This is a spoiler-free review! You can read my review of A Court of Mist and Fury here.
I was finally determined to finishing this series since I read A Court of Mist and Fury nearly five years ago, and wanted to still be able to get through this book without hearing any more spoilers online. Tamlin is -- to no one's surprise -- still a total jerk, and every single time that his name popped up, I wanted to rip out the page. I have hated that man since the first book and nothing has changed in my opinion in the eight years that I first read that book.
It was great to read about Rhys and Feyre again after all these years -- they were one of the first fantasy couples that I really was introduced to when I was expanding what genres I was reading, so I feel like I am heading towards a full circle moment as I finish the series. Their dynamic continues to development in this third book, and we see how Feyre and Rhys are continually affected by their experiences Under the Mountain and the trauma that they have both gone through.
I hate to jump on the anti-Nesta bandwagon, but for some reason it is taking me a long time to try and move past the way that she has treated Feyre and continued to treat her throughout the book. I can, however, acknowledge that she has been through something traumatic and I want her to grow as a person and have some decent character development -- I do not like the comparisons between her and Elain though, because they both handled their trauma in different ways and I see a lot of people excuse Elain's treatment of Feyre and hark on Nesta's treatment of her when they were pretty similar. I feel as though I am in this limbo with how I feel about the both of them, and I do not think if they apologized to Feyre every day for the rest of their lives that it would be enough to forgive them for how they treated her.
However, I will say that her character development definitely did improve during the second half of the book, and we finally see some emotional expression from her that is not rage, so I say it is a win in my book. I do wish that we got to see more of Elain in the book -- I felt as though she was missing from a lot of plot points, but was glad when she finally had a more active role in the story, but wished people would stop infantilizing her and hold her accountable for certain things. That being said, Elain does apologize to Feyre and that speaks volumes in the context of the books and the struggles that everyone is going through. I do look forward to seeing their development in the rest of the series as well, as they did both grow on me during this installment.
My number one enemy Tamlin continues to plague my existence with every word that comes out of his nasty little mouth. It is absolutely insane to me that he claims time and time again that he loves Feyre, but the things that he says about her has me constantly dropping my jaw to the floor. He is such a little incel of a man, I honestly spent the entire book wishing that he would simply disappear from my memory and from this book as a whole.
I loved seeing all of the High Lords in this book -- it has been years since I read the second book, so it did take some time for me to re-familiarize myself with everyone, as well as try to remember who we hated and who we liked. Lots of fun and lots of betrayal happen not only with some High Lords and their sons, but with characters that initially had our hate, as well as with some that had our support.
A Court of Wings and Ruin could have maybe been shorter -- at times it felt like some scenes were dragging on and at other times it felt as though they were flying by. I do think that Maas utilized most of her pages to the best of her abilities, but I will say that after seeing the "His growls of pleasure filled the tent, drowning out the cries of the injured and crying" quote so many times on social media, it did not prepare me to having to read it with my own two eyes in the context of war. That one definitely could have been left out after edits.
That being said, this book had be uncontrollably sobbing for the last 90 pages and I genuinely felt dehydrated once it was over. I did not think I was going to be hit with so many emotions so close to the ending, and even after getting spoiled for some of the plot points, they still had me hurt. I originally was iffy about continuing this series after I plan on reading A Court of Frost and Starlight, but after that ending, I will definitely be continuing on with the series.
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