Bless This Mess: A Court of Thorns & Roses by Sarah J. Maas
THE SET UP
Feyre is a poor girl who has to hunt to provide for her family, who all kind of suck in a very fairy tale-esque way. Which is good, because this is literally a fairy, sorry, faerie story; in this fantasy world, humans mostly hate faeries, who exist beyond The Wall, and who used to enslave them some 500 years ago.
One day, Feyre shoots and kills a suspiciously faerie-looking wolf with a faerie-killing arrow she just happens to have. As punishment, she is taken beyond The Wall to pay penance for killing a faerie, by which I mean that she mostly just gets to hang out in a cool mansion with hot fae men for a while.
What follows is about 250 pages of Beauty & the Beast-style romance between her and Tamlin, the Spring Court faerie whose friend/vassal she killed. Don’t worry, this will never amount to any real conflict between them, because it turns out that the fae-wolf she killed was actually trying to get killed (more on that later). Oh, yes, also, this is technically a retelling of the Tam Lin myth. Again, don’t get too caught up in that, it’s only barely relevant.
After she’s spent so! Very! Many! conflict-free pages a) painting b) falling in love with Tamlin but not telling him c) hearing him read her bad poetry d) vaguely hearing about some issues going on in faerieland (Prythian), Tamlin sends her back home, where he’s been providing for her family while she’s been away. Here we find out that her family doesn’t actually suck as much as they seemed to at first glance. It’s sort of unclear to me why her eldest sister Nesta, who seems like a badass in her own right, just straight up refused to help feed them and bullied Feyre at any opportunity, because we like her now. Cool.
But I digress. In true Beauty & the Beast fashion, she realizes that she has to go back, and that she does truly love Tamlin. Saying goodbye to her family, she returns to Prythian to help him out. There, she learns that the land has been ruled for the past 49 years by Amarantha, who’s super evil, and who cursed Tamlin and his Court specifically. However, if Tamlin could get a fae-hating human to fall in love with him (hence the “sending his vassals into the mortal lands to be killed” thing), the curse would be broken. Too bad Feyre never told him that she loved him! Womp womp.
Anyway, Feyre challenges Amarantha to a new deal: if she can beat the three trials set to her, or solve Amarantha’s riddle, all of Prythian will be free. Here she also properly meets Rhysand, Amarantha’s lover and Lord of the Night Court, who’s incredibly sexy and dangerous and oh boy you know where this is going, right?
THE MESS
The character of Rhysand. Spoiler, he’s going to become the main love interest next book, but here, he’s just pure sexy bad boy, and maybe it’s my inner 12 year old, but I’m kind of here for it. He tries to help Feyre, but he has to do it subtly, so that Amarantha doesn’t catch on, meaning that he has to be a dick about it. He’s also referred to as “Amarantha’s whore,” which is obviously problematic but I guess it’s kind of interesting to see that word used for a male character.
Here is where we get, y’know, actual faerie stuff. Like wild parties, substances, orgies, torture, things that you might associate with real fairy legend. Rhysand forces Feyre to attend in a skimpy outfit and feels her up while she’s drugged multiple times (but don’t worry, only ever on her hips/waist, he doesn’t cross the line into ACTUAL assault).
Feyre fights a big worm (which SJM has spelled “wyrm” for some inscrutable reason) as one of the trials, which is pretty fun. She gets injured, and Rhysand heals her in exchange for a bargain: she must promise to go to him for a week every month after this is all over. The bargain is represented by a sick ass tattoo on her arm, which also lets Rhysand help her cheat in the second trial.
The last trial is that Feyre has to stab three faeries through the heart. She kills the first two, and then the third is revealed to be Tamlin, but she figures out that his heart is literally made of stone, and therefore he doesn’t die. However, due to some bullshit, she still has to solve the riddle, and the answer is “love,” because of-fucking-course it is.
Like three or four times within the book, the narrative/SJM uses the phrase “my bowels turned watery” or something similar to denote fear. This is such a specific turn of phrase that I have never seen anywhere else. Also, I think maybe Feyre has IBS?
The book ends with Feyre triumphant over Amarantha, but before Tamlin can tear the evil queen’s throat out, Feyre is killed. As thanks for freeing them from her tyranny, all seven Faerie Lords give her a sprinkle of power, and she is brought back to life as a faerie.
THE ACTUAL BAD STUFF
This is a gripe but SJM refers to all faeries as “male” or “female”, as nouns, because I guess “man” and “woman” mean humans? I know that isn’t an unusual thing in this kind of book but seeing phrases like “the female” or “his male jaw” just makes my skin crawl, I’m sorry.
There’s some not-great racial connotations in some of the passages. For example, when dressed in her skimpy party outfit, Feyre’s internal dialogue talks about how she’s like a “heathen god’s plaything” and “savage”, which is, y’know, not great.
See above comment about the sexual assault that’s not quite sexual assault, at least as far as the narrative is concerned.
Feyre ends the book being turned into a faerie, which is great for her, I guess. What I don’t love is that, similar to Bella being turned into a vampire in Breaking Dawn, she instantly becomes way more beautiful and graceful. And, specifically, skinnier. Like, it is mentioned that her fingers are longer and slimmer. Gross. On the other hand, we will never hear about her bowels again, so I guess that means her IBS is cured?
There’s a character called Lucien who’s Tamlin’s best friend and who lives at the Spring Court; he’s actually an exiled son of the High Lord of Autumn. He also befriends Feyre and helps her through the trials a little, where he can. He’s theoretically an important character, and I like him better than Tamlin, but he is so barely relevant to the plot of this or any subsequent books that I debated whether or not to even mention him.
IN CONCLUSION
So genuinely, I found a lot of this book incredibly boring. Feyre spends, again, about 250 pages hanging out in Tamlin’s mansion without any particular stakes or conflict. An all-knowing faerie called the Suriel even tells her “stay right where you are, fall in love with the high lord, and all will be well”; a situation in which the main character can choose to do nothing at no cost is just not compelling to me.
Buuuuuuut the last 100 pages have their moments of fun and mess, enough that I was interested to see where the story went from here.
I give it 3 sexy faeries/5