A COURT OF WINGS AND RUIN (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3): Review

A Court of Wings and Ruin (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3)  by Sarah J. Maas
Published by Bloomsbury USA Childrens on May 2, 2017
Genres: young adult/new adult, romance, fantasy, retellings
Pages: 699 | Format: Hardcover

Rating: ★★

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It’s just a trilogy thing, unfortunately. (Or maybe not, since this series is being expanded. But I’m sure you know what I mean.)

When I finished ACOWAR, I knew it felt like a disappointment, and not just because ACOMAF was so amazing. As the end to Feyre’s story arc, as the end of a series from her point of view, as the final installment in a saga describing the growing conflict between Prythian and Hybern, A Court of Wings and Ruin was a disappointment.

This review will be pretty brief and to-the-point about why, because I think ACOWAR’s pitfalls can be boiled down to several points.

Feyre’s (and SJM’s) worship of Rhysand. Look, I love Rhysand. He’s not my favorite book character ever (I’ll save that award for the Dregs in Six of Crows), but, like I said in my review of ACOMAF, I liked the way he helped show Feyre just how powerful and independent she could be once she harnessed the tools to obtain that independence. But in this book, Feyre is constantly describing just how awesome and perfect her “mate” (eww) is. All the time. And it was just too much. I enjoy Feyre’s ruthlessness and Rhys’s compassion, too, Sarah J. Maas. But there’s no need to lionize your own characters in the narration and put them on pedestals in your prose just because so many readers love them, too

The sacrifices are not high enough for the stakes the rest of the series has set up. (FYI, there are spoilers in this section.) For two (very long) books, we’ve heard talks of war and this terrible tyrant who’s set on obliterating everything Feyre and her family loves. The king of Hybern and his allies have tortured Feyre’s friends and her mate, have transformed her sisters into Fae (which both sisters are traumatized by), and have been threatening to disturb the precarious peace the courts of Prythian enjoy. This whole book supposedly revolves around the Night Court training an outmanned army, trying to form alliances with the other Courts against a threat that could obliterate them all.

So, when we finally get to the war, you’d expect it to be this huge thing, right? You expect this war to be devastating.

Heh.

SPOILERS: ((Well, there’s a lot of grandstanding and a total of one surprise beheading, one other actual death, and two fake deaths. The only person who dies on the “good” side is Feyre’s father–someone of little consequence to the story at this point.

In other words, the “high-stakes” war this whole series has built up to is very anticlimactic because the payoff isn’t sufficient enough. The character’s don’t have to sacrifice anything in the midst of such high stakes. I don’t like characters deaths (just ask Crooked Kingdom), but there should have been more, and they should have been deaths of more prominent characters. People die in war. People sacrifice in war. And because I didn’t see any of our main characters sacrifice much, what was supposed to be the biggest source of conflict just turned out to be a letdown.))  

There were probably other issues I’m forgetting, but those are the main issues I had with this book.

It’s a shame, too. I was hoping this would be one of those series I fell in love with. One of those series I could love unconditionally. But alas, this installment proves it’s not meant to be. I’ll be reading future installments of this series (I’m really excited to see this world through Cassian and Nesta’s eyes!), but unfortunately, based on these three books, this isn’t a series I’ll be devoting much shelf space to.