A Court of Silver Flames (Court of Thorns and Roses, #4)

by Sarah J. Maas

[thepunktheory]

Full review on my blog!

I binge-read the first three books, I devoured the novella. I was so excited about A Court of Silver Flames coming out and then it was here and I forgot about it. Oopsie. Well, I finally picked the novel up, and boy there are a lot of things to talk about.

First of all, I enjoyed that this book was such an intriguing study of mental health, of trauma, and of healing. Maas did a good job showing that the journey to get better isn’t linear, some days are better than others, some are worse. It also shows quite well that you have no way of knowing what goes on in another person, why they behave the way they do.

Getting better is a struggle, and I think she also captured well that is not just a struggle for the person going through it but also for those around her. There is someone you deeply care about and you want to help them, but you don’t know how to best go about it. They might resent your help, might not understand it. There is also a volatile balance between trying to help someone and taking away their own agency and ability to make decisions. Nesta was hurting, herself and others. Her coping mechanisms weren’t healthy, and she was running herself into the ground. Standing by and watching someone you care about to that has to be hell. Yet the only way to get her to stop was to impose strict rules and essentially upend her life.

All that being said, Sarah J. Maas, we need to talk about something. Why was there *so much* smut in this book? I was not prepared for what, 8 (?) chapters that were nothing but graphic smut. I think it adds up to easily 100 pages. This book gave me the impression that SJM read a lot of fanfic between the last book she wrote and this one and somehow decided that’s what she’s going to do now. Yes, there was one chapter like this in I think it was the second book. But that was one chapter in three novels. This is a whole other level. I simply wasn’t expecting that and also didn’t really care much for it. Like, if that’s what I want to read I pick up a different kind of book. As I said this added substantially to the page count as well. This is not me being a prude or anything of that sort, but Maas just went a bit overboard in this novel. My copy of the book had about 600 pages, so over 100 pages of smut is a substantial amount of the story. You get my point.

I appreciated that we finally get an ACOTAR story focusing on someone other than Rhysand and Feyre. I think three books (and the novella) about them are enough, especially since there are so many other interesting characters to explore in this world. While I like a big portion of the story, the grand overarching enemy was a bit pale in this one. The final battle was cool but somewhere halfway through this part of the story could have had a little more substance for my taste. Maybe it’s just that Maas is setting things up for another novel since there sure are questions left unanswered after this one. So for now, I’ll let it slide. Oh also, I get that Rhysand isn’t happy about Nesta but he can absolutely get in the bin for how he keeps behaving towards her. I liked them in the past books but by now Rhys and Feyre are kinda annoying and I so very much do not care about the baby. Please for the love of god, could writers fuck off with that angle?! Rhys’s entire attitude in this book actually makes me dislike the whole “mates” thing even more. It’s a concept I didn’t like from the get-go but here it becomes annoying and controlling and just creepy. No thank you. Which is also why I hated the very last chapters. No spoilers but if you read the novel, you know why based on my previously laid out sentiments I didn’t like it.