At last, I have finished reading the A Court of Thorns and Roses trilogy. A Court of Thorns and Roses set up the fantasy world and introduced us to one side of the coin, A Court of Mist and Fury showed us the other side of the coin alongside another batch of characters and how different things are to how we’ve been led to believe, and A Court of Wings and Ruin saw the decision be made and the lead up to this war that has been teased out since the beginning. But was it good?

I will do my best to be objective and to make any critiques on the impact of the story itself rather than the subjective opinions and preferences that differ across the board for many readers. If I’m expressing a subjective view, I will endeavour to mention so beforehand.

Objectively, there are more words than necessary in this book. There are many times where words or phrases are being repeated, not only across the many discussions and interactions throughout the book but on the same page through internal monologue and conflict. There are also times where what should be a punchy sentence is hindered by extra words. I wish I could give examples but the ones that come to mind are heavy spoilers. Let me at least guide avid readers towards these area I’m remembering so you can see for yourself. Page 666’s final line would be a lot more impactful without that first word there. Page 606 before the break has the same issue. Largely, this is a problem with an excessive usage of ‘and’ as there are multiple other instances of this happening throughout the book. I want to say the heavy use of ellipsis gives the same hinderance to sentence fluidity. I don’t remember ellipsis being used so heavily in the earlier books which makes this choice stand out even more. If they weren’t used as prevalently in previous books, it conflicts with narrative development and style. Feyre’s perspective changes into something that doesn’t feel like what we’ve come to learn as her voice. This will change each reader’s perspective and interpretation of the book differently, but for me it creates further distance between me and Feyre as a character, something that was already pretty distant to start with.

The plot and flow of the action isn’t the worst, but for a final book in a trilogy I expected something stronger. There is a rough split of 100 pages in part one, 400 pages in part two, and 200 pages in part three. While many of the events and how they unfold are important to the direction of the overall end fight, there seems to be a lot of low tension, slow paced points which drag down the energy and anticipation of the final conflict. In general, and this is a subjective-leaning opinion, the overall feel of this book is low-medium tension and low-medium stakes. It is implied from part two and directly mentioned in part three that we should expect people to not come back. We should expect characters, whom we have been getting close to throughout the course of this story, to die and not come back. Not just minor figures and third-party players but faces in the spotlight. But they don’t.

!!! SPOILERS AHEAD – PASS OVER OR STOP READING IF YOU HAVEN’T READ ACOWAR!!!

The character that die aren’t ones we have grown attached to, or at least ones that we’re meant to grow attached to, and often their deaths are quickly brushed over and forgotten about. Two of the death-gods die, third party entities that we haven’t be encouraged to care about all that much. The Archeron father dying isn’t significant to readers given he’s been a poor father to his daughters and he hasn’t featured as a character since the start of ACOTAR. The Suriel dying is more significant than any of the aforementioned deaths and the Suriel is another third-party entity with minimal ties to the characters. Rhys and Amren come back – we knew Rhys would come back because it echoes what happens in ACOTAR when Feyre died. Amren coming back as a High Fae is the only surprising thing to happen and even that goodbye wasn’t a high-emotion send-off (subjective view) because we know she’s a powerful, otherworldly entity with strong powers that would be very beneficial to use in this situation where their side is losing.

Another reason I think this book falls flat in delivery and significance as the final book in this trilogy is because Feyre’s perspective feels emotionally removed. This is definitely a subjective view and I know others will disagree, but I have a problem with how Feyre sees all of the things happening around her. I don’t feel as if Feyre has a true understanding of what is going on around her, both in a logical sense and an emotional sense. There were many times where Feyre either blatantly states she doesn’t know what’s happening (battle along Summer boarder) or it’s apparent her cognitive ability to understand subtleties and unspoken information is extremely low. There is a lack of emotional understanding between her and others that, for me, makes her a character I struggle to empathise with and relate to. She has little understanding of how to help people suffering from trauma, especially those whom she does not see eye to eye with like Tamlin and Nesta. Her reactions to Tamlin I can understand given the trauma he both instilled and disregarded in her during her time in the Spring Court. Failing to understand her sister’s trauma, on the other hand, I cannot excuse. It doesn’t require a proper education to understand that Nesta has her own traumas prior to the final battle in this book. The only person that seems to understand trauma and the healing journey that entails in this entire series is Azriel and that’s because of his own healing journey.

I also need to address another reason why I don’t like Feyre in this book and that is her ignorance and lack of caring when it comes to shapeshifting her wings. There is a rich history of misogyny and patriarchal traditions within the Illyrian communities. Not only is there a huge disparity between men and women, something Feyre is well aware of, but there is the very common occurrence of women getting their wings clipped. For Feyre to shapeshift wings at will, to chose whether or not she has wings, is a huge insult to Illyrian women who were born with wings and had no choice when it came to their wings being clipped. It just feels wrong for her to be so carefree about it, for her to completely breeze over the moral implications of such a choice. She’s lucky there were no female Illyrians fighting in the war because any possible respect they would have for her would be wiped away. Again, this is my subjective opinion.

If I continue any longer this post will turn into a thesis so let me end it here. A Court of Wings and Ruin could have been more concise and impactful and left a stronger impression as the final book in the trilogy.