REVIEW: A Court of Wings and Ruin (book) by Sarah J. Maas

A Court of Wings and Ruin is the third book in Maas' fantasy romance Court of Thorns and Roses series. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Feyre returns to the Spring Court as a spy. Tamlin believes her lies, oblivious to her revulsion at the deals he made in order to get her back. Lucien sees that there's more going on, but he keeps quiet, knowing that Feyre is his only link to his newly found mate, Elain.

Once her work at the Spring Court is done and she's back with Rhysand, it's time to prepare for the upcoming war against Hybern. Nesta and Elain both have abilities that could be useful, if they can be persuaded to care enough about what's going on around them to try to help. Feyre has more skills to develop, and there are many potential allies, if she and Rhysand are willing to take some risks.

Mixed in with all the battle preparation is a lot of relationship/emotional stuff: Feyre's relationship with her sisters, something brewing between Nesta and Cassian, Lucien fretting over Elain (who is refusing to eat or do anything now that the Cauldron has changed her and she can't marry the person she'd originally planned to marry), Mor finally talking about Azriel (although she didn't owe Feyre any sort of explanation, but whatever), more Tamlin, etc.

Feyre's relationship with Rhysand was a lot more interesting before they officially became mates. In this book, Rhysand was practically a background character, one who occasionally had sex with Feyre and left everyone understandably worried that he'd sacrifice himself for the mere chance of safety for others. Granted, Feyre was at least as bad, going off on her own multiple times rather than remembering that she's now a High Lady with responsibilities and people who need to know where she is and what she's up to.

As far as secondary relationships went, I was slightly more interested in Nesta and Cassian than I was in Lucien and Elain, although I don't actually like either Elain (who is basically beautiful wet tissue paper) and Nesta (who seems to be prickly just because - and I personally haven't forgiven her for doing nothing while Feyre was left solely responsible for feeding their entire family). 

I could sympathize with Feyre being worried about the possibly self-destructive aspects of the way Mor was handling her relationships. That said, Mor didn't owe Feyre any sort of explanation for what was going on between her and Azriel - if Mor talked to anyone, it should have been Azriel, and after I found out what was going on with her it seemed doubly unfair that he still didn't have any idea what was up.

This wasn't a terrible book, but it dragged for me. I didn't like the characters enough to put up with all of this, and a storyline that could be summed up as "battle prep," for 699 pages. I consider this the weakest book in the series so far.

Extras:

A map.