“To the blessed darkness from which we are born,
and to which we return.”
*insert the longest exasperated sigh imaginable*
I cannot BELIEVE Sarah J. Maas is going to subject me to a pregnancy plotline for Feyre in A Court of Silver Flames. I am so mad. Just as I was finally accepting my rightful place as a raccoon in the trash heap that is ACOTAR, she pulls this shit.
…
Let’s take a couple steps back. I finished A Court of Frost and Starlight, which acts as book No. 3.5 in the series and a bridger between Wings and Ruin and Silver Flames.
It is what it is. It’s not anything weighty to the story, it’s not groundbreaking, it’s not spectacular or special in any way. It just is. It exists.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. This is essentially a companion book to the series to better set up Silver Flames. It’s not meant to be any of the things I mentioned above. It’s there for some additional information and fluff and nothing really more.
That’s fine.
I personally just wanted it to be more interesting and at a faster pace. This was painfully slow-paced. Crawling. While there’s a focus on catching up with our Night Court Inner Circle at Solstice, I wish we had more of an event to center the story around that added a layer of excitement or action. Something that would be a bit of a puzzle to make this novella feel important rather than glorified fanfic. Finding Bryaxis would’ve been a good plot line to follow, for example.
That being said, I enjoyed the deeper glimpses into characters that we previously hadn’t seen too much of — particularly Mor, Azriel and Cassian. Especially Mor. I’ve been extremely careful with spoilers for this series, but I have been told by friends that some of these characters become more of a focus in book No. 4. In that sense, this addition helps shift the story in a good way for them to start taking more of the spotlight from Feyre and Rhysand, while also advancing that main storyline.
Plus, I kind of adored the softness of the Inner Court in this book. Sometimes you just want soft, fluffy moments. ACOFAS delivers on that front.
But I still closed this book angry and feeling as if it wasn’t enough for many reasons. We’ll be getting into it.
This won’t be as nearly as long as my 10-page Wings and Ruin analysis (thank all the gods), but instead I’ll pinpoint just a couple things that infuriated me and some that I loved.
If you’re interested here are my analyses on the first three books: ACOTAR, ACOMAF, ACOWAR.
Here are all my thoughts on A Court of Frost and Starlight. … Spoilers ahead.
Morrigan, my love
Since reading Mist and Fury, I’ve said that I had a soft spot for Mor. I love her character for so many different reasons. She’s this mysteriously strong figure that doesn’t need to flaunt whatever power lies within her, while also holding this elegant feminine touch that is often thrown out when writing fierce female protagonists. She’s not perfect or unwavering, but that makes her feel so much more real than the other characters who seem to be so unfazed in many ways.
It is a bit irritating to never have Mor’s powers disclosed, but because she can hold her own without them and the fact isn’t thrown in my face every other page, I can forgive the lack of information. Maybe it’ll be explored in Silver Flames as she plays diplomat.
Aside from what the future has in store for Morrigan, I thought ACOFAS did a good job at giving readers more insight into her character, especially from a motive standpoint.
From the moment Mor steps into the narrative, she’s eager to befriend Feyre but there’s also a little more to it. She is the one who walks into the Spring Court manor to retrieve a trapped Feyre in Mist and Fury, and, yes, it’s on orders from Rhysand. But she also has her own personal reasons for wanting to help this young woman that’s been broken and brutalized by a man, by life, by circumstance.
When Keir had dumped a bloody Mor in the Autumn Court, she had begged Eris to help her and he left her to die. Azriel was the one to find her and give her another shot at life, at freedom. He carried her out of the Autumn Court just as she carried Feyre out of Spring.
It’s such a subtle parallel between their experiences that adds depth to their friendship beyond just being part of Rhys’ Inner Circle and thus an unavoidable part of this found family or a girlie to share a bottle of wine with. No, Mor has a tender heart to help others who have suffered as she has, and it’s clear that she wanted to help Feyre just as the others had helped her so long ago as she saw some of herself in this newcomer.
I love soft touches like that.
Going along with this, readers also get to see a different side of Mor at the end when she’s riding her horse through her property and contemplates Rhys’ offer. Particularly this line: “She had always been drawn to the untamed, wild things of the world.”
Mor is clearly a free spirit. Yet, she’s been confined to the Night Court and her duties to the Court of Nightmares, because she feels as if she has something to prove to her father and a debt to Rhys. She’s free, but also trapped by that need. She asks over and over again if her father would ‘win’ if she stepped away from the CoN or moved on, and I just wish somebody would tell her that it’s not a matter of winning or losing, it’s about living. I really wanted Rhys to tell her that when she asked, but for all the hype that he’s a smooth talker, he fucking sucks at saying what matters.
But Mor sort of figures it out on her own as we get confirmation that she wants to go on this new adventure, so it works out, I suppose.
I’m not sure how much of Mor I’ll see in Silver Flames, but I’m guessing not a ton since it more so follows Cassian and Nesta and Mor will be traveling the continent. If she doesn’t get any further development, I’d love to see her somewhere else. I want her to get the same treatment as Feyre in settling within herself. She’s waited like 500 years. She deserves it.
Give me more … wait … Give me Mor. heh.
(P.S. I did the tiniest bit of research on the name Morrigan just for funsies, and it means “phantom queen,” which I thought was really interesting considering she was born essentially a princess of nightmares. It derives from Irish mythology, and the Morrigan is associated with foretelling fates in war. Here’s the wiki if you want to take a look. It makes me think that Maas’ Morrigan shares this power and that’s why she lingers in battle until needed.)
Feyre finding herself, a flimsy title and please don’t do this to me
This bounces off the Mor subject, but another thing that I felt ACOFAS did well was center Feyre.
Being able to see Feyre begin to paint again and then ultimately open the studio felt very satisfying as a reader to wrap up her storyline. We leave Feyre in Wings and Ruin in an in-between stage. She’s free, she has her mate and her court, but we really don’t know who she is in all this mess outside of Rhys. This separates her from the High Lord and allows her to feel like an individual again and adds a sense of identity using previously established traits.
Maas nearly strips Feyre of her defining characteristics in an effort to show how destroyed her protagonist had become. Her identity prior to FAS is pretty much just High Lady — AKA Rhysand’s mate. That’s also because war forces this to be so. It’s rational character building, but it was nice to get a bridger to reform what was broken so that Feyre didn’t end up as an ornament to Rhys.
And it’s done in a way that makes sense to the narrative and to her character.
Feyre always used art as an escape and a coping mechanism — one she was so rarely afforded when she was in the Mortal Lands. She also always had a desire to help people. We saw it with the Spring Court and then with her volunteering early in the book. There’s also the guilt she feels for her wealth when some in the city struggle.
The choice to have her open an art studio to help the people of Velaris cope with their various traumas at no cost is just a lovely decision that snaps together all these pieces Maas has laid out for us.
It also just gives Feyre space from the Inner Court. She makes a friend that wasn’t chosen for her, which I think is so important because everything else about her lifestyle was very much handed her way. She is her own person, and this allows that.
OK, so that was the good and now it’s time for a rant. …
I mentioned in my ACOWAR analysis that Feyre’s position as High Lady is only a title, and it continues to be the case in Frost and Starlight, despite Maas desperately trying to somehow prove otherwise.
Feyre is handling paperwork, she sits in on Rhysand’s meetings with his people, he convenes with her and asks for her input, she volunteers among the various organizations in Velaris.
Feyre says she should hire a personal secretary without realizing she is the secretary.
Rhys is still running this show. He is still the one in charge. He makes the decisions on what to do for each problem that crosses their desks, and then Feyre responds. He is the one handling the Illyrian camps in brewing discontentment, he is the one offering Mor to be a diplomat, he is the one meeting with all necessary High Lords to fumble through achieving peace.
This would actually be fine if Maas didn’t try so hard to beat into readers’ brains that Feyre and Rhysand are entirely equals. This fake pretense of equality between the two only highlights the inequality and makes the story feel disingenuous and faulty.
When it doesn’t have to be pushed at all, because it would make more sense for Feyre to simply take a secondary position.
She said it herself, she didn’t want this type of power.
She could be an advisor and a confidant to Rhysand without having it appear as if they are on entirely equal fronts in this singular position.
Feyre still loves the people of the Night Court and the dreams Velaris represents. She still wants to help them, which we see her do by putting boots on the ground and volunteering in the city and now by opening the art studio to help her people heal. She is given the option to do all these things or do something entirely different. That would’ve been enough for her story, to accept this other role as a step away from politics — which may’ve made what I’m assuming will be a pregnancy plot line in Silver Flames make more sense. It’s wielding power and wealth in society in a different way than Rhysand does, which would’ve been a cool concept to stack on top of each other to show how well Feyre and Rhys fit together.
All Feyre wanted to do in the Spring Court was help the people rebuild, to be a member of the community her High Lord was born to protect and serve, to be valued and trusted. She’s doing that in the Night Court, because Rhysand allows her to take whatever role she wishes. That’s enough. It doesn’t need the title or the pretense that she holds more weight in the game than she does.
And it would make sense for her to do these things and allow herself to finally heal.
Instead, she’s becoming exactly what she always said she didn’t want to be — pretty dresses, pretty title, soon-to-be pretty baby. It just feels … off … based on her characterization leading up to this point. Like the 180 happened way too quickly.
It makes me think about Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, and how it all ends with Katniss and Peeta watching their children play in the future. Katniss never wanted children, but that was because the world she grew up in wasn’t the world she wanted to bring children into. She fought and lost for a better world to get to that point. She won her peace. It was achieved. Feyre and Rhysand are still fighting for peace. This whole book has undertones of more war and hard roads ahead. These two even say multiple times that they simply have no time for each other or even meals. Their story and roles aren’t over. The war they started is seemingly not settled.
This decision is like if Katniss was actually pregnant in Catching Fire.
So why the change of heart for Feyre?
I can’t suspend my disbelief this hard to make it make sense. Not even with the weaver’s story. Because Feyre has always known the risk of this life. There’s no way she could be that clueless to not know that, even as an immortal, life is equally as short as it is long. She died. She literally died after like six months in this Fae world. She nearly died again in Tamlin’s manor. Rhysand had died. There’s a risk every single day of dying yourself or losing the ones you love most whether you’re Fae or Mortal or whatever. Feyre knew that when she was just a girl in the woods trying to make sure her family didn’t starve.
And now the world is just as dangerous. Maybe even more so because the Wall is gone. They know peace won’t be an easy thing to come by and that territory disputes will most likely arise.
The weaver’s story doesn’t change anything. It shouldn’t have been a wakeup call.
Maybe if Maas gave a different reason for this decision, I’d accept it. But with the info at hand, I’m mad as hell.
Side note! I think what makes me the angriest is that I can understand the difference between Feyre in the Spring Court and her in the Night Court making the decision to have a child. It’s a choice. It’s always been about choice. She pretty much had no choice with Tamlin. She was a pretty little object to show off and was expected to breed heirs. That’s all that was wanted from her.
So the fact she chooses to have a child with Rhys is the difference. She comes to the decision on her own after her collective experiences.
I can distinguish between the two easily. However, it’s still a shitty decision that I hate for this story and doesn’t make sense. If you need to write a novella just to justify this choice, then maybe it’s a bad choice.
So many mommy issues
Yinz know how much I loved Rhysand the first couple books. … I hate to say it, but he grates me now. The same way Maas tried to paint Tamlin as the good guy in ACOTAR until I was seeing red is what she did to Rhys. She like … washed away his depth by burying readers with his goodness. He was such an interesting morally gray figure, and she stripped him of it. He’s just a possessive simp now. I hate it.
There’s this theme Maas is pushing with her male protagonists that they’re super progressive because of the mistreatment their mother’s faced in societies that didn’t see them as worthy of really anything. And y’know what? Fuck yeah. I love that concept. We love men that respect women.
However, Maas doesn’t know how to weave it into her stories without making it feel disingenuous. She simply shoves a poster in your face over and over again that says “THEY’RE FEMINISTS! SEE?!”
Things like Cassian’s mission with getting females to train in the Illyrian camps and the library with the rescued priestesses and Rhys just giving Feyre choices are all wonderful ways of showing that these men are trying to use their status and power to make a change in the world they were born into. The issue comes with presentation.
We see the skirmishes between Devlon and Cassian on the topic of girls fighting so many times, and yet it never really plays a bigger part in any of our stories. It doesn’t matter except to show this personal mission, which would be fine if we didn’t keep coming back to it without stronger reasons. It’s not even a side quest. It’s a side note that has zero impact on the narrative and doesn’t even strengthen Cassian’s character development because there’s nothing substantial to weigh it against.
Since Cassian takes a lead role in Silver Flames, this might unfurl there. I’m saying now that I will take half a step down on this issue if it’s done right. If. It’s still weird to shove it at us awkwardly in four books prior — not really setting it up as a plot line, but letting us know that it’s there. Taking up space from issues that matter to the plot.
Then, the way Rhys acts is over the top. He’s too much of a pushover for Feyre, though I still feel like if he and his mate were ever at odds for some political issue dealing with the Night Court, he would overstep her opinion. We just haven’t seen it. However, what I meant is that he almost makes equality look as if he needs to be lesser for her to be more, which shouldn’t be true. They can excel in different aspects and find equality through balance. But there’s no true balance, it’s just Rhysand taking a foot off the scale. It’s an insult to Feyre under the disguise of feminism.
And thus I find myself annoyed with a character I loved so much. RIP. You were fun while it lasted.
One more thing about Rhys. He’s too cocky, and not in a fun villainy way. Things are just going too well for him. It’s annoying. I need somebody to either challenge his authority, beat the shit out of him, knock him down a peg, or all three. Add it to my Silver Flames wish list.
Azriel remains perfect. Don’t even look at him.
Rating
2 Solstice presents lying at the bottom of a river out of 5.
Life of Bry 
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