A Court of Mist and Fury » Book Review

If A Court of Thorns and Roses was a Beauty and the Beast retelling, then A Court of Mist and Fury is the story of Hades and Persephone. This book is darker, sexier, and more twisting than its predecessor and I LIKED THAT.

Here's the thing... Maas has the ability to write vastly entertaining books, ALBEIT with juvenile edges. She often resorts to B-movie theatrics and hair-pin turn-arounds, and that can annoy me.  So even though I can't respect her writing as that of a master, I can enjoy her stories immensely.

And I enjoyed A Court of Mist and Fury, moreso than I have any of Maas's other books.

Part of the charm was the romance.  [spoiler]In a move that is just SO Maas, the love interest of the previous book is demolished. Tamlin goes the way of Chaol from the Throne of Glass series and becomes an asshole...all to make way for a newer, fresher, more intense love story.[/spoiler] I'm not going to lie — I love a dark-edged love story and that's exactly what Maas delivers in A Court of Mist and Fury.

As for Feyre, our protagonist, we don't see her do anything as incredibly epic as the Wyrm Hunt of A Court of Thorns and Roses, but the character does come into her own in A Court of Mist and Fury.  At times, I thought she was losing her distinction as a character, but then Maas would tighten things up once more and Feyre emerge once again. She's a human-hearted girl who can hold her own in a crowd of powerful and ruthless fae.

Another great character — Rhysand.  He was the complicated villain character in the previous book, and he comes back with a vengeance in A Court of Mist and Fury.  He is Tamlin's foil, and he has a whole other agenda when it comes to Feyre and ideas about how she should be spending her new immortality.  Rhysand is the High Lord of Night, Dreams, and Nightmares, and, in the words of Feyre, is as faceted as the night sky.  The prose lit up whenever he was present on the page.

Speaking of characters, one of my big complaints about A Court of Thorns and Roses, was how few major characters there were.  The cast seemed very, very small — Feyre, Tamlin, and Lucien.  Fortunately, Maas broadens her story in the sequel.  We got to meet more than several new cast members, mostly friends and allies of Rhysand.  My favorite by far was Cassian, a brute of a soldier with passionate appetites.  I hope we see more of him going forward. Mor was also great — a lovely high-fae woman with a brutal past.

We get to learn far more about how the fae-realms work in A Court of Mist and Fury, partly because the book is quite long (a good thing!) and partly because Feyre has the means to find out more.  One sub-storyline I liked immensely was that of the Illyrians — a low-fae race with bat-wings and talons.  They're a warrior race with a rich culture, but they treat women like shit.  It was so interesting to see fae-feminism come into play in this book.  It's a subject that usually isn't touched on in the flood of fae-centered fantasies on the market. It was a really nice sub-plot.

This review has been quite rambling, but meh, whatever.  So was the book, really — meandering, long, and self-indulgent. But I really, truly liked all of these qualities.  Most especially, the darker, more adult turn this sequel took.  Is A Court of Mist and Fury really being sold in the YA section? Whew! It most definitely has NA themes about it.

So, if you were hesitant about picking up the sequel to A Court of Thorns and Roses, I say give it a shot.  I liked it far better than book one, which I thought was deeply flawed, yet entertaining.  A Court of Mist and Fury is most definitely imperfect, but nevertheless shines in its own, weird light.