On Growth, Craft, and the Right to Say: Yes, Sarah J. Maas Got Better ✍️📚
After I posted about Tamlin’s villain arc — or more precisely, the lack of one — I got a lot of responses. Some were supportive (thank you! 💖), and others were… let’s say passionate in their disagreement. So I thought it was only fair to clarify something:
Yes. I do think Sarah J. Maas improves her writing significantly as her books go on.
And no. That doesn’t mean I hate her or her work — quite the opposite.
🌱 Let’s start at the beginning. A Court of Thorns and Roses is a decent book. Enjoyable, romantic, intriguing enough to keep you turning the pages. But let’s be honest: the character development is inconsistent, the pacing shaky, and the prose is a little flat. The book is structured almost entirely around two major events (Feyre entering the fae world, and Under the Mountain), and everything in between feels like it’s still trying to figure itself out. There is a clear intention to create mystery when she is alone in the palace, but the author is unable to achieve it.
If you don't believe this, read it again and you'll see the HUGE difference in pacing, depth, and intention once the Under the Mountain arc begins. The improvement in the writing and plot is clearly evident.
✨ Fast forward to A Court of Mist and Fury, and suddenly you have layers. Inner monologues that actually hold weight. Character decisions that carry consequence. Trauma handled with more subtlety. Useful dialogue. And writing — actual writing — that feels more fluid, vivid, and intentional. 🌊💫
🧱 By A Court of Silver Flames, we’re deep into themes of mental health, recovery, shame, and desire with a complexity that would’ve felt impossible in the first book. We get to Nesta's arc because Maas is already capable of writing something with that complexity. Before, when she tried (and I have to go back to Tamlin), she wasn’t able to.
This isn’t slander. This is growth. You can love a series and still acknowledge its early flaws. You can be grateful for what it gave you and still wish it had been tighter, smarter, deeper from the beginning.
🌟 SJM didn’t start as a literary genius — few authors do. But what matters is that she got better, that her books are now of higher quality, and that we can enjoy them more fully.
And that’s something to appreciate. 💜📖
