Tag: Fantasy

A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas

Fiction

It was so great to see Tamlin finally get what he had coming to him. He thought he was being so romantic and heroic, sacrificing his court and all of Prythian by making a deal with the devil in order to get the woman he wanted back. But he was just a crazy fool who lost everything because he was too stubborn to listen to reason and consider compromising, and too prideful to believe that maybe Feyre really didn’t want to be with him. I don’t even feel a little bit bad about what happened to him and his court. I think I might have a slight problem, in that I get entirely too excited when I hear or read about people getting justly punished for their wrongs. 

Besides my absolute glee over the first part of the book, the rest of it was amazing. Intrigue, intricate planning, secret missions, betrayal, one on one combat and huge battles, and, most importantly, romance and spice between Feyre and Rhys. And we finally get to meet all the High Lords of Prythian, along with their most trusted advisors, love interests, and family. I had to take a few notes when I got to the chapters detailing the meeting of all these characters. It was hard to keep up with who came from what court, what their special powers were, and who had a grudge against who for whatever reason. The best part was how feisty everyone from the Night Court got when Tamlin couldn’t keep his mouth shut about Feyre and when the men of the Autumn Court were too disrespectful towards Mor. I would love to read those scenes again for the first time. 

I was convinced that someone important, someone that I liked, was going to die in the huge battle that the book was leading up to. When the characters I had predicted might be on the chopping block were still alive at the end of the book I was both surprised and relieved. But, there are two more books in this series, and Maas is writing a sixth as we speak. I don’t want to think what might happen to some of these characters in the two books that I have left to read and the one that will be out in the future. Happy endings are great, but deep down, I think I might want a little more drama? Maybe I will get it in the fourth book, A Court of Frost and Starlight. Although, from what I have heard, fans of the series like this book the least. Maybe I won’t be amongst them.

A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas

Fiction

I don’t usually do this, but spoilers ahead because I am just so incredibly excited about this book that I need to rave about the plot.

I am beyond elated that Feyre and Rhys ended up together because I was rooting for him pretty much the entire time. Back in A Court of Thorns and Roses, I liked Tamlin and Feyre as a couple. And I could understand why Tamlin acted the way he did Under the Mountain, emotionless and cold. He was doing it to try and protect Feyre as much as he could by acting like he didn’t care what they were doing to her, although in the back of my mind I was slightly wondering why. When Feyre arrived she immediately stated that she was there to claim her love. I think this alone would have let everyone there know that Tamlin felt the same way about her because he didn’t deny not loving her back. He could have done something, he should have done something, to help her. With the way the next book opened up, I grew an immediate dislike for him for his lack of help during her trials.

A Court of Mist and Fury immediately opens up with Feyre reliving what happened Under the Mountain in her nightmares, and we see that her waking moments are filled with just as much agony. She has had to adjust to a new life after living through trials designed to torture her body and mind, but she has not been given any time to heal. The wedding between her and Tamlin has been set for only three months after their liberation, really rushed in my opinion. Everyone around her is controlling her, giving her excuses as to why things need to be done a certain way, and why she cannot be allowed to do certain things. Rhys ends up saving her from making a huge mistake, and here is where I started to love him. He may have given you icky, gross, feelings Under the Mountain, but we find out that it was all an act that Rhys has been putting on for decades in order to save his people, Prythian as a whole, and ultimately Feyre as well. I don’t care what people say, he is exactly the person she needs by her side, supportive, encouraging, loving, and most importantly, non controlling. I’m still fuming at Tamlin for locking her in his mansion. 

I loved the ending. I don’t know if I have ever been more excited to read the next book in a series, and it took an amazing amount of self control for me to not open it before writing this review. I cannot believe I waited so long to begin reading these books.

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

Fiction

I had to see what all the fuss was about. If people all over the internet were recommending this series, it had to be good. And having read Maas’ Throne of Glass series, and having enjoyed it immensely, I suspected that everyone was not exaggerating. They were not.

I live for fantasy novels. I love magic, spells and curses, other worldly creatures, strenuous quests, puzzling mysteries, and betrayals that make me gasp out loud. This book has it all. If you have read the Throne of Glass series and are looking for another great story to get obsessed with, this is it. It feels like a combination of Hunger Games and Throne of Glass, and also a little bit like the stories from Grimm’s fairy Tales, but it is still its own unique, adventurous fantasy. 

Feyre is just trying to survive the winter, hunting for her family, when she kills the wrong sort of wolf. Her mistake costs her everything, as she is forced to make the choice between immediate death or leaving her family forever, the very ones of whom depend on her for their survival. Thinking that even though her useless sisters and disabled father may die of starvation or exposure without her, becoming a captive is better than death, and she leaves the mortal world to live the rest of her life in the faery realm. She is immersed into a beautiful, but dangerous world, where she is so weak as a mortal that just about everything can kill her. All the creatures seem to be speaking to her in riddles, and her lack of knowledge about the ways of the faery’s makes trying to solve anything close to impossible. The build up is amazing, and when everything is finally revealed, it is delivered by an expert storyteller who leaves out no details. I don’t think I need to tell you that as soon as I am done writing the review for this book, I will immediately be opening up the sequel.

Bite of Justice by R.L. Caulder

Fiction

In the final book of the Blood Oath series we get the intense, filthy, spicy scene between all four main characters that we have been waiting for, definitely a four out of five on my spicy scale. Alina and her three fated mates start to figure out how the dynamic is going to work with four of them being connected by the means of a bond that can only be broken both physically and emotionally, but seemingly not spiritually, through death. Everything else that has been going on, between Alina and the slayers, the plot to overthrow Dracula, is resolved, with the exception of one thing.

There is one big unanswered plot point that I was really bothered by once I realized that it was not going to be discussed further. The author never explains what was going on with the violent deaths that were occuring at the school, the very deaths that forced the administration to send all the students home. I think this may have been done purposefully as a way for the author to get you to read her other books. On the authors website, as well as at the end of this book, you are directed to where you can purchase additional novels that follow Alexandra, Alina’s demon friend, as well as Alora and her family, who happen to rule Hell. 

Another disappointment, though it was not as all encompassing as I found it in Book 3, were the grammatical and punctuation errors. This is just something I cannot let go of in a book that has been, or at least I assume has been, professionally edited, reviewed, and published. Books like this that exist pretty much purely for the purpose of being an exciting, fantasy, controversial romance, novels that don’t have much else going for them, should at least be well edited. I’m not completely ragging on this genre, I mean look at me, I read plenty of these types of books. They serve a purpose, and we all know what that purpose is. I would just appreciate it if there was a bit more care put into the final edits. I do apologize for the rant, but I feel like it is long overdue and this series just put me over the edge a bit. 

I hope to have a book review for you next week that will be full of praise and nothing but kind words. I have been working on a very long history book for several weeks that I have been enjoying very much. Hopefully between now and next week I will have found myself with enough free time to finish it.

Bite of Vengeance by R.L. Caulder

Fiction

This book is absolutely riddled with grammatical, spacing, and punctuation errors, it comes out on top with the greatest number of mistakes I have ever found in a published work. It was incredibly frustrating to have to stop reading with such frequency as I had to pause and reach for a post it to mark a flaw, of which I already said, there were many. Every time I found a mistake I hoped it would be the last one and I tried to let it go, but at some point I just gave up on being able to think well of the author and the persons responsible for publishing this mess. You can see my picture of shame along with this post, the dark pink being all the errors I found and the light pink being the spicy scenes. It is kind of embarrassing that there are more errors than there are exciting plot moments, especially when you consider that people usually buy these types of books specifically for the dark romance and not living out a fantasy of being a book editor. 

I just really wanted to get that out of the way before I review the actual story. Again, it is very fast paced, events taking place over hours and days rather than weeks. I like that for the majority of this book they are out of the school and in the real world. Honestly, all the plot focused around the school is quite boring, we never get much of an insight into the subjects they study, which I would have found very interesting. The real world, the world in which vampires live alongside slayers and other magical beings is so much better since we get to see them in their day to day life. 

I have one more book in this series left to go. I do want to see how the story ends, but I am more interested in seeing if the pages have been edited better than its predecessor. I don’t know what went wrong here, I didn’t find any errors in the first book, and I only found three in the second one. I’ll let you know how things turned out next week.