In command where you belong

I started Cannonball this year with the rule that I couldn’t start a new book unless I’d at least written a draft of a review for the book I’d just finished. This rule was relaxed later to just writing a few notes before starting a new book. Now what I’ve been doing is just creating the document in Google Docs but NOT ACTUALLY WRITING ANYTHING. Do you know how frustrating it is to open a document, thinking there will at least be an OUTLINE of a review, or, I don’t know, a sentence about what what you thought about the book, TO FIND ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRITTEN AT ALL?

It’s frustrating. To say the least.

All of that to say…I finished this book at least a month ago and have read five books since so I’ll do my best to remember everything, but Past!Jennie really screwed me over. (Typical.)

A Court of Mist and Fury is the sequel to A Court of Thorns and Roses (I can’t keep all of these courts straight), which was the first book I reviewed for Cannonball this year. GOOD STORY, JENNIE, TELL IT AGAIN. Anyway. This review will contain spoilers, probably. I don’t know, I haven’t written it yet. But it will FOR SURE contain spoilers for the first novel and probably the second because I’m too lazy to write around major plot points.

Anyway, this novel takes a turn I absolutely was not expecting, in terms of the love story, but one I absolutely enjoyed nonetheless. To be quite honest, I thought it was super odd that Tamlin and Feyre fell so head over heels for each other so quickly in the first novel. I just sort of accepted it because that’s what happens in these novels? The hot guy and the hot girl fall in love? That’s just how it works?

But things are rocky after all that happened at the end of the first novel, and even Feyre being newly Fae isn’t helping. In fact, it’s only complicating things for her. She feels super strong, not just compared to what she was when she was human, but compared to other Fae. And yet, Tamlin is keeping her locked in his house because he saw her die in the last novel and doesn’t want anything to happen to her again. This is understandable and yet also super annoying because she’s a grown woman who is perfectly capable of A) taking care of herself and B) making her own decisions.

Meanwhile, they’re planning to get married (!!!!) even though they’ve only know each other for about five minutes. Feyre isn’t totally on board, or even enthused, about the wedding plans but goes along with everything until the ceremony, when she starts to have a full-fledged panic attack on her way down the aisle. She unconsciously calls out for help, like, psychically, and Rhysand answers, whisking her away to claim his time from her.

(Because, see, in the last novel, in exchange for his help, Feyre promised that she’d spend a week of every month with him, for the remainder of her life. It was a good deal at the time, I promise.)

This seems like punishment at first, but, as she grows closer to Rhysand, and his family of friends, she starts to see that there’s more to him than she initially expected. Also! He doesn’t keep her locked up and actually encourages her to explore her new powers and his kingdom, which is a welcome change from Tamlin.

If I had one issue with this novel, it’s that Maas seemed to just completely shift the story from what it was in the first novel because she’d either A) written all she could from that perspective or B) grown bored with what she’d done with Tamlin and Feyre. But since I really liked the shift, I really have no complaints. I look forward to reading more of this series, which I’m enjoying even more than Maas’s Throne of Glass books.