By Chung Yu Kwok
This book was vile.
There’s nothing more to say about it, but given that Sarah wrote about 200,000 words I’ll address a few plot points - which is generous, given that you would find Nemo before you found a storyline in this garbage pile of paper they call a young adult novel. Think of all the trees felled for the production of those pages, I hear the environmentalists cry (more on that later), so I’ll dignify it with a review.
As any English teacher will tell you, context is important. This novel was published in 2017, back in the day when they didn’t have ChatGPT and My AI - so that begs the question, who wrote it? Sarah clearly wasn’t in the right state of mind and the editors surely took a day off with this one, so they must have copy-pasted the same words over and over again to form some semblance of a story. Here’s the gist (all) of it: Feyre spies on her ex. She goes home. There’s a few meetings. Then a war breaks out. Every irrelevant side character dies. And our crew lives happily ever after. The end - sort of.
If anyone is curious, the frequency of the term “mate” has now increased to 196, which is pretty good for ACOTAR standards - thanks, Sarah. The aforementioned “mates”, Feyre and Rhysand, have suffered from what I like to call photocopier syndrome: when the author tries to replicate the fiery passion and whirlwind romance from the previous book but instead creates a washed out, lifeless version of the couple with less effort and more awkward sex scenes. That is what our two leads have been reduced to, so let’s move on to the other characters in this story.
Again, nothing much to say. There’s a few more bat furries called Cassian (the jock) and Azriel (the quiet kid) and some vampire witch lady called Amren (the cryptic edgelord) who is even older than our geriatric Rhysand’s 500+ years. And then there’s the blonde girl, Morrigan, who Sarah realised didn’t have enough of a personality - so, to appease her readers, she made her bisexual. That’s right! Sarah even dedicates two thousand words to Mor’s departure from the closet to really demonstrate her allyship. This may have been the most baffling moment in the entire trilogy for me. I truly could analyse her “I like girls” monologue for days to try and figure out what exactly the point is.
Along the vein of strong female characters, let’s talk about Nesta, the more interesting of the two of Feyre’s ingrate sisters, if you can even remember they exist - because while we weren’t paying attention, they got dunked into a big pot of magic water and turned into fairies too. Must be hereditary. If Amren’s a cryptic edgelord, Nesta is a SUPER edgelord - but not cryptic, because her only character trait is being unabashedly mean to everyone. It’s this absolute sheer spite (Nesta, after all, is the one who knocks!) that turns her into some sort of abomination with super dark superpowers. Are we ever told what these are? Does she ever really use them? No.
You may have forgotten - I certainly did - but there is actually a villain in this series: Hybern. Hybern is the country that the bad guys, who are also referred to as Hybern, are from. This country is ruled by the King of Hybern, or just Hybern for short. Everyone and everything is literally Hybern. It would be ominous if it wasn’t so freaking dumb. And guess who’s allied with Hybern at the start of the story? Tamlin! You thought we were done with him, didn’t you? You wish. Feyre wrecks his court and steals his bestie Lucien (who’s in love with her boring sister but that is another problem) and those evil Hybern bastards obviously betray him (or something, I don’t remember) so he’s left to linger around his back gardens for the rest of the story and throw shade at Feyre when he eventually rocks up again.
Now let’s discuss the “war” in ACOWAR. Everyone in Rhysand’s squad is super powerful. The bat boys are warlords, Amren’s true form clears everyone, and Mor is so impressive Sarah makes a point of calling her THE Morrigan every now and then to remind us of just how awesome she is. Rhysand is the male lead so of course he can do anything, and Feyre is the main character. We are constantly reminded of how big and strong these people are. So how do the undistinguishable, mediocre Hyberns from Hybern somehow beat these people to an inch of their lives? Two of them even die - but then they come back to life. Quite frankly, I’ve had enough. You cannot opt out of death like it’s GCSE Geography, yet THREE people (and counting) have already decided to say no to the reaper himself. Rhysand says, quite literally, that he saw Amren on the other side and thought to himself: never that deep. Why not just hold hands with her and skip off back to life?
That’s that. The trilogy is complete, and I wash my hands of this awful ordeal. The only people I would recommend this book to are those that are fans of happy endings or the most tepid love affair ever detailed on paper. But actually, it’s not quite the end yet. Here’s some great news: Sarah wanted more money! Yes, she wrote a spinoff novel - more of a first draft, really - which marks the first of not two, or three, but FOUR books she decided we would love. Keep your eyes peeled for the orange edition.