A Court of Wings and Ruin

In this thrilling third installment of the A Court of Thorns and Roses series, Feyre has infiltrated the spring court and must play a deadly game to gather information on Tamlin’s movements and learn how to defeat the King of Hyburn. After a failed attack on Hyburn, Feyre was forced to return to the spring court with Tamlin. What Tamlin did not know was that he was bringing back the Queen of the night court. Now Feyre is on a mission to take down Tamlin and his court from the inside. She is determined to save her mate, her sisters, and her court.

As Feyre spies on Tamlin, she is also scheming to turn the court against him. When Feyre learns of the King’s true plans for the war, she knows she must get back to the night court to warn her family before it is too late. As war approaches, Feyre must navigate the politics of the high lords and learn who can be trusted. Will Feyre be able to stop the King’s plans before it’s too late? Can she maneuver the high lords and win this war against Hyburn? The harrowing saga continues as Feyre gets closer to the truth, figures out how to use her own powers to stop the King of Hyburn, and saves both the human and faerie worlds.

Feyre has mastered her powers and proves to be a strong leading lady throughout the novel. The story focuses more on Feyre and her sisters and how their relationship heals and evolves. The motif of sister relationships is important, as it portrays the family working through their problems to become even closer and stronger. A Court of Wings and Ruin shows the evolving friendships and details how the characters learn to work with different courts to defeat the King together. The characters are funny, witty, and are what keep readers coming back for more.

Prythian is set in a magical world, but this fantasy brings the reader into a different world filled with imagination and excitement. This novel has a great representation of strong female characters and healthy friendships and relationships. This series is at times funny, romantic, sad, and exciting, so it has something for every reader.

A Court of Wings and Ruin will leave fans satisfied because it does not leave any loose ends. It brings the suspense to a peak as the war that has been brewing begins. The war shows both the politics behind it and the battles themselves, but these repetitive scenes can become tiresome. Despite this, every scene adds meaning to the story. The complicated plot brings in new characters and shows brutal fighting. In this third installment of Sarah J. Maas’s series, the characters delve into war, heartbreak, love, and friendship to save the world together.

Sexual Content

• Feyre and Rhys are reunited after months of being apart and have an intimate moment that lasts for about three pages. Feyre’s “hands shot into his [Rhys’s] hair, pulling him closer as I answered each of his searching kisses with my own, unable to get enough, unable to touch and feel enough of him. Skin to skin, Rhys nudged me towards the bed, his hands kneading my rear as I ran my own over the velvet softness of him, over every hard plane and ripple.”
• Feyre and Rhys have a flirty moment together. “His hand began a lethal, taunting exploration up my thigh, his fingers grazing along the sensitive inside. Rhys leaned in again, kissing my neck – that place right under my ear – and then he was gone.”

 Violence

• Rhys has a flashback to the first war when he had to check the corpses to make sure they were not his friends. “A half-shredded Illyrian wing jutted out from a cluster of High Fae corpses, as if it had taken all six of them to bring the warrior down. My aching, bloodied fingers dug into dented armor and clammy, stiff flesh as I heaved away the last of the High Fae corpses piled atop the fallen Illyrian soldier.”
• While in the forest, Feyre finds “what was left of three bodies, their shredded pale robes like fallen ashes through the small clearing.” They were killed by two of Highburn’s soldiers. Their murder was not described.
• Feyre and Tamlin get into a fight and his power “explodes” with his anger. “Furniture splintered and went flying, windows cracked and shattered. The worktable slammed into me [Feyre] throwing me against the bookshelf, and every place where flesh and bone met wood ached.”
• Tamlin whips one of his soldiers for “losing the keys” to the gatehouse. “As he [Tamlin] drew back the whip, the thunderous crack as it cleaved the air snapped through the barracks, the estate.”
• Feyre finds Ianthe, the high priestess, harassing Lucien and uses her mind control powers to make Ianthe smash her own hand with a rock. “Ianthe brought the stone up. The first impact was a muffled, wet thud. The second was an actual crack. The third drew blood.”
• In order to escape, Feyre and Lucien fight off two soldiers, Dragdan and Brannagh. Lucien kills Brannagh as “a tremor shuddered through the clearing—like some thread between the twins had been snipped as Brannagh’s dark head thudded onto the grass.” Feyre ends up killing Dragdan with a knife that she “punched into his eye, right into the skull behind it.” This fight lasts for two pages.
• Feyre and Lucien flee to the autumn court where they are attacked by three of Lucien’s brothers. One of his brothers, Eris, backhands Feyre “so hard her teeth went through her lip.” “He struck again before I could even fall, a punch to my gut that ripped the air from my lungs. Beyond me, Lucien had unleashed himself upon his two brothers.” The fight continues for three pages.
• Rhys tells the story of one of his priestesses, Clotho, who was attacked by a group of males. “They cut out Clotho’s tongue so she couldn’t tell anyone who had hurt her. And smashed her hands so she couldn’t write it.”
• Feyre and a friend fight off some Hyburn soldiers by “tearing through them with a sizzling wall of fire” and “beheading them as they come near.” This fight scene is described over a chapter.
• There is a battle scene that Feyre describes as a “blood drenched mud pit” where soldiers were being “taken down with steel.” This battle lasts for one chapter.
• The King of Hyburn tortures Cassian in front of Feyre and her sisters. “The King brought his foot down on one of Cassian’s wings and he screamed.” The King was stopped by Feyre’s sister, who kills the King by “ramming her sword to the hilt through the back of the King’s neck.”

 Drugs and Alcohol   

• At a dinner meeting, someone says, “I think we’re going to need a lot more wine.”

 Language

• Profanity is used occasionally. Profanity includes: damn, bitch, and hell.
• While fighting, someone calls Feyre a “little bitch.”

 Supernatural

• Feyre’s food is drugged with faebane that was “grown and tended in the King’s personal garden.” Faebane makes Feyre’s powers useless.
• Feyre fights off Lucien’s brother, Eris, with “a wall of fire.”
• Feyre removes her glamour to reveal “smooth skin that had been adorned with swirls and whorls of ink. The markings of a new title—and my mating bond. I [Feyre] was High Lady of the night court.”
• Feyre visits the Bone Carver, a powerful magical creature, to see if he will help them in the war. He asks her to bring him the Ouroboros, a magical mirror. The Bone Carver says, “that is my price and I’m yours to wield.”
• Feyre goes into Lucien’s mind to hear his thoughts. Feyre thinks, “Perhaps it made me the lowest sort of wretch, but I cast my mind toward them, toward him [Lucien]. And then I was in his body, in his head.”
• Amren tells the story of what alien creature she used to be and how she confined herself to her human body. Amren says, “I was a soldier-assassin for a wrathful god who ruled a young world. I did not feel how you do. How I do now. Some things—loyalty and wrath and curiosity—but not the full spectrum. I had to give something up. I had to give me up. To walk out, I had to become something else entirely, so I bound myself into this body.”
• Feyre asks for help from a supernatural creature. She never sees the creature but describes it as having “a voice both young and old, hideous and beautiful. I could feel no body heat, detect no physical presence but I felt it behind me.”
• One of the characters is a seer who begins getting visions of the future. However, she doesn’t understand the visions.
• A character has “an unearthly power” that allows her to “blast the trees into cinders.”
• There is a cauldron that creates Fae life that Feyre must destroy to end the war. When she touches the cauldron, it becomes a “living bond” between them and attempts to take her life. Feyre “could not move [her] hand. I could not peel my fingers away. I was being shredded apart slowly.”
• Amren uses Feyre to do an “unbinding spell on her to unleash the alien creature she used to be and end the battle.”

Spiritual Content

• Ianthe, a high priestess, leads a solstice ceremony where the sunrise is supposed to “bless her and the land.” “During the ceremony, Ianthe’s back arched, her body a mere vessel for the solstice’s light to fill, and what I could see of her face was already lined in pious ecstasy. The crowd began to murmur, not at Ianthe, but at me [Feyre]… resplendent and pure in white, beginning to glow with the light of day as the sun’s path flowed directly over me instead.”

by Adeline Garren