Mad Morrigan's Trash Lair

Okay, plot first. For all I said the plot was relatively straightforward, the book does seem very confused about where it should put its focus. There's essentially two major parts to the plot - the King of Hybern (who has yet to receive a name) is (or so Rhys tells us) planning to invade Prythian so that he can then invade the (also unnamed) human lands, because he's evil and wants slaves and Make Fairydom Great Again and blah blah. He's our major shallow caricature villain who exists primarily off-page for this book. So, he obviously needs to be Stopped.

The other major part of the plot is that, for some reason, Rhysand, the evil High Lord of the Night Court who spent most of his page-time last book sexually assaulting or torturing Feyre in some capacity, has decided he needs her help, specifically, for defeating Hybern. Oh, and also, Tamlin has randomly turned into an abusive dickwad since last book (well, so the book says. More on that in a bit) and Feyre needs to escape. How convenient that the Night Court wants her instead! So very lucky that Tamlin made it so easy for her to leave right then...

Now, with all that being said, you might think that the plot is about Feyre having to learn to work with the guy who repeatedly sexually assaulted her so that the Greater Evil of Hybern can be defeated, and they'd go around doing stuff that would lead to Hybern's defeat. And if you think that, you're probably new here, because this is a Maas book, dammit, and we absolutely cannot have interesting plot stuff happen on-page!

Instead, the book is mostly about three things:

Making sure that we know that Rhysand was Secretly Good all along and has the Most Tragic of all pasts in the series;

Making sure we know that the Night Court (well, Velaris, specifically, the rest of the Night Court only counts as part of the Night Court when Rhysand wants something from it) is Better than the Spring Court in every conceivable way and;

Some truly astonishing feats of mental gymnastics performed as we brush all the outright evil shit Rhys did last book under the rug, so that he and Feyre can fall in love and the book can try and pretend it's not a fucking horror story.

And not gonna lie, that's pretty much it. In its almost 650 page run length, the only things our protagonist does that are actually related to defeating Hybern are: going to the Summer Court to steal the Book of Breathings (which they could probably have just asked for, but, ya know, they're the Good Guys™, so obviously they have to steal it), meeting (briefly) with the mortal queens so they could set themselves up as minor antagonists, and then the final confrontation with Hybern in the last ~10% or so of the book. The rest of the Hybern-related stuff (e.g. the entire subplot with him collecting the Cauldron legs, gathering info about the mortal queens and Hybern, trying to decipher the book, etc) all happened completely off-page, resolved by non-protagonists. If we're being generous, it amounted to maybe 200-250 pages of content.

So, what was it doing for the other 400+ pages? Well, like I said above. We spend part of the early book at the Spring Court, so it can show (well, "show") us how horrible and abusive Tamlin has become in the wake of UtM, and also so we can wallow in Feyre's trauma and depression resulting from the same. The first time I read this book, I honestly thought her depression was portrayed pretty well, and that the breakdown of the relationship was quite believable. This time, while I still think the breakdown of the relationship could have been believable, I'm a lot less enthused on the trauma-portrayal. Mostly because, well, it's not all applied equally.

There's a very simple method to work out the hierarchy of trauma in this book. And this is also probably where we've given up talking about the plot and will descend into mostly ranting complaints about everything, because it's all kind of tangled up in this.

The most valid of all traumas is Rhysand's. If it affected him negatively, then any other negative effect on any other character is immediately superseded and disregarded, assuming he's not appropriating it to further his own angst, ofc. Up to and including his sexual assault of Feyre UtM! He felt really bad about it, see, and feels even more bad about it when he makes her repeat the performance at Hewn City in this book (yes, really!), so any trauma Feyre might have had related to such activities? Yeah, completely irrelevant, it's brushed aside and forgotten about with barely so much as a mention, if that. The book just straight-up ignored that the assault happened for a good 75% of its run length, and when it was finally forced to confront it by literally having Rhysand make her repeat it in Hewn City, no, this will never not be fucking outrageous, it was veeeeeeery careful to dance around what actually happened and use terms like "the clothes she was made to wear UtM" while conveniently omitting the "by Rhysand" part. It also never really mentions the actual assault, just the skimpy clothes and forced drinking. Utterly galling and hypocritical that, in a book that's meant to be all about Feyre recovering from her trauma UtM, we just straight-up ignore one of the biggest contributions to it. Fucking ridiculous.

But, of course, with Rhys's angst being the most Valid and Important, we get to hear a lot about it. We learn all about his Tragic Past as Amarantha's servant, which he obviously only did for the Greater Good of saving his court.......... well, not actually, of course, he literally only saved Velaris and threw the rest of his court under the bus to do so, but! Rhys has declared that everyone else in his court are evil barbarians who deserve to die, so that not only makes it okay to do this, but even makes it Good and Noble and Heart-Wrenching! Such Sacrifice! Weep for him! Weep for how he was forced to vicitmise himself to Amarantha! Er, well, again, maybe not actually? The book is very strange on this topic. It simultaneously wants him to be her victim, for cheap and easy rape victim cred (and I feel unclean just typing that so flippantly, but, well, that's ultimately all the book uses it for. See my rant in..... one of the earlier chapters, I want to say 18? The same one where I rant about Jaime Lannister), while also refusing to allow/accept that he might have to relinquish his agency in the process.

What do I mean by that? Well, his sob story is told with an undertone that he was, at some level, always in control of what happened there. Presumably because the book simply cannot fathom an instance where a man (sorry, male) is actually legitimately victimised by a woman. It assumes that he must have "allowed" it to happen, that it was a concession on his part, rather than.... well, for want of a better word, a "victory" on the woman's part. Because males are just so dominant and in-control, ya know? And so, the book makes sure we know it was ultimately Rhys's decision to become Amarantha's servant. It's done ambiguously enough at first that it kinda works - maybe it's just cope on his part, maybe it was just a lesser of two evils situation, etc - but later on, the book gives us some more detail. And we learn that Rhys essentially sought out Amarantha, chose to respond to her advances, and may or may not have used his mind-control powers to make her think it was the best sex of her life, and thus make her want to keep him as a sex slave. Yeah. Yeahhhhh. Really muddies the waters on whether he's actually a victim here, especially if mind-control was involved. And it's a shame, because there's so few works that ever portray male victims of sexual assault at all, let alone with any kind of dignity.

But, uh, I got a bit side-tracked there. It happens a lot with this book, unfortunately. As you can probably see with just that little sample, there is a lot of bullshit jammed into it. But, we were talking about the hierarchy of angst, right?

Below Rhysand, we have the Inner Circle and Feyre. I write it like that because, while it's less egregious in this book, I am 99.99% certain that they are given higher precedence than her in subsequent books, if the baby drama of ACOSF proves anything. But, for this book, it's largely an irrelevant distinction. Anyway, as long as Rhysand isn't hurt more by whatever is happening, these guys are the top trauma dogs. If they don't like it, and Rhysand wasn't the one who did it to them, then whoever did the Bad Thing is irredeemably evil, and so is everyone around them. And thus we get things like Tamlin and everyone at the Spring Court being abusive and thus irredeemably evil; Mor's family and the entire Hewn City being hedonistic and abusive and thus irredeemably evil; every single Illyrian being backwards and barbaric and thus irredeemably evil........ it's all a bit much, quite honestly. Especially when we start to see how Rhys and co actually interact with these people (e.g. breaking every bone in Kier's body over a minor insult that Rhys essentially orchestrated himself). It's just... ugh. The fact that Rhys is a despotic tyrant is irrelevant, Mor's family was mean to her that one time (okay yeah, it was pretty horrific, but the point stands), that means everyone in HC deserves to be treated like absolute dirt! And the book 100% expects you to roll with this.

Also worth mentioning with Feyre's trauma, specifically, is just how damn selective it is. Lucien's red hair and the red flower petals on her wedding aisle are enough to send her into full-blown panic attacks, because it reminds her of the blood of the faeries she killed, or something; Mor's red dress and Amren literally drinking blood in front of her, though, are all a-okay and not even worth a blip on the radar. The Spring Court bodyguards are stifling and signs of controlling abuse, but Cassian and Azriel acting like bodyguards even after she's asked them not to is all fine and dandy. And etc, etc, etc. Also, approximately nothing of what Rhys did to her seems to have left any lingering trauma, and indeed, the book even tries to attribute some of his actions to Amarantha instead (while trying to appropriate some of Tamlin's actions for him), which is absolutely insane.

The Spring Court deserves special mention, of course. I mentioned above how the book tells us that Tamlin turned into an abusive dickwad since last book. And... yeah. In the hierarchy of trauma, Tamlin's is the least valid of all. Absolutely nothing he does could ever possibly have a sympathetic or understandable motivation, in the book's eyes - even as it pays lip service to the idea that his actions might be motivated by trauma, it's clear it doesn't really believe it, and more to the point, really does not want the readers to believe it. It's all quite cleverly framed, really, to make it sound like Feyre is making "undeserved" excuses for him, but, well... the excuses are true. He spent several months forced to watch Feyre be tortured and assaulted UtM (by Rhysand, but don't tell the book that), finally culminating in literally watching her die. You kind of expect a dude to be fucked up after that. And in a display of true crying irony, the one time controlling dickwad behaviour is vaguely "jusitified" (like, it's still wrong, but you know why and where it's coming from, at least) is the one time a Maas book flips out over it and calls the guy abusive. Rhys does things that are just as bad (if not worse!) as Tamlin, yet we don't hear a peep about it from the book.

And, as well, in the grand scheme of things, and after re-reading with a more critical eye...... I really don't think what Tamlin did in this book was all that bad. Rhys set the bar in hell with his two-month roofie-assault spree last book, after all. But, let's look at what actually was happening in this book.

At first, we see that Tamlin is initially unwilling to let Feyre do things like visit a random village, on the basis that he has no guards to send with her. We'll ignore the fact that the bride of the lord *not* having guards is a completely stupid and ahistorical complaint for the sake of sanity. But, we also see that he compromises and relents pretty quickly, arranging things so that she can go. And based on Feyre's narration at various points, we can conclude that she's been on several such trips before, or else on hunting trips and things like that. She's not locked in the house, is what I'm getting at. Tamlin is being overprotective, but it's clear that he recognises that, and is taking the steps he can to try meet her halfway while also juggling the rebuilding of his court and whatnot. And don't get me wrong, I'm saying this as someone who doesn't even particularly like Tamlin. This book just does him so dirty, I feel compelled to defend him.

One thing that's also worth noting about Tamlin's trauma and the subsequent abusive behaviour it causes. He's mostly concerned that Feyre will be killed/abused again like she was UtM. He's worried that he won't be able to protect her, that his enemies will be coming for her, that all the defences the Spring Court can muster will be inadequate and she'll be taken again. And then, what happens? Rhysand, the guy who tortured, roofied and assaulted Feyre for two months UtM, Rhysand, who has been cultivating a reputation as an evil bastard for 500 years, waltzes right into the Spring Court, straight past any defences, and kidnaps Feyre from her own wedding. Right under Tamlin's nose, proving that all his fears about being unable to protect her and other High Lords wanting to kidnap her were right. So, he tightens security. And then, Rhys waltzes right past those defences and kidnaps Feyre again, and mocks Tamlin to his face for how pathetic they were. And yet, we're meant to think Tamlin's being unreasonable when he insists on upping the guards? I want to know what the fuck SJM has been huffing to think that makes any kind of sense. Probably Rhysand's farts.

Because this is a rambling rant now with no direction, let's jump straight to the most egregious thing Tamlin does. The big thing is, of course, when he "locks her up." Which, well, he does. But there's two very important things to keep in mind there. When that happened, he had been called very urgently to the border, and was in the process of departing when Feyre confronted him about wanting to go to. She was severely depressed and malnourished at this point (because she hadn't been eating, and the book has a... somewhat strange fixation on that), and she was refusing to take no for an answer. She knows archery, yes, and I still maintain that Tamlin's refusal to train her in faerie stuff was stupid and unreasonable, but at this point, even if he was training her, well, she wouldn't be anywhere near trained for battle yet. She was showing clear and alarming disregard for her own well-being. But, the call away was urgent, and he doesn't have time to argue with her, and so, he seals the manor, trapping her inside (because she expressly intended to follow him), intending to discuss it further on his return. Was it a dick move? Yeah, arguably. But given the circumstances, I can understand why he did it.

The second important thing to remember, that the book never acknowledges in any capacity, is that by that point, Rhysand has locked her up in (one of) his house(s) not once, but twice! But I guess, since his house is on top of a mountain and doesn't have windows, that... makes it okay? Yeah, nah, she's just as trapped there as at Spring, even more so, since she can't even visit Night Court villages or go hunting. And Rhysand straight-up laughs in her face when she asks to leave. But, no. No, Tamlin is the asshole for locking her up, and Rhys is her saviour for doing the same.

Actually, before I rant any further, I'm going to save myself and you guys a lot of time: it's the fucking hypocrisy. That is the biggest problem with this book. Rhys is the best, and everyone else sucks, even if, by every conceivable objective measure, he sucks the most out of the lot of them. The book will lie, gaslight, omit, retcon, villify, you name it, it does it, in order to make Rhys the best and never in the wrong about anything ever. That is all. We can all go home now.

Because that really is the rub of it. Most of the rest of this book's flaws would be eyeroll-inducing at worst, were it not for the omnipresence that is the narrative stroking of Rhysand's dick. Instead, they become rage-inducing. I hate him and everything about him so, so, so fucking much.

You'll notice that I haven't really said much about anything not Rhysand-related. And that's because, honestly, there really isn't that much to say. We are very much in the Rhysand show now. Like, sure, the Inner Circle is there. They definitely exist. But they mostly exist to be Rhys's 2-kool-4-u friends who rule the Night Court with nepotism, pre-packaged as a friendship group for Feyre's convenience. They're all stereotypical selfish Maas "good guys", to varying degrees of low-keyness based on how much spotlight they've had so far.

Honestly, I think the best summary of this book is that it basically reads like a bad ACOTAR fix-fic. Someone didn't like that Feyre didn't end up with the hot villain after UtM, so they decided to make their own version. Tamlin suddenly does a 180 in terms of character, Feyre's bargain with Rhys is miraculously intact despite it being "lifelong" and the fact that she died, there's this whole heretofore unmentioned part of the Night Court that is actually super cool and not evil, we get to meet all their annoying OCs, the canon abuse Rhys subjected Feyre to last book is either ignored, excused, or attributed to someone else, what little character Feyre had is dropped or forgotten as is convenient for the "hook up with Rhysand" plot.... it really is an absolute fucking mess. The only way any of it makes sense is if you ascribe to the theory that Rhys has actually been daemati-ing her (and likely everyone else, esp Tamlin) this entire time. I have chosen this as my headcanon in order to preserve my sanity.