the personal journal of Brent Stewart
Maas has created a world populated by powerful and Immortal Elves and humans who are neither powerful nor long-lived. The humans were slaves to the elves until they revolted (helped by sympathetic elves) and created their own free society. Against this backdrop, Feyre is a young woman trying to protect and provide for her family. When she accidentally kills an elf, she gets swept up into the world of elvish power plays. As she learns about the larger nature of the world, we are brought along for the ride.
Somewhat. The book is aimed at teens and I read it at the suggestion of my kids. Maas has created an interesting and original world. Her main character is admirable and relatable. Still, the plot doesn’t always progress linearly and there are passages that read like a Harlequin novel.
At this point I’m neutral. The book is aimed at teenage girls, both in terms of the protagonist and the way she is presented. There were sexual situations that I wouldn’t have felt appropriate for that group, especially for younger teenagers. I think there was an effort to make Feyre independent, but a lot of these worked by fitting her into traditional male stereotypes. Nothing wrong with showing the shallowness of stereotypes, but here I think it was flat. She also spends a lot of the book dependent on her captor and falling in love with him, so that stereotype plays against the other.
I didn’t immediately start book 2, although I have it. I’ll probably read it at some point and ultimately series have to be judged as a whole. In this case, good plot and imaginative veriations on what’s been done before, Maas is a wonderful writer, but something about the arc didn’t hit the mark.