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Something about the way this story was written felt very off to me, it didn't feel like a smooth transition from the first book - truthfully it felt like a different story with different character plopped into the setting. In my opinion it was lazy, unfair, and OOC writing that was far too black and white and far too 'easy' for Feyre and the Court of Dreams gang. There were too many hypocritical moments, too many easy (miraculous) fixes and abilities to problems, and no actual responsibility taken by Feyre. Plus a complete character assassination towards anyone who wasn't a part of the golden circle.

Hell, even Feyre and Rhys's characters were assassinated. Where was the snarky and mysterious manipulator from book one? Where was the strong and willful girl from book one? The characters just do not line up in any way and it was very jarring from ACOTAR.

I agree. Tamlin was very OOC (he was always overprotective, but never to the extent that Maas writes him in this book) and Rhys went from being a morally-grey 'I care about ME' character to a Gary Stu with a Tragic Backstory. Feyre is very overpowered, Elain went from polite and kind to a doormat, and Lucien was barely even in the book.

True, I was a huge fan of Rhys in the first book but his character was honestly murdered in cold blood. I guess people can argue that he was only acting that way in the first book to manipulate and trick Amarantha, but it seemed like Rhys lost dozens of IQ points somewhere between the first and second book.
And I was never a huge fan of Tamlin, but he was turned into a villain out of nowhere. And Lucien too

Honestly, it felt like it was all the bad aspects of Court of Thorns and Roses and none of the good aspects.

It felt like all the character progress and growth Fayre had made through the first book got thrown out of the window.

When Thorns and Roses starts, Fayre is frozen inside. She’s deliberately obtuse, defensive, and often aggressive at very little provocation. This makes sense given her background.

But as the story unravels, she starts to thaw and grow. She starts being more aware of how her constant aggression to others isn’t her being strong but her being afraid, she starts reaching out to others more and being more proactive in following her own heart as opposed to simply being an automaton who does what she thinks she’s obligated to do then being resentful at the people around her for not freeing her from herself.

But then by Mists and Fury, we’re right back to square one. She spends the entire first act grousing over everything. When people try to reach out to her, she pushes them away, and the narrative feels like we’re meant to sympathize with her own self imposed exile.

Later when she goes on about how Rhys had reached out to her where Tamlin didn’t was especially jarring since she herself said in the early pages that while she and Tamnlin both suffered from their pasts, both were “content� to not speak of it. She never spoke to Tamlin, or anyone, about those times when she woke up in the night to vomit. She never reached out or let on that she was hurting, she merely expected Tamlin and the others to just know that she was hurting and to reach out to her, and when they didn’t she grew resentful of them for ignoring her pain. And the narrative seemed to want to back up her perception, blaming Tamlin and having him go through a rather radical character transformation to match this new narrative so that the audience never asks, ‘if she was hurting, why didn’t she reach out to anyone? Why did she just wait for people to notice she was hurting then hate them for not noticing it?�

The whole bit with the wedding was her just sulking in silence and accepting to do what everyone told her to do then hating them for their decisions.

And the condescending nature of how she spoke to that one Priestess chick also got really grating. So much of Fayre’s antagonism towards the priestess character came off as her just being resentful that the priestess chick was more confident and outgoing than she. The priestess character genuinely tried to be her friend and help out and all we got from Fayre was how she just wasn’t ~into~ things like weddings and dresses and all that. It came across as her being dismissive of these things just because they’re traditionally depicted as feminine, and she’s supposed to be ~above~ such things because she’s not ~like~ other women, and the condescending nature of how she viewed the priestess chick just seemed to affirm this.

Honestly it was very disappointing and just eye rolling. It was all so terribly unnecessary and a true waste of potential.

Ultimately Fayre comes across as being very weak. No matter how strong her powers or how people idolize her, she needs other characters to validate herself, she needs other characters to love her where she cannot love herself. If written well and self aware it could be a great tale, but instead it was just easier to have the character grouse about their insecurities only to have other characters (Tam in the first one, Rhys in this one) tell her how wonderful she is and how right she is and how every choice and decision she makes is totally 100% correct and right.

I just finished acomaf but it has been a while since I read acotar so I might not have sensed as much of a difference since I didn't marathon them. But even I can see the compleat 180 that Tamlin took, and I agree that Maas probably went too far with more or less making him the villan of the story. Like I can understand that he has been messed up under the mountain but still this is a bit too much. And what I was specially dissapointed with was Lucien, like since Tamlin was acting like this I was hoping that atleast Lucien would continue to be one of my fave characters and stick up for Feyre but he never properly did and I was actually more sad about his character being portraid as a asshole and a bad friend :(
I did actually enjoy Feyre and Rhys in this book though. Like Feyre went through some messed up shitt and ofcourse she needs some time to pull herself togeather.
But still when you guys say it I guess I was hoping for a bit more cunning and smart plans from them, specially when they are on the same side now and can cooperate.

Turtlemonkey wrote: "Honestly, it felt like it was all the bad aspects of Court of Thorns and Roses and none of the good aspects.

It felt like all the character progress and growth Fayre had made through the first boo..."


BAM

Perfectly stated.

I also can't stand how she just abandons Tamlin after he messes up and locks her in the home. Look Feyre, he was Under the Mountain as well. He was obviously mind fucked as well. He's obviously dealing with his own crap right now. Sorry the world isn't revolving around you at this point in time and that other people may be needing a therapist as well. I GET that he screwed up, and I GET that he kept her out of things she was always adamant about being in, and I GET that he got a wittle scary (which is totally out of character, but w/e), but you just completely take off and never bother to at least speak to the man after? This was someone who gave up the freedom of his court to protect you. This was a guy that you loved and were going to marry. This was a guy that made sure your family was taken care of even though he did not have to. And we just waltz out on him and don't bother to give him more than a note? DUH he was going to look for you and be all worried. And I almost don't blame him for making a deal with the Devil. He sees Rhys as an enemy and he thinks you were taken and Rhys can do Mind Control. Let's act all shocked and mad that he dare do what was in his nature and try to "save" you from the night court. The NIGHT COURT that has the reputation of dungeons and doom. You know, the reputation you even tried to help people believe? OIY. And we are shocked that Tamlin did anything and everything in his power to get you, the girl he loves and feels he needs to protect, back.

I was never a big Tamlin fan, even book one. But the complete vilification of his character just pisses me off. Book three was even worse.

I liked how the characters changed. Under the Mountain changed all of them in different ways. The whole Tamlin-becoming-the-villain plot made sense to me. If we remember, Tamlin wasn't always a great guy in the first book, so it's not a total surprise that he gets worse when the curse is settled. Now, did his "180" happen fast? Yes. But it furthered the plot in my opinion. Feyre was a weak character at the beginning. She was broken down and was stuck with Tamlin for the first part. I appreciate how her character grows over the series. It could've happened that she was just happy and magical after what she went through Under the Mountain because they won, now she's powerful, and life could be okay again. That would've been boring though. Her moodiness is more realistic. She had a lot to sort through. Yeah, Tamlin seems to have extreme ups and downs throughout the rest of the series. But, hey, he's an interesting yet annoying ex-boyfriend of Feyre's that I love to hate.

I think what most people don't understand about the books is that Feyre is "content" with her situation with Tamlin until she isn't.

She was being abused and she didn't realize until it almost mentally broke her. It's understandable that Tamlin just wanted to protect her but you have to remember that there are several sides to every story. He had no consideration for how his actions would affect Feyre's well-being and when she tries to fight back he plays the victim saying how worried he was and how it would kill him to lose her, not realizing that he was killing her! This is classic abuser behavior. Not to mention all of the stuff that happens at the high lords meeting or how he continues throughout the books to believe that Feyre is truly his.

I understand all of that. I was commenting on the major characterization changes from book one to book two - outside of Tamlin even.

I think the issue I have is that Tamlin wasn't an abusive guy and then he suddenly was. Sure, kidnapping Feyre in book one is not ok, but doing it to lift a curse and free your entire realm kind of gives him a little leniency on the kidnapping thing. Also he avoided doing this very thing to protect people that were dying needlessly. Eventually his own sentries decided to take the risk when he didn't want them to, so, now he finds this girl that he realizes can break this curse so he takes her, why let his friend die in vain? To top this off, he's actually not that bad with her. He takes care of her family (maybe out of guilt), he tries to protect her in the only way he knows how, and in the end he frees her even though he was a few days away from freedom. He wanted to save her and her safety meant more than his. That's not the actions of an abusive boyfriend. They tend to be more selfish and less selfless. He didn't read as the guy that would abuse someone. It's frustrating that his character changed to be that way.

And I think Rhys changed as well. Book one, he was this dark mysterious and very intelligent guy willing to make sacrifices and play the long game. He was dangerous and mostly unapologetic about it. Then suddenly his character is "faking" the dark parts of him to make his court seem scary and he has this entire town that is all perfect? I just found that silly and way out of left field. He's either a unapologetic genius that plays the court game well or he's a nice softy that cares about people. He can't be both. And book two tried way too hard to redeem him and vilify Tamlin to make the new pairing work, and that felt like lazy writing.

We could have an emotionally damaged Feyre and Tamlin struggling and a slightly evil manipulative Rhys digging into this relationship. I could see that working and that appeared to be the way it was heading. Maybe we would discover some soft "spots" of Rhys, but I expected him to be the Lord of the Ever Scary Night Court and to act like it. Not some guy that had a town that fell out of a Disney movie in which he was the personal mayor of happy vil. and he only acts mean and scary for show in his own court because... reasons that are kinda lame.

I get characters change and grow in series, but when they jump to a new everything that is WAY out of context, it bugs me. And clearly I'm not the only one that felt that way which is why this discussion exists.

Abbiney wrote: "I think what most people don't understand about the books is that Feyre is "content" with her situation with Tamlin until she isn't.

She was being abused and she didn't realize until it almost me..."

I think the problem a lot of us had is that in the second book, Feyre stopped being her own complex person and instead became a hollow avatar for the reader, nothing more than a placeholder for men to fight over.

Most of every character’s actions in Mist and Fury can be immediately responded to, � it there was no *reason* for them to do this.�

You say she was being abused and didn’t realise it. I won’t lie, I couldn’t stomach past halfway through the book. But I am curious as to how she was being abused in the first act?

She didn’t like the wedding planning. She vaguely mentions it to Tamlin. He apologizes but says it’s decorum and she meekly gives in, basically giving a ‘yes dear, whatever you want dear,� response where once she had fought tooth and nail to have her will heard. She gives in without a fight, then blames everyone from Tamlin to her family for not seeing that she was unhappy instead of simply telling them she was unhappy. She doesn’t like wearing dresses. She wears them anyway and sulks about how much she hates them. She wants to go outside, Tamlin says he’s worried about her being alone given recent events, and she meekly gives the, ‘yes dear, whatever you want, dear,� response, then resents Tamlin. One book ago this was someone who made what they did and did not want very clear. Why suddenly should we expect people to have to read her mind when she says, ‘oh, it’s all fine with me� because she doesn’t want to risk bothering anyone, then seethes internally that the people around her can’t just know what she really wants despite what she says? This book was sold to us on the premise of a strong protagonist. Letting the people around you make your every decision for you then sulking in sullen silence because the decision they made wasn’t the one you wanted them to make for you isn’t strength, it’s, well, quite the opposite. Again, Feyre once fought tooth and nail to be heard. When she was wrong, when she was right, she made her thoughts and feelings clear. Now she just hated everyone for not anticipating her every thought, upset that while she agreed and acquiesced to everything, nobody saw that her ‘yes� meant no and her no meant yes. This in a period where we’re told everyone is running back and forth in between reconstructing an empire, reforming allegiances, planning a wedding, and preparing for a vast rite.

Then there’s the thing with her throwing up at night. Feyre states that she knew Tamlin was also haunted by his past, but he never spoke of it, and she never spoke of her experiences to him� never spoke about the sleepless nights or the nightmares or just asked to be held and comforted. She simply expected him to do it, and resented him for not doing something she never asked him to do.

In this very post you also see another reason why people may have given up on this book� the idea of Feyre as an individual disappears. The story becomes all about who Feyre will end up with.

Whenever people talk about this book, whenever people argue about this book, it’s about Tamlin and Rhys� Feyre and Feyre’s journey doesn’t figure into it. This was very much done on purpose by the author as she simply brushed off what brief character growth Feyre had experienced in the first book and simply accepted that Feyre is meant to be a faceless avatar for the reader, loved by all, fought over by all, revered by all. By Mist and Fury, the veneer of Feyre as a hero in her own right was well abandoned, doomed like most YA and NA protagonists to be nothing but a point of view for readers to imagine what it’s like to have increasingly powerful men fight over them. It’s the same old comdescension of the genre. And don’t get me wrong, I love love stories. But a love story is only as unique, as memorable, as powerful as the characters and their circumstances, the conflicts they must overcome, the personal and emotional journey they must go through in order to be together. It was this that made Thorns and Roses stand out. But Maas couldn’t hold on to it, and by Mists she was back to the same old tired tropes and cliches, about as romantic as the 9,000 other identical stories with identical characters. Faceless avatars for the readers and love interests whose entire personalities boil down into singular tropes of ‘angry obsessive abusive ex� and ‘misunderstood bad boy with a tragic past� just don’t make for a good love story.

Feyre, the illiterate, angry village girl who learned to trust other people and who learned to fight not because she had to but because she wanted to, because she had a reason to fight that was her choice as opposed to an imposition, was gone. Swallowed up to be the vassal of yet another trite daytime soap opera mess of a love story whose boring sex scenes did very little to hide the Puritan roots of a female lead whose worth is determined by how much better she is than other women and whose sum total of existence is how much power a man in willing to invest in her. Tamlin didn’t want to make her High Lady, Rhys did. We’re fed this as though it’s proof of how much better Rhys� love is than Tamlin’s so that we don’t ask, ‘why does she need titles to be given to her?� She was cursebreaker by her own actions, yet it’s the ‘high lady� title through marriage that’s blown up. It’s all quite ridiculously condescending. Rhys giving her a title Tamlin didn’t doesn’t come across as proof that Rhys respects her more than Tamlin, it comes across as how much importance the author places on titles. There is something intrinsically gnawing about the sheer amount of narrative weight put on the idea of a title that is *given* to her as opposed to the title she made herself by her own actions. We’re meant to see a willingness to give a title as a sign of respect on Rhys� part and that just comes off as hollow because, again, we’re supposed to judge Rhys� love for Fayre based on what he’s willing to give her. Fayre is completely and utterly passive in this. She is either given a title or isn’t. And that act, an act that is done by someone else while she sits there passively, is meant to be seen as a gesture of love and respect? That’s a rather old fashioned view of love. A woman sits and is doted upon and given things. If you want to write that then absolutely, but when we have the narrative constantly telling us how strong Fayre is, this comes across as rather disconcerting- this idea that a strong woman simply waits for someone to give her what she wants, and that the ultimate proof of love is someone giving you something you wanted.

It makes for a great study on the genre and the strange ways in which authors have come to use strength in battle and magical strength so that they never have to embue their protagonists with emotional or psychological strength, or even strength of character and personality, and how we really haven’t evolved that far from the princess needing to be saved by the prince where a protagonist’s entire sense of self worth relies on what a male love interest is willing to do for her. But I’d be a lot more interested in the greater sociological implications of all this if this hadn’t been the third NA romance fantasy with that exact same plot and the exact same characters I’d read in about a two week span. Right now I’m still in the ‘pissed off at how boring, repetitive, and uncreative certain writers are� mode.

You make several good points about authors not letting characters grow, however I think Feyre did grow. Maybe you haven’t read all of the books, which if you haven’t maybe you shouldn’t give your opinion since there are many revelations in the final book about how Feyre was treated and Tamlin’s side to the story.

However, the thing that struck me the most about how how Maas portrays an abusive relationship is how she makes all of us see Tamlin the way Feyre sees him. Even after she leaves the Spring Court permanently she still feels as if she owes a debt to Tamlin. She still feels like she’s betrayed him somehow. She completely forgets about the fact that she fought and almost died to save his people while he stood there like an emotionless void. This is how abuse victims feel most of the time. They feel like they’ve done something.

Abbiney wrote: "You make several good points about authors not letting characters grow, however I think Feyre did grow. Maybe you haven’t read all of the books, which if you haven’t maybe you shouldn’t give your opinion...�

Sounds to me like Maas wanted to do the trendy Paranormal Romance thing by having the protagonist meet one guy who was ‘safely� bad, struggle over her feelings for him only to decide that she will fall in love with him after much hand wringing, and then a rival villain antagonist to the ‘safely� bad guy appears, then the first guy is revealed as being a terrible person and the rival villain guy suddenly redeeming in order to justify their relationship to the audience. See also: Charlaine Harris� Southern Vampire series, Latrell K Hamilton’s Anita Blake series, and I’m told Maas did this herself in her other series and that the Grisha trilogy follows a similar pattern.

you shouldn’t give your opinion since there are many revelations in the final book about how Feyre was treated and Tamlin’s side of the story.

Yeah, well, here’s my opinion anyway: Sounds like due to the whiplash in quality between Court of Thorns and Mists, many critics noted the sudden and drastic changes in the characters and rather bizarre tonal shift and called it out.

Having been caught, Maas tried to respond to the criticism by retconning her characters previous characterizations in Court of Thorns through flashbacks and a retelling of the narrative in order to justify the massive shifts in characterization in Mists. The truth is, she just couldn’t bring herself to write a protagonist who is in love with one guy, but falls in love with another guy, and subsequently leaves the first guy. Again, boring sex scenes or no, the puritanical imagery in this series is heavy, and the idea of a woman leaving a man simply because their relationship had lost its spark is still considered by many to be unacceptable. This is why Feyre harps on and on and on about the sheer power of the love she had for Tamlin, and why Tamlin went from 0 to an evil husband from a Lifetime TV movie. If he was abusive, the author can say Feyre’s love was pure and she was still a ‘good girl,� but it was due to Tamlin’s actions that Feyre had to leave. It’s a very old tactic in romance writing that harkens back to the idea that a woman’s love is unwavering, and that good women never leave their men unless they’re rescued by a better man who comes in and sweeps them off their feet to save them from their boorish partners.

Also, if a character grows, then from one book to the other completely regresses, the audience shouldn’t have to read through the entire series before being allowed to comment. The truth is it was bad writing. The writing was on the wall with Thorns� the idiot plot in the middle (having a magical deus ex machina to try and distract the audience that most of the plot could have been easily avoided with one conversation doesn’t count and isn’t exactly subtle,) Feyre being needlessly aggressive to almost absolutely everyone she meets only to be congratulated for this, the constant barrage of ‘hey I was told doing this is a bad idea that might put me in danger but I’m going to do it anyway because this plot is starting to stagnate’� but it was structurally sound, and by the second act when Feyre dropped the needless sarcasm and condescension to virtually everyone, you felt as though maybe her arrogance was written on purpose, that the writer had purposefully set out to write a flawed character that goes on a journey to become a better person by learning to trust and rely on others, that she only looked down on absolutely everyone as a coping mechanism. By the very first chapter of Mists this was out the window as she groused and sulked and whined and moaned while the narrative tried feeding us how tough she was, when at that point almost all her misery was self imposed. Roping in a ‘she was abused� angle much later not only adds insult to injury, but it frankly trivializes what is supposed to be a massive and complex issue just in order to justify a character leaving one character for another.

As for Tamlin’s abuse, everything I’ve read from what the book descends into paints the story of the author having the character act in increasingly more aggressive and obnoxious ways because she couldn’t simply have her lead leave him for someone else. I mentioned this above, the idea that authors like Maas cannot bring themselves to have their leads simply leave a relationship because the romance is dead because they are still rooted in very old fashioned ideas of what constitutes as proper behavior for women. But the truth is, had she stuck to the character terization of Thorns and Roses, I’m sure many people in this thread would have had no problem believing that Feyre and Tamlin just didn’t work out. They were complete strangers who were thrown together against their will. Lust and loneliness drove them into each other’s arms. After things calm down after the mountain, Maas could have easily written a poignant statement about how there are different kinds of love, and the familiarity Feyre had felt for Tamlin might not necessarily have been the romantic sort of love she needed or sought. It’s a very human story� two people in a desperate situation looking for a port in the night, but come daybreak they realize they were in love with the idea and excitement and whirlwind of being in love, but not in love. But then you don’t get a trendy, market ready love triangle plot.

Honestly, the drop in quality between the two books was so drastic I at one point almost suspected Maas of having a ghostwriter. But on re-read, the writing was on the wall with Thorns and Roses. Unfortunately, it just happened that the things that made Thorns and Roses stand out, the things that made it impossible to put down at times, were ultimately just flukes.

Trust me, I wouldn’t be writing these diatribes if I hadn’t liked the first book. If I’m angry and annoyed it’s because I genuinely thought for one moment that Maas was going to be different, that she was going to go for a higher bar. I thought I’d finally found an NA author capable of writing a strong female protagonist� where strength is defined by a flawed person learning to overcome their flaws and become a better person, a person who becomes aware of their weakness and fears and finds the courage to pursue their own happiness on their own terms.

Instead it just turned into the same old, same old. Super special girl sits around being underappreciated, guys come along and have to constantly tell her how special she is, guys fight over who gets to be the one with the super special girl. The protagonist’s entire value revolves around people around them telling them they’re special and all the bad things that happen to them are other people’s faults and nobody can recognize how truly special the protagonist is other than whatever generic personality deprived love interest crawled out of a character generator. The character ultimately has no self worth, she’s only worth how much her love interests love her.

Turtlemonkey: VERY insightful look on Feyre. I like your detail and I wasn't able to put my finger on exactly why Feyre bugged me so much in the second book, but you managed to put the feelings into words.

Abbiney wrote:
Maybe you haven’t read all of the books, which if you haven’t maybe you shouldn’t give your opinion since there are many revelations in the final book about how Feyre was treated and Tamlin’s side to the story.

I think you can give your opinion even if you haven't read the third book. Some people didn't read the third because the second warped everything so much. I also would think that if you need to read the third to understand the point of the second, that's evidence that the second failed at character development. A third book in a series can carry a story, but it shouldn't have to explain how a character developed in a second or be used to "fix" the issues the readers had.

I honestly liked the first, second and third book even though I have hang ups (particularly the vilification of Tamlin and the Disney like heroics of Rhys and Gang who-can-do-no-wrong and apparently are immune to death). I have things about these stories that frustrate me, and I certainly agree with a lot of the bad reviews, but I also enjoyed reading the series for the most part. There were a few eye roll moments and the third book almost had me give up during the very first part, but overall... yeah I liked it.

That being said, I do think that a lot of the characters and even the world kind of changed. Even going outside the main characters like Alys (That the name of the hand maiden in book one?) was once this character that was super grateful to Tamlin for helping her and his court for protecting her, and then suddenly she abandon's them because Tamlin and court changed way too much. Her loyalty and everything seemed to just warp.
Also Lucien, who was always kind of a meh character, and he was certainly a bit of a dick, but he eventually came to respect Feyre and stood up for her. Then, in this book he just seems different. Book one, he disobeyed Tamlin, spoke his mind, even tricked Feyre and almost had her killed ~ish with the Suriel. Then this book, he's a doormat that is all about the rules.

There are other things I remember thinking while reading the book, but I can't remember them off the top of my head. I also may be thinking of a few things that happened in the third book as well, which REALLY had changes that bugged me.

I'm still confused about this. Did She (the author) Plan the character 180s? It almost feels like when the story gets taken over by another person (like the finish the story game) I'm talking about How she was content to sit and wait around the castle and How her attitude twords TAmlan changes. First we're leadto believe he's a busy royal and Reese is a Creep. Now they almost change rolls with T being almost power hungry and after the perfect image and R trying to free the main Charactar

Kristin wrote: "I'm still confused about this. Did She (the author) Plan the character 180s? It almost feels like when the story gets taken over by another person (like the finish the story game) I'm talking about..."

I honestly can't tell. It feels sloppy to me, and unplanned.

Hallelujah That is absolutely all I want to say. I am so happy to have crossed a forum of people who found all of the novels suprassing the first to be very OOC. Where was the transition? When did Feyre, a willful, determined, strong young woman - become a victim? I understand that even the best and strongest fall prey to the charm of an abuser, but the author just threw a bunch of random information, unexpectedly, into our faces and expected us to just accept it as fact. Sarah J Mass made the characters mold to her will, and that's just faulty writing to me. Also, magic must have a system. It must always have rules, magic cannot be all-powerful, it cannot fix everything or save everyone, because then - whats the point?

I must say I agree with a lot of people here, but there is still one thing that I do not understand about this series. I get that Feyre is quite an important character, but all I see is another weak soppy misrepresented female character, who somehow turns out to become extremely powerful. She was weak from the start, w no skills other than her archery skills, and that too was pretty okay. After that she becomes a strong character, but only because of the powers given by the other high lords and is now put on this pedestal where now she is all powerful and incredibly strong, but that still does not seem the validate her powers to me and I cannot seem to think of her as the whiny, and quite boring and really unlikable and unnecessary character who did not deserve all the attention and honor she was getting. Also, she is extremely whiny at times, and I get it "after all that she has been through"... But so do a lot of other people, and that does not give you the right to crib about her problems. All. The. Time.

Samiksha wrote: "I must say I agree with a lot of people here, but there is still one thing that I do not understand about this series. I get that Feyre is quite an important character, but all I see is another wea..."

The term you are looking for is "Mary Sue" it's a trope that gets old. Where a character isn't that special and doesn't work that hard and just becomes strong through happenstance and is GREAT at everything for no ascertainable reason.

And yes, she was very whiny.

I didn't like feyre and...rhysand in this book because their role is nothing more than MATES!!
Tamlin was not that bad...he did things for feyre and she was so ungrateful towards him which is ironic because her sisters were ungrateful towards her!!

I always find it strange how people justify Rhysand’s actions in the first book but not tamlin’s. People have called tamlin an abuser but ignore how Rhysand is also one to. Did we all forget that he gave word to armanthras people to kill an innocent girl that feyre basically screwed over? Then we have the under the mountain situation where he twisted her bone because she wasn’t listening, drugged the girl, made her dance for him and touched her without her consent and then basically gave her a choice to either die or become enslaved by him. If you come off with the crap of “Well he was just protecting her.�
Then you can also say that tamlin was trying to protect feyre. They both have done some horrific shit to feyre and feyre herself has put herself in massive danger because she’s hard headed in the disguise of a strong woman able to do what she wants. Yet everybody has to save her ass. The only major thing she ever did that would warrant some coolio points was when she got the ring. Everything else she needed help doing. I feel like people gave Rhysand a second chance because he was the dark and mysterious hot guy in the book and normally first choices always get screwed over in most books. Rhysand got to tell his backstory and people learned about him and they started to sympathize with the character.
Unlike our boy tamlin who had to struggle and watch feyre be attacked in the trial, unable to protect her, and practically gave up everything to save his people and her, the came back in the second book had his lover snatched from him, and became even more cautious about letting her roam around because of all the bullshit that happened in the first book. I felt like Sarah was trying to make him come off more as an asshole, but can you blame him for what feyre put him through? Tamlin lost EVERYTHING and all’s he has is his pride.
He lost his court, his lover, his friends. He has nothing. All in the name of love. My boy needs a redemption book or I’m gonna raise hell. I never liked feyre as a character from the get go and found Nesta more my style. So when these next three new books come out? He better get a section/book idgaf. He was misunderstood.

Sandi wrote: "I always find it strange how people justify Rhysand’s actions in the first book but not tamlin’s. People have called tamlin an abuser but ignore how Rhysand is also one to. Did we all forget that h..."

I hate how Tamlin was vilified. HATED IT. It was like the author got bored with him or decided she liked Ryhsand so Feyre had to leave Tamlin, and instead of making Feyre decide what was best for her and hurt Tamlin who didn't change by just ending it with him... the author had to make Tamlin a villain to try to Martyr Feyre.

Authors tend to do this all the time. They want a new love interest and instead of having the main character make a difficult choice to break up with their current love interest for no reason other than "You know what, we don't work together. And I like someone else!" The author has to make the old love interest a monster somehow. It's like we can't accept that people break up. Sometimes we break up because we just don't feel the spark anymore. And that doesn't make us a bad person for ending a relationship. But I feel like society has taught us that if we break up with someone, especially if we are a woman and break up with someone, that we're a bad person and hurting someone we loved. So authors tend to end relationships in stories by making the love interest suddenly completely act out of character and become this monster to justify the end of the relationship. It's basically cowardly writing. It's this attempt to make your main character a victim and allowed to want to leave a relationship for "real" reasons.

I've vented about Tamlin being vilified a LOT and I can't stand that that happened to him. And Rhysand was just as bad, if not worse, in the first book. And we try to justify him all the time because he gets the girl, and that also bugs the heck out of me.

Thank god I found a group of people sharing my opinion. I too spent rather too much time discussing with my friends the dynamics of Feyre's relationships. The first book planted the seed and nurtured it well and the second book just hacked away at the plant. Tamlin's 180 was sloppy, probably unplanned and very very out of character when he was replaced by the "oh-so-hot" Rhysand, who was a morally grey and complex character in the first one and turned into this Disney Prince/ puppy combo. And the SJM fandom seems to have conveniently forgotten the fact that Rhysand physically and mentally abused Feyre in the first book (see the Under the Mountain jailed scenes) and chose only to focus on Tamlin, who was a really great character in Book 1. Rhysand is only held up on their shoulders because of the bad boy vibe and "oh he's hot". I had grudgingly admitted that ACOTAR book 1 was good when she wrote the flawed, human characters and then she had to completely throw my views in the garbage with the "puppy-fication" of Rhysand and the complete disregard to whatever was good in the first book.

Well I was more than okay with changes because why not.She was being protective towards herself in acotar because there was no one before helping her in stabilising herself.She was strong and that is how she was able to win the trials.in acomaf though, she was depressed,tamlin changed ,she changed.well her needs did not.She craved love from Tamlin -the love that was given to her earlier, the freedom.Isn’t it true that in acotar tamlin was just full of shit during the trials.He did nearly nothing to save her except to beg even when he was charging himself with power.We can see that Rhys is more concerned because he fought without any power just to save her , not caring about his life.Well tamlin was not treated like feyre in those trials except to become amarantha’s play toy, similar to what rhys was.all the lives were in the hands of feyre.Yes he was depressed but depression that lead to controlling and that was justified but if feyre accepted the control of tamlin, there would be no warrior but only a warrior bearing trophy wife.She would have to give up much more things in the name of life when she was herself suffering.So, Yes Tamlin did love her, feyre did love him but the circumstances changed and thus the lover as well.