August 14, 2018

REVIEW| A Court of Frost and Starlight

A Court of Frost and Starlight (A Court of Thorns and Roses #3.1)
Sarah J. Maas


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UK Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
UK Release Date: 1st May, 2018

DISCLAIMER: This is a novella between book 3 and 4 of Maas' ACOTAR series. So spoilers may occur naturally. Read at your own risk.

Synopsis:

The Winter Solstice. In a week. I was still new enough to being High Lady that I had no idea what my formal role was to be. If we'd have a High Priestess do some odious ceremony, as lanthe had done the year before. A year. Gods, nearly a year since Rhys had called in his bargain, desperate to get me away from the poison of the Spring Court to save me from my despair. Had he been only a minute later, the Mother knew what would have happened. Where I'd now be. Snow swirled and eddied in the garden, catching in the brown fibers of the burlap covering the shrubs My mate who had worked so hard and so selflessly, all without hope that I would ever be with him We had both fought for that love, bled for it. Rhys had died for it.

REVIEW

This is it folks, my first ever one star review. I must apologize to any of my flatmates and friends who had to interact with me whilst reading this one. 

To say I'm bitter that I wasted my first book, after deadlines, on this is a bit of an understatement. There's so much to question and pull out as to why it's deserving of my first one star review and at one point I even thought about not writing anything and just re-sharing a few reviews that speak similarly. But, I also wanted to document this - this is what my blog is here for, really.

I felt like I was just reading two hundred pages of no significance. I wasn't reading for an end result, a resolution, rather than I was spending time reading about characters who are not true to who characterization that the earlier books gave us (more to that later). I'm going to put my critical writer cap on here and say this: to write a story is to build a narrative series of events that are in consequence to one another and build to an overall conflict, that as readers, we read as a way to seek a resolution for that conflict. And A Court of Frost and Starlight does not do that. 

I can't help but feel like Maas' character become caricatures of themselves. They're are no longer characters who develop, but become ownership to give readers what they want and expect of the characters. 

The only aspect of this I liked was the small inkling we get of where Nesta's character has progressed to. She's the female equivalent of a tortured soul, drinking, shagging, trying to lose herself in this world she doesn't want to inhabit. Just a shame I found Cassian to be an annoying puppy-dog and don't ship it.

I want to link to another review from Caleb over at InsaneReader (here), he speaks of similar issues and all of which I've mentioned or agree with as well as some that I haven't. 

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