REVIEW: A Court of Silver Flames (book) by Sarah J. Maas

A Court of Silver Flames is the fifth book in Sarah J. Maas' fantasy romance series. I bought my copy new.

Review:

The King of Hybern has been defeated, although there are still ongoing problems with the mortal queens, particularly Briallyn, and other machinations among some of the faerie courts. Rhysand has both Azriel and Cassian working to address these issues. However, Cassian's time and attention is devoted to an issue of personal concern to Feyre: Nesta and her self-destructive behavior.

Nesta is given an ultimatum: either she moves into the House of Wind and divides her time between training with Cassian and working with the priestesses in the library, or she'll be banished to the human lands. She reluctantly agrees to go to the House of Wind, but Cassian soon learns that every inch of ground he hopes to gain with her will be a battle.

I've never been a fan of Nesta, although I at least started to appreciate her somewhat in A Court of Wings and Ruin. Then, after Elain improved, Nesta fell completely apart. I understand it, I do, but, between the previous book and the 200ish pages here that it took for her to finally start moving in a positive direction, my patience was more than wearing thin. Cassian was a saint.

My frustration with and dislike of Nesta made it easier to note other issues that I'm sure were present in previous books but only really irked me now. I couldn't help but notice, for example, that Maas was heavily reliant on establishing the scariness of various creatures and beings by noting that certain powerful characters were afraid of them. This can work when done sparingly, but it was used so often in this book that it quickly lost any power it once had.

As far as the romance/relationship stuff went, I'm probably in the minority here, but I wish Cassian and Nesta had waited until Nesta had things a little more figured out before the two of them had sex. I swear, it felt like this book had as much sex in it as all of the previous books combined, and most of the time it just felt like a really bad idea for both of them.

Overall, this book did not need to be as long as it was, and it was a relief when I finally finished it. While I did enjoy several of the emotional beats in the second half and liked where things eventually ended up, it took way too long to get there, especially considering that Nesta's self-destructive behavior was already established in the previous book and didn't need more rehashing here.