A Court of Frost and Starlight (Court of Thorns and Roses, #3.1)

by Sarah J. Maas

Narrated by Feyre and Rhysand, this bridges the events in A Court of Wings and Ruin and the upcoming novels in the series.

New in the #1 New York Times bestselling Court of Thorns and Roses series, A Court of Frost and Starlight is a glimpse into the lives of Feyre and Rhys as they begin to recover from the war that changed their world.

Feyre, Rhysand, and their close-knit circle of friends are still busy rebuilding the Night Court and the vastly-changed world beyond. But Winter Solstice is finally near, and with it, a hard-earned reprieve. Yet even the festive atmosphere can't keep the shadows of the past from looming. As Feyre navigates her first Winter Solstice as High Lady, she finds that those dearest to her have more wounds than she anticipated -- scars that will have a far-reaching impact on the future of their Court.

• ISBN10: 168119631X
• ISBN13: 9781681196312
• Publish Date: 1 May 2018
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 28 January 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Imprint: Bloomsbury YA
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 272
• Language: English

Reviews

[mitabird]

3.75 stars

[Emma (SCR)]

This review was originally posted on Star Crossed Reviews I really enjoyed the main ACOTAR trilogy but I left it a few months before I decided to read this one. I needed a book with Star in the title for my Astronomy OWL so I thought now was the perfect time to pick this up.

This book picks up a few months after the end of A Court of Wings and Ruin. The gang are trying to rebuild Prythian from the aftermath of the war with Hybern and preparing for the Winter Solstice.

I enjoyed this catch up with Feyre and the others but it was all too happy. I know, I know it doesn't always have to be doom and gloom but there was no twist, no big drama, just a family fight that has been long brewing.

I didn't hate it. I just wanted something a bit more. The other three books were so epic that this one just fell a little flat. It was all too fluffy for me.

[Stephanie]

This was boring until the last 30 pages or so. Feyre shopped for gifts way too many times for it to be interesting.

[thepunktheory]

Full review on my blog: www.thepunktheory.wordpress.com

I also devoured this little piece of writing (it's a novella) in one go.
I love that the pace is so much slower than in the other books as it only spans over a few days. However, that doesn't mean the story is less intense.
Just like the novels before, this one had me weeping like a child.
I know many people hated this novella. Most likely because it's so different from the rest in the series. But what broke my heart this time was seeing them all together, struggling to adjust, finally finding some peace and quiet. I loved it so much because the characters get something they deserve after all those horrific events in the past books.
Some things might have been a bit tacky and not overly thrilling, but that's the way life is. We get chapters about almost every one of our favorite characters and learn a tiny bit more about where they come from and what they feel.

[Vicki]

3.5 stars
I couldn't get enough of the other books and so was dying to dive right into this one. I was a little disappointed because it sort of felt like nothing really happened. While I love all the characters to death, it felt a little like a giant epilogue with some drama thrown in there. I had thought this was going to bridge the prior books to the new ones to be released and so maybe my expectations were off. Don't get me wrong, I still loved reading about Feyre, Rhys and everyone else. A nice steamy scene thrown in there too. I also got a thrown off a couple times with the change from first person to third person. I liked reading from Feyre and Rhys POVs but then switching to the other POVs that were written in third person threw me because I almost forgot which chapter and POV I was in. Nothing crazy but it did happen to me a couple times. Overall, loved reading more about this world and getting a glimpse of their happily ever after.

[Stephanie]

There is no real plot, just hints at future plots. Some I care about (Cassian, Azriel, & the Illyrians, thx) and others I don't. Will I read the next one?

Y E P. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Steph L]

I loved this book it was such a quick fun read. I loved reading about where some of my favorite characters are now. I loved celebrating Feyre's birthday with everyone!!!!

[Kate (Blogging with Dragons)]

Personally, I really enjoyed A Court of Frost and Starlight, and even liked it more than A Court of Wings and Ruin, (read that review here). A lot of other readers and reviewers were annoyed because this book seemed like simply a “filler,” but I was under the belief that that was the specific purpose of this novella—to fill the readers in on the time after A Court of Wings and Ruin, to update on the characters, and to set the stage for the next saga in the series. Frankly, I was not disappointed with the extra character development at all and was just grateful that this story was written—I missed the characters and this world! In my opinion, those expecting a full-length, action-packed novel were only setting themselves up for disappointment and missed out on appreciating a well-written return to the series.



With my perspective, I really liked the book’s focus on the characters and on their healing from the war, as well as the shifting point-of-view between the characters. It was great to get inside Rhysand, Cassian, and Mor’s heads. I felt even closer and more connected to the characters. As always, I also loved the close relationship of the gang—Cassian, Azriel, Mor, Rhysand, Feyre, and Amren, and of course, the banter between Feyre and Rhysand. As always, I was very interested in Lucien, Elain, and Azriel’s interactions, but there was just enough of it to tantalize. But as I was hungry for anything with these characters, I gobbled up the tease happily.



Though this book was not packed with romantic developments in many of my favorite ships, I was pleased with the further development between the Archeron sisters. In many fairy tale books, the sisters are perfect and best friends or the heroine is tormented by her evil sisters. Though the series may have started with Feyre being treated awfully by her sisters Elain and Nesta, it evolved into a complicated relationship that was filled with love, loyalty, resentment, and so many other emotions. I really enjoyed that Maas took the two sisters that I hated and twisted their existences upside down and tied them further to that of Feyre’s, Rhysand’s, and the rest of the gang’s fates.



I especially found it remarkable how lifelike it was for Nesta to not want to turn up to the Winter Solstice holiday, extort money in order to do so, and then ruin the rest of the evening for everyone else. To me, this was the exemplary kind of character development that makes the series shine, and is not often found in a young adult fantasy novella, of all things. As always, Maas excelled at breathing life into her characters and putting real people in fantastical worlds.



In this particular world, at the Night Court in Velaris, the gang were all preparing for the Winter Solstice, and coincidentally Feyre’s birthday. I enjoyed all their gift-buying preparations, but found it a little hard to believe that Feyre and Rhysand did not know what to buy each other. They have always been so obsessed with each other that their dilemma just did not quite seem believable to me. Though I loved Rhys’s gift of the sketchbooks and artist tools, I wished that he had bought Feyre the artist studio instead of the random house for to design. For goodness sake’s, he even stumbled across her painting in the abandoned studio—after she hadn’t picked up brushes in months—and then did not buy the studio, where she could finally manage to paint, for her. The gift of the house felt pretty inattentive for thoughtful Rhysand and like just another way for the author to state how rich, young, attractive, and powerful they all were, which honestly got a little old.



Despite these constant references, I relished the foreshadowing that was laced throughout the book, especially Rhys’s visit with a rapidly deteriorating Tamlin, and Mor’s sighting of something dark and dangerous in the woods. But most of all, I was totally floored by the excerpt at the end and what appeared to be Nesta’s training with Cassian and the Illyrian troops. Like most readers, I was somewhat disappointed with how Nesta was choosing to cope with the results of the last book—drinking, sleeping around, and cutting Cassian out of her life. But honestly, I wouldn’t change a thing because not only was Nesta interesting and firey as usual, but also appeared that all of this strife was leading to her enlisting—okay being forced into their ranks by Feyre and the gang as a type of intervention for her increasingly destructive behavior—into the Illyrian warriors with Cassian. I know that Nesta is going to be a complete and total badass and I honestly cannot wait to read it!



For those who love the characters, the Night Court in Velaris, and the world, you will certainly enjoy this book. As I am one of these readers, I welcomed the return to the series I loved. But if you are tight on money or do not enjoy books that are not filled with action and deep plots, and instead focus on character development, pass on it. There’s nothing in this book that won’t be referenced in the next.


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[Kait ✨]

Enjoyable for fans of the series as a “filler” between books three and four, but this book does not stand on its own and was quite frankly a waste of time. As someone who is obsessed with Christmas I loved the Winter Solstice vibes, and I imagine I’d enjoy rereading this in the winter... but Maas’ writing continues to decline in quality and there is absolutely no plot in this novella.

[sarahjay]

Ugh... okay, I was honestly going to write a whole review on this, and maybe even make a video about it, I was all set to sit down and get to it, but then I found an ant on my bed, and ants are the kind of thing where if there's one there's definitely more, and sure enough, there were a bunch on the carpet all over my living area, and it was not immediately clear where they were coming from, so we just spent like 2+ hours vacuuming and spraying and vacuuming some more and poring over every inch of carpet to make sure we got them all, and then I ended up being paranoid enough that I deep cleaned my entire room for the first time in (amount of time I don't want to say publicly) and now I'm exhausted, I'm so tired. But all of that was more fun than reading this absolutely insipid book. This is about nothing. It is a holiday special that doesn't even have the decency to include any kind of conflict or plot to make it worth reading. If you like this series, I really recommend you skip it. I wish I had. I want to Eternal Sunshine this pointless novella from my mind so I can read the next official book without it tainting my view of the people in this series. These are characters I thought I LIKED! I gave them SO much slack in the other two books I accept as "decent" in this series! And now, I resent them all to a degree I cannot begin to describe. I felt like I was reading Twilight.