers') and seems to be gaining some sort of personality/boldness that I'd like to see developed more. Also, what the hell's going on with her love life? She has a mating bond with Lucien but they barely see each other and she clearly hasn't accepted the mating bond yet. Lucien seems to want her to accept it but she's just kind of ignoring it indefinitely. She clearly has a thing for Azriel but neither of them seem to have acted on it at all, plus (from what I remember) the mating bonds can't really be severed, so she doesn't really have a choice anyway even if she decides to be with Azriel (which is kind of fucked to be honest). It would make the most sense for her to either accept the mating bond with Lucien or have Lucien die and then complete the weird brother-sister romance trio that seems to be going on with Rhys-Feyre, Cassian-Nesta. I was looking forward to seeing how the mating bond between Lucien and Elain turned out in this book because I was pretty happy to see it form when she was turned, thinking it would give them both a second chance at love when their lovers were tragically taken from them, but there was absolutely no progression with that storyline. I hate how Elain was just not focused on at all in this book and basically only existed to add a slight bit of tension to Nesta's relationships with others. GIVE ELAIN THE SPOTLIGHT FOR ONCE, PLEASE. I'd like to see her being proactive and actually doing something cool in the next book, possibly in relation to the war (if that even happens at this point, considering the Night Court now has the Dread Trove and could basically level everyone in the world). Additionally, as usual, Elain is treated like a literal child by everyone in this book and it is infuriating.

RE: the Nesta Valkyrie girlboss plot... So, Nesta, Emerie and the priestesses train for what... a few months? And apparently that is enough to put them on the level of elite ancient warriors. They even beat a bunch of Illyrian males who have presumably been training since early childhood. I love how Sarah J. Maas does this girlboss feminist shit whilst pushing this weird pro-life narrative at the expense of Feyre's health and safety. It just makes no sense that Nesta, Emerie and Gwyn manage to gain the titles of Valkyries and Illyrian warriors when they only have months of training compared to the lifetimes of training of the actual Valkyries and Illyrians. It just makes those warriors' titles seem less important and legitimate when those three are able to achieve the titles so easily. Also, Nesta fighting off 6 Illyrian males after a few months of training is just laughable. Can we please get a realistic progression of their fighting skills rather than some Mary Sue jump from novice to literal legendary warrior?

Nesta being forced to train is completely inhumane and disregards her autonomy/free will as an adult. If they don't like her behaviour, that's fair enough, but they should just cut her off financially instead of treating her like a child and taking away her free will. Obviously Nesta abusing the Night Court's funds and not contributing in any way is immoral, but the way to remedy that is not by forcing her to train and work at the library in the House of Wind under literal house arrest. I'm sorry, but the stairs do not give her freedom. She is literally trapped in a house and forced to train and work. This made me lose respect for the inner circle just like them withholding the pregnancy information from Feyre did. She is a traumatised alcoholic and their response to that is to force her into cold turkey recovery and take away all her free will.

Maybe I missed something, but it seemed that Nesta and Cassian's mating bond just randomly appeared out of nowhere with no hints of it before Winter Solstice. The thing about golden threads joining their souls or some shit during the Solstice was a hint, but before that, we were just led to assume that there was a shitload of sexual tension between the two and not an actual mating bond. Elain's mating bond with Lucien was revealed immediately, so why wasn't Nesta's? When did it develop? Was it right after she was made, or was it later on? Is it a gradual shift, because from everything written before, it seems like the bond kicks in all at once. This just seemed to be shoehorned in as a way of legitimising Nesta and Cassian's relationship (at least she didn't get pregnant though - I think I would've thrown the book across the room if that happened). It would've been nicer to see their mating bond develop after a longer period since those two have a lot to work through, or at least for it to be hinted at earlier in the novel.

I hate that everyone in the inner circle/focused on in the books is super hot (where the ugly faeries at?) It seems like appearance is directly correlated to how 'good' a lot of the characters are, i.e. Briallyn being a crone and Lucien having a fake eye due to his moral greyness. It would be so much more interesting if more characters had more physical flaws. Some of the males have very minor physical differences like scars, but the scars are never anywhere that actually affects their overall appearance, like the face. Also, Emerie being called 'disabled' because her wings were clipped is borderline insulting. Like what the fuck.

This is kind of nitpicking, but Nesta doesn't have opportunities to take her contraceptive tea every day but somehow doesn't get pregnant or worry about it despite her constantly fucking Cassian raw.

I am forever haunted by the line of Cassian wanting to court any woman with large breasts (Cassian is a fuckboy confirmed).

This is kind of a random point, so I don't know where to put it, but SARAH J. MAAS, for the love of God, please stop calling virginity 'maidenhead'. It is such a disgusting gendered term which should have been abolished 300 years ago. I know she's trying to give the books an olden twist and they aren't exactly set in the modern world, but there are enough modern elements in the texts that they really don't need to be using the word 'maidenhead'. I find the whole concept of virginity annoying and disgusting anyway because of how heteronormative and sexist it tends to be, but if we're focusing on this shit concept at all, can we at least not make it focused all on women giving their 'maidenhead' to men. It's gross and I hate it. Also, of course she makes all of her female characters bleed when they have sex for the first time, because no one seems to understand that hymens don't bleed after women have sex for the first time (unless the woman has some sort of medical condition where the hymen is fully closed over, in which case surgery is required). I can't believe I have to explain this in regards to a female author's writing, but the hymen is a ring surrounding the entrance of the vagina, which stretches when you have sex for the first time or engage in other activities that could stretch it, like using a sex toy or even horseback riding. The hymen isn't broken, it is stretched. Blood from first-time sex often comes from the woman not being fully comfortable and aroused, causing her vaginal walls to be torn enough to cause some amount of vaginal bleeding. Bleeding is by no means necessary for one's first time, and we need to stop normalising this in fiction.

Koschei (what a dumb name by the way) had so much tension building around him and what he would do throughout the book, so I was expecting some serious shit to go down with him, but his scene was so fucking disappointing. He was barely even in the book and it was such a letdown.

Despite everything, this was such a comforting, cosy book but the subplots and main plot were downright demented so much of the time. The only things that got me through were the compelling, already well-loved characters and the beautiful atmosphere and descriptions of the book. Nesta and Cassian growing to love one another was also nice, though I found it strange that Nesta was just magically cured of her mental illness by Feyre's prescribed activities and loving Cassian. Get the girl some therapy.

I liked Nesta being good at dancing. It was honestly really compelling to see her be skilled at something other than being a complete bitch to everyone in range.

I'd really recommend the audiobook; Stina Nielsen narrated it really well. The only uncomfortable part was the sex scenes (and there were a lot of them, god damn) but those are kind of uncomfortable whether you read it on paperback or listen to it. I just really didn't need to hear about Nesta and Cassian rawdogging every 5 minutes.

So, in conclusion, thank you for reading this giant rant if you have even made it this far. If you have any thoughts I would love to read them. I had no idea this post would be this long but here we are. There were a lot of things wrong with this book despite the cosy vibes and wholesome relationships.

P.S. Nesta literally conjuring the house into a living being because she was that lonely is a fucking mood and I actually really loved the house's character and subplot, if you can call it that. It was just a wholesome relationship.

Edit: I put this into a word count and OH MY LORD.

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