And for some reason I can deal with big dicks, but I can't deal with the pointy ears.
I don't know why, it's just like a turn-off to me.
You can have like a big monster dick, but if you have pointy ears,
that's where I draw the line.
Today I'm gonna talk about my thoughts on A Court of Thorns and Roses, or as I like to call it,
a Court of Thorns and Hoe...ses.
I don't know.
It's not really gonna be a serious review. This isn't gonna be an in-depth discussion or anything like that,
I'm just gonna ramble my first impressions of this story because I think it would be interesting to
kind of keep track of my impressions now compared to when I read the rest of the series.
I just want to see if my thoughts change as I keep reading along because I've heard that it gets worse.
But I've also heard that it gets better.
So either way, it sounds like it changes a lot and I just want to put my stake in here.
I'll talk about spoilers in the second half of the video and I will also leave a time stamp in the description if you care about that.
So why did I decide to read a court of Thorns and Roses?
First of all, I got these books from The Book Dragon Reads.
She was very curious about my thoughts in the series.
So she sent me the trilogy, so you really have her to thank for this content.
Thank you for sending me these books. I think.
But the second reason is that this series is very contentious. People either love it or hate it.
It's been pretty interesting being a third party observer because I'm actually in two group chats
One of them is filled with Sarah J
Maas fans who absolutely love her books is called Velaris,
which I assume is like a term in her series? I got added to the chat by one of the members a while back and
they're pretty cool people. I just have no idea what the fuck they're talking about.
And then I have a second group chat with Jordan and Kat who absolutely
hate the series and will eviscerate it just like how my roommate's cat is currently eviscerating his litter box.
Regardless of how you feel about the books, either way, everyone is shitting their pants over it.
The question is are you shitting your pants in a good way or in a bad way? That's what I'm here to find out.
So I finally read the book and the verdict is —
*drumroll*
My pants are dry.
I rated this book two stars, which I was very disappointed by because I approached this series with an open mind.
I really really wanted to like it. I knew it wouldn't be like the greatest American literature ever, but that's okay.
I can still enjoy a book as a guilty pleasure, even if it's not great on a critical level.
It's okay to just like trashy romance books too, like I don't think there's any shame in that whatsoever.
So I really really wanted to enjoy it and I felt okay with it for the most part.
I looked over a lot of things but when I got to the end,
there was just one monumental moment that happened that I just could not
condone it and then I had to drop my rating from three stars to two stars.
The ending happened and I was like god fucking damn it. The bar was so low.
I expected nothing and I'm still let down. So let me just backtrack and explain why I was set on giving it three stars.
I was right in the middle because I didn't love the book, but I didn't hate it either.
Honestly,
I don't see what all the fuss is about. People have such strong feelings
over this book on
both sides of the spectrum and I just don't understand. I think if it wasn't for all the hype and the strong feelings that people
had about it.
I would have just read it as a very standard Beauty and the Beast retelling and just moved on with it.
Like it ain't that deep. To give a quick synopsis of the book,
basically, A Court of Thorns and Roses
is a
Beauty and the Beast retelling where the main character kills a faerie and then as punishment for her crime she has to trade in her
life for his by being captive by another faerie. So she has to leave her poor
asshole family and live in a magical kingdom where she is rich and gets to do whatever she wants.
It's very devastating.
I don't know how she survived it all, but one can only pray for her. The first one third of the book
she was like, oh no, I miss my family and I miss how my sisters were such assholes to me. Oh boohoo.
Man, this really sucks. While she's living in the kingdom with her captor, she starts to learn more about
Faeries and about the faerie land that they live on and a curse that these particular fairies have. What is the curse,
you may ask. Maybe it's the fact that nobody can pronounce their fucking names. Tamlyn,
Lucien or lucien or wherever the fuck your name is. I won't reveal the curse because we haven't gone into spoilers yet,
but I will say that one of the symptoms
involves them
having animal masks that are stuck to their faces, because they had gotten this curse when they were at a masquerade ball.
Which I thought was a really cool story. Thank god
it was just a face mask cause, can you imagine if they were like at a furry party or something and then they're permanently trapped
in their fur suits forever?
I don't know just somebody to think about I'm just saying it could be worse, but honestly from how Tamlyn is described
he's basically a faerie. Nobody can change my mind about that. So anyway, first thoughts when I started it.
Uhm.
I guess first of all, I had no idea that this book was about faeries.
For some reason that kind of just went over my mind whenever I heard about the series.
This is my first time reading a faerie book,
and from what I've gathered from you thirsty bitches talking about Sarah J Mass and The Cruel Prince,
I'm guessing faeries are a species of people who are
all-powerful and wicked and cunning and just a very intimidating type of species. For me,
I always pictured faeries to be the kind from Neopets?
You know the one where you fulfill quest to get cute little potions and shit. So reading this definitely required some
readjusting in my brain.
I
consulted the
Velaris group chat about it because they are the
experts of Sarah J Maas,
and they are the experts of faeries, and Katie from Kate's book nook summarized it pretty straightforwardly to me.
Katie said they're basically like humans, but with magic and big dicks.
You know, I just appreciate how Katie gives it to me straight. She's been around these courts before she knows how it is.
She's seen it all big or small, skinny or girthy, whatever it is.
She knows it. And for some reason I can deal with big dicks, but I can't deal with the pointy ears.
I don't know why it's just like a turn-off to me.
You can have like a big monster dick. But if you have pointy ears, that's where I draw the line. I also don't really like
100% perfectly handsome characters, it just feels very unrealistic to me.
I can't do any wish-fulfillment when I read a story like that because they're way out of my league.
Do you guys know I mean?
We're like you see someone who is so hot and so
attractive, that you can't even be attracted to them because they are like on a whole another level and your ugly ass
is like just all the way down here? That's basically how I feel whenever I read an impossibly perfect character.
I can't fantasize myself with them because I'm a fucking troll. You know what? That's just my problem, okay? That's just my personal preference.
I'm fine with overlooking these things and just approaching it with an open mind. So that is what I did. With that in mind,
I want to talk about all of the things about this book that I
overlooked and then the one final thing that I just could not get past and it was the reason why I dropped it to two
stars. So, one of the things I overlooked was the writing. I am NOT a fan of it. It's too superfluous,
it has a lot of unnecessary
description, it has really slow pacing and it has a lot of em dashes. Holy shit!
So many em dashes. If I took a shot every time I read an em dash on any single page
I would be dead by now. But you know what, it's fine because sometimes you want to die.
So again, I overlooked it. I do want to read a few quotes from the book though,
that made me stop, put down the book and just question in my life for a moment. (Cindy quoting) "In the dark,
his tone was enough to know that his eyes were flecked with bitterness.
He left me and I took a gasping breath, not realizing I had been holding it." ♩Hello Darkness, my old friend . . . ♩
"He pulled me onto his lap, holding me tightly against him as his lips parted mine.
I became aware of every pore in my body when his tongue entered my mouth." ♩Hello darkness my old friend . . .♩
"Pain barked through my bones." ♩Hello Darkness my—♩ Wait, what? What the fuck does that even mean?
Man oh man, do I hope I can fuck Tamlyn today.
* stubs her toe *
* Barking noises *
Fuck. Fuck. Oh, ow.
Oh my god. Now, let's move on to the protagonist named Feyre.
I think Feyre seems relatively smart,
but she keeps having like these leaps of logic that are clearly just there for the sake of plot.
They tell her not to do something. She does it anyway and then something bad happens and I'm like, bitch, what did you think
was gonna happen? I don't think she had ever followed anyone's instructions ever. Like EVER. If I had to deal with her
I would just tell her to do the opposite of what I want her to do. Like I would reverse psychology this bitch.
Listen, Feyre. You need to follow my advice. Okay, I need you to go outside and put yourself in danger tonight.
Can you do that for me? /Cindy's Feyre imitation/: Oh, yeah?
Well, I'm gonna stay inside and keep to myself because I'm a headstrong woman who doesn't listen to anybody. Damn it.
(sighs) Once again, you didn't listen. Oh man. I should have figured because you're so headstrong. (sighs again)
I guess I can't stop you right there. And still I'm willing to overlook this,
mostly because I've read worse and by worse, I mean Alina from the Grisha trilogy Feyre is like the older cousin of Alina.
She's a bit smarter because at least she has some
awareness that she shouldn't be doing something but she still has that dumb bitch genes,
you know what I mean? Now, I'm gonna talk about the other characters, which will have spoilers.
So if you care about that, feel free to leave the video, but if you don't care about it, let's stick around and discuss.
I'm gonna frame my impressions of the male characters
with a simple question. Fuck marry kill. I would kill Lucien. I know his archetype. I just don't care for him/
His background story seemed interesting and maybe I would be more invested if he were a main character.
But he really wasn't, he was just a side character that acted like a wet blanket for most of the story.
So, meh. I would marry Tamlyn because he seems fine.
I keep hearing that apparently Feyre and Tamlyn are an abusive relationship and frankly, I don't really see it.
Maybe that's the thing that happens in the second book, but for this particular book
he seems like a perfectly nice guy to me. He seems like a really decent guy.
I think he means well, I don't really see any problematic aspect with him so far.
I mean there was one part where he pinned her to the wall
but I don't really see it as problematic because I felt like that was part of these sexual tension.
And he was hopped up on faerie cocaine — that didn't really happened,
I'm just making shit up cause I kind of forgot about it already.
But the point is, like, he wasn't himself. He was on something else. He was like on faerie crack or some shit.
I don't know. Let me tell you something Neopets would never. So yeah, Tamlyn is fine.
Is he as boring as a stale piece of bread? Maybe so. But at least he's not abusive.
Wow, the bar is really low.
And then lastly I would fuck Rhysand. I mean there's not much to choose from but I do
think that he is the most interesting character in the book. At first
I didn't like him because I don't really care for his archetype.
He seems like another version of the darkling. But as I read along he did become a lot more interesting.
He seems to show more complexity and gray morality, which I think makes him a more intriguing character.
He plans things out like a chess game and he seems to be like the only person who uses his brain.
So I think having to guess his intentions is what makes him more compelling compared to the other characters.
The only thing I didn't like about him was that he
Basically turned Feyre into a hoe by pimping her out at these parties and getting her drunk and making her sit on people's laps.
That was just really icky to me. I actually find that more problematic than anything Tamlyn has done so far.
It feels really skeezy and gross and I know that the whole point of him doing that
was so that he could make Tamlyn angry enough to want to kill Amarantha, or whatever the fuck her name is. But
he's already pissed off because he's basically enslaved by her and she keeps on threatening to kill Feyre.
So, I think he's pretty pissed off already. I don't know. It seemed like a very flimsy reason to be skeezy.
I'm not really a fan of that. If it weren't for that then Rhysand would actually be cool.
And then lastly I want to talk about the hot mess, that was Amarantha.
She is literally the worst villain that I have ever read. I am so
astonished by all the mental acrobatics that you have to do just to follow her fucking logic. At first,
it was kind of funny cause when she made the curse she just made it so weirdly
specific that it was amusing to me. Someone has to fall in love with you by
explicitly saying "I love you".
But only right after they kill a faerie and you have THIS amount of time to complete it AND this AND that.
It is so weirdly specific that she is basically writing the book herself.
/Cindy's Amarantha imitation/: HA you fool
The only way you can break the curse is if a mortal human being falls in love with you.
Oh, really?
Are you serious dude?
/Cindy's Amarantha imitation/: And that human being has to explicitly say, "I love you".
/Cindy's Amarantha imitation/: And this must be a human who has killed one of your kind. And she can only —
Okay, wait, hold on up here, I need to write this shit down or something. (Amarantha keeps talking)
/Cindy's Amarantha imitation/: And when she says I love you
she has to be petting her head and rubbing her stomach at the same time. And she has to have at least two sisters and
a single father. She cannot have a mother who's still alive because that is somehow relevant to the curse for some fucking reason.
It was ridiculous, but still I looked past it as I've been looking past every other fucking thing
I've read in this book. And then came the trials. Amarantha gives Feyre a bunch of conditions
where she has to complete three tasks, and they have to do with like pulling the right lever or fighting a monster.
Or she can answer a riddle. And she can answer the riddle at any time
but she can only answer once and it must be correct because if it's not correct
then everyone would die . . . and I'm like dude. Why does this bitch have so many contrived rules?
Is she trying to be a fucking game show host? What the hell's going on?
And why did she choose these trials specifically? Why is she doing any of this other than to drag the story?
Like I don't understand. She could have killed Feyre literally at any point.
But instead she strings us along on this bullshit. Enough with the riddles, bitch. Just kill them already.
Here's the pivotal moment that certified my rating of two stars.
It was the dramatic climax where everything is at stake, when everyone is on the brink of death, and then Feyre has a giant revelation.
♩dramatic music playing
/ gasps and sputters/
/Cindy's Feyre imitation/: The answer to the riddle
is
love.
Uhm, fuck this shit.
I had to put the book down once I read that sentence because I was like fuck.
I'm gonna have to rate this book two stars, aren't I? Cause I cannot condone this cheesy ass bullshit.
Literally any other answer to this riddle would have been so much better.
/Cindy's Amarantha imitation/: Answer my riddle or I will kill you. My ministrations are soft-handed and sweet,
But scorned, I become a difficult beast to defeat.
For though each of my strikes lands a powerful blow, when I kill, I do it slow . . .
/Cindy/ : Your mom
/Cindy's Amarantha imitation/: What?
/Cindy/: The answer is your mom, bitch.
Not only is it ridiculous that Amarantha would set up any of these trials or this riddle in the first place,
it also doesn't make any sense why
she would choose a riddle where the answer is love. That seems extremely out of character for her.
But then again, I don't even know what the fuck her character is.
She's literally a cartoon villain that talked and asked like a mustache twirling caricature. She's not a person,
she's just there to set up some semblance of a plot. That's my rant. She's fucking ridiculous. What a hot mess.
Okay, I think that pretty much covers my thoughts on the book.
So the question remaining is will I be reading the rest of the series? The answer is yes, but not anytime soon.
I am willing to give this series another shot because I was actually buddy reading this with Nuria the reader and she had
pretty much similar sentiments to me. She rated the book 2.5 stars, but then she started the second book right away,
and then she rated it 5 stars.
She finished it in like two days and she was so addicted to the series and I'm like what the fuck is going on?
What the fuck happened? I'm intrigued by how much of a leap there was in her interest in the story,
so I want to find out why this is the way that it is. Again,
I'm totally down to like a trashy romance guilty-pleasure book.
I am all for that. This particular book just wasn't it for me. But maybe the next one
I'll like better. But I can't start it anytime soon. Because I'm not strong enough, okay? Leave me alone.
I will not be reading the second book until June because I am planning
on reading King of Scars in April and then reading The Gilded Wolves in May.
I like to space out reading popular young adult books so that I don't get burnt out for them and
also because I'm, I'm not strong enough. I can't do it a second time so quickly.
I can't be resilient like you guys. But when I do read the book
I will make sure to share my thoughts about it and maybe I'll even vlog about it. We'll see. So until then,
Goodbye.