Bless This Mess: A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
THE SET UP
Following their victory against evil queen Amarantha, newly-turned-faerie Feyre is getting ready to wed her true love Tamlin.
Or, at least, she would, if she weren’t so gosh-darn depressed.
Also, despite the fact that she now has faerie strength and powers, and though her IBS is cured, Tamlin refuses to let her train or be part of his important decisions as High Lord of the Spring Court. She’s furthermore haunted by the fact that she had to kill two faeries in order to free Tamlin and save the world.
Oh, also, now there’s this High Priestess named Ianthe who’s Feyre’s new bestest friend. She’s so obviously conniving and manipulative that it’s a little funny; she also likes to play with her men which is bad, I guess. Listen, it’s so hard to walk the line between empowering women and tearing them down.
On the day of the wedding, sexy badboy Rhysand finally calls in his bargain, and takes her away for a week. This, understandably, doesn’t go over super well with Tamlin. However, her time with Rhys at the Night Court is chill; he teaches her how to read and also how to shield her mind. We the reader also learn that he’s a feminist, because he believes in women’s rights to rule. Literally, after Feyre mentions that there are no High Ladies (only High Lords), he goes “um, actually, there can be High Ladies.”
#Feminism
Anyway, Feyre spends a couple of months going back and forth between the Spring Court and Rhysand, as the bargain requires, until finally she tries to push to go with Tamlin on an outing and he locks her in his house. Oh yeah, turns out evil queen Amarantha had a boss called Hybern and he also wants to take over the world. We’ll circle back to that.
Feyre flips the fuck out at being locked up (fairly enough), and Rhysand sends his friends to come get her. She feels deeply betrayed by Tamlin, and ends up deciding to join Rhysand in trying to stop the threat that Hybern poses. Here is where the book really kicks off, by which I mean we’re like 150 pages in and the plot slows to a crawl so that she can banter with Rhysand’s friends.
THE MESS
I don’t want to make light of the suffering and trauma of real people; however, Feyre’s trauma is SO overwrought and melodramatic that I can’t help but find it hilarious. The fucking book begins with the sentence, “Maybe I’d always been broken and dark inside.” OKAY MISS EDGY.
Genuinely, the character assassination of Tamlin is deeply funny to me. I thought he was super boring and basic in book 1, and this reminds me of nothing so much as a fanfic where the author needs to make the canon love interest a total bastard to justify breaking them up. Straight up, he refuses to provide aid for the people of his court because of “tradition.” Tamlin’s a fucking tradcon, surprise!
This exchange:
“‘Come here,’ [Tamlin] growled, so roughly the words were barely discernable.
I pushed back the blankets, revealing my already naked body, and he hissed.”
Rhysand takes Feyre to this city called Velaris, the City of Starlight, which is somehow a large, secret city. Nobody knows it exists, and yet it has a thriving populace and busy economy. How does any of this work? I don’t know, and neither does SJM. This is where we spend a bunch of the novel, with him and his Court of Dreams (the real phrase they use), where everything is Awesome and Better than Literally Anywhere Else In the World. We learn that Rhysand pretended to go along with Amarantha to protect Velaris (and also his friends).
How to explain this succinctly - for reasons that are not fully clear to me, Rhysand has to pretend his Court is shitty and corrupt. Therefore, he has some folks who suck, who don’t know about Velaris, hang out under a mountain having wild parties and being awful to each other. They refer to this unironically as the Court of Nightmares. This has been going on for hundreds of years, somehow.
At some point in the book, they have to visit the Court of Nightmares, and Rhysand asks Feyre to get all dolled up and play his pet while he fondles her in public. This is before anything romantic or sexual has actually happened between. I know, I know that this is here because readers and SJM presumably find it sexy. Hell, Feyre is also into it, so that’s nice for her I guess. I personally just think it’s wild to have this next to Rhysand trying to empower her as a ruler in her own right. Also, stop forcing your exhibition kink onto non-consenting bystanders, guys!
Over the course of this book, we learn that Feyre, on account of having been revived by all of the High Lords, has inherited powers from each of them. She spends a lot of time learning the new powers that she has, which is all of them. She has all of the powers. This is deeply silly but ultimately pretty fun.
Again, a lot of time is spent on Feyre just kind of hanging out with the Night Court while they try to do things to stop Hybern. This involves doing a small but decently fun heist at the Summer Court, where she helps them steal a book that they need for reasons. Of course, the Summer Court, who seem relatively chill, are less than thrilled with this, and Rhysand must once more heroically play the villain.
Feyre also has to sneak into the cabin of this ancient death-god called The Weaver in order to retrieve something, and that part is also pretty good. Both because, y’know, something is actually happening, and also because I’m always into actual weird fae shit and The Weaver totally counts as that.
I feel like I should talk at least a little about the other characters in Rhysand’s Court, because they’re all theoretically important, but again, they have very little to actually contribute to the “plot”. In any case:
Mor, short for Morrigan, who has a Deeply Tragic Backstory and also magic truth powers? It’s unclear (to me and possibly also SJM) how these are meant to work.
Amren, who was Made into a faerie, but who is actually some kind of ancient godlike being. She drinks blood and everyone is afraid of her. I kind of like Amren.
Azriel, who’s called a “Shadowsinger” which I think just means that he can speak to and control shadows. He’s Rhysand’s spymaster. He has very little to do, but he’s in love with Mor. This is the most important thing about his character as far as I can tell.
Cassian, who has perhaps the least to do in this book. As far as I can tell, he mostly exists to banter with Feyre and, eventually, with her sister Nesta. They’re so attracted to each other, can’t you tell from how they can’t stop snarking at each other? Anyway, he took Mor’s “maidenhead” (blech) about 500 years ago as part of her Tragic Backstory and that’s still hanging over him, her, and Azriel.
A lot of this book is very episodic with things just kind of happening here and there, no sense of build, but Feyre does get to make friends with Rhys and his Court, and slowly comes out of her depression. There’s a scene that I was genuinely charmed by wherein, during a comet shower, Feyre and Rhysand have a moment of connection where she declares him to be her friend. I don’t think they totally earn the “found family” dynamic they’re going for here, but I can appreciate the effort.
So, part of the rehabilitation of Rhysand, turning him from sexy evil bad boy to considerate respectful boyfriend, is the reveal of his own Tragic Backstory. Besides the fact that his dad was shitty and forced him to go through abusive training as a child, his mother and sister were murdered by Tamlin’s father, and their wings taken as trophies. Then, naturally, Rhysand and his father killed Tamlin’s father and brothers, leading to some pretty bad blood between them. Also, it was Tamlin, who at the time was friends with Rhys, who told his dad where Rhysand’s mom and sister were, for reasons unknown, so, y’know, add that to your “reasons Tamlin sucks” board.
The climax of this book involves Feyre and her companions attempting to thwart Hybern’s schemes by sneaking onto his island. They are, of course, immediately discovered, and we find out that Tamlin, in a fit of jealousy/thinking that Feyre had been kidnapped, has allied with Hybern. As a result, Hybern takes her sisters and turns them into faeries by putting them in “the Cauldron,” a magical item that can do a bunch of things including that, I guess.
“Erin,” you may be asking, “why would he do that?” Great question. It’s because he’s made a deal with the queens of the human lands, who are of course mostly all conniving bitches. The deal is that they’ll surrender their lands in exchange for being turned into hot powerful faeries. He demonstrates his ability to do this using Feyre’s sisters. “But Erin,” you may be saying, “that still doesn’t make sense.” Indeed it does not!!!
Elain, the middle sister, comes out of the Cauldron and immediately Lucien (you remember, that extremely ineffectual guy from the last book) recognizes her as his mate (more on that in a moment). Nesta, the eldest, goes into the Cauldron fighting, giving Hybern a “death point” as she goes in. This is admittedly kind of badass.
In order to get everyone out of this situation, Feyre pretends that the “control” Rhysand had over her has been broken by Hybern (his deal with Tamlin). She decries Rhysand as having taken her captive, and pretends to be excitedly returning to Tamlin. This doesn’t make total sense, but I do kind of love overwrought drama and this is definitely that.
The book ends with everyone escaping from Hybern, and Feyre going back to the Spring Court with Tamlin, ostensibly to spy on him and Hybern. This is paired with the reveal that she and Rhysand got married at some point off-page and that she is now High Lady of the Night Court, at least legally. I’m losing my mind.
THE ACTUAL BAD STUFF
Rhysand’s mom was of a - race? Culture? - of “lesser” faeries called Illyrians; Azriel and Cassian are also Illyrian. They’ve got kickass bat wings and can fly (and Rhys is able to vanish his on command). They’re also brown-skinned warriors with a reputation for brutality who live in “war-camps” and mutilate their women upon menses so that they can’t fly. Yes, this is obviously deeply racist. This book was published in 2016.
I think the idea of “mates” (as in predestined soul mates) was mentioned in the first book briefly, but here we really get into it. Soul mates is not my trope, but it can be fun in the right context I suppose. Here, however, it is specifically explained as something done to ensure strong children, which strikes me as particularly troubling and eugenics-adjacent. The ACOTAR wiki assures me that queer couples can be mates, too, but I sure don’t see any evidence of that within the books themselves!
Of course it’s revealed that Feyre and Rhysand are mates, and that he knew but kept that information for her, supposedly to preserve her ability to be happy with Tamlin. Anyway, she finds out, and is annoyed, but then finally gives in and they have mind-shattering sex. I don’t know how I feel about this, because on one hand, they have had a fair amount of time to build towards a relationship, so this isn’t just mashing dolls together. On the other hand, we already know they have feelings for each other, and this feels like it’s just there to add one extra layer of “see, they’re MEANT to be together.”
I also don’t love that he keeps the information from her! I guess I don’t know how you go about saying to someone, “Hey I know we’ve mostly been enemies, and that you have a boyfriend, but we’re totes meant to be,” so Rhysand kind of gets a pass here, but. I’m watching you, dude.
Sorry, one more thing about mates. The mating bond draws people together (which in my mind calls into question attraction and affection building up “organically”) but it’s not locked in until the female offers the male food. This is nonsensical in a way that makes me kind of angry, not to mention extremely easy to do on accident, especially when your main character doesn’t have knowledge of faerie culture!
Once again, when the sisters emerge from the Cauldron as newly-Made faeries, they’re way more beautiful-er than they were before. I continue to hate this.
Also, there’s this weird thing I’m noticing where it seems like SJM doesn’t like to give names to her characters sometimes. Like, I’m using “Hybern” as short-form, but that’s his title; he’s the King of the Island of Hybern. He does not have a name. Rhysand’s parents and his sister don’t get names. Lucien’s mother doesn’t have a name. Sarah, name your characters goddammit!!!
IN CONCLUSION
This book is more everything than the first, and unfortunately that also means that it’s more enjoyable. Where I found the first to be boring, this book actually has a lot of stuff that I would consider fun mess, things that are silly but ultimately harmless (in addition to some stuff that is actually harmful). I maintain that SJM has no idea how to pace a novel, but the parts where the tension and stakes are actually present, I was having a decent time.
Also, as annoying and eye-rolling as Rhysand’s feminism can be to me, I grew up when Twilight and Twilight rip-offs were the biggest thing in Fiction For Girls, and I do kind of appreciate that at least there’s some lip service paid to empowerment and healthy relationships. It’s still absolutely pop feminism, but I’ll take “this man locked me in his house and that’s not okay” to “my boyfriend broke my car so I can’t go see my male friend and this is presented as totally okay by the narrative.”
I give A Court of Mist and Fury 3 1/2 cool bat wings/5