Naír

today i’ve realised there are people with legitimate critics of the throne of glass and acotar series by sarah j maas. it’s not that i love the books, because i stopped reading acotar after the second (bored, honestly) and tog after the… fourth? i got to the part where aelin and rowan come back to adarlan and people start battling each other and there is like, a ton of ice burying a castle at some point. i was also reading because of obligation and then i forgot even the books existed because the story in the last two had gone so wild i was like wtf i don’t care for this, i don’t know who the characters are anymore lol. and the only romance i really shipped was sam-aelin because i loved the prequels despite its faults you know? (it was more than a bit fucked up but these were two very fucked up kids who didn’t even have time to truly start healing ;_;) so realising that there are a lot more of faults than just doing whatever with the magic and such a poor job of characterising the fae, she also upon a bit of close examination (i started reading this series when i was like 13 and only throne of glass + prequels were published, i was just enjoying it and not thinking much about what i was reading) had a lot of other, more serious issues in her books was like woa. (poc ausence that i can’t relate very much but it’s very glaring, feminism issues, lgtb+ treatment etc) because i feel very much they contributed on making her characters feel alien for me and i never was on the same page with a lot of them and it just. it felt very awkward to keep reading those books once i also grew out of them. and look i’m 19 into 20 this year, it’s not like i’m all that older than the heroines but they feel so. fake? very much trying hard to tick the correct boxes, and sometime you can feel with them but other times it’s just artificial. i’ll say than even when i was reading for the first time i didn’t like chaol romance with celaena because it felt so much like the man who wants to make the woman stay in home with him, for him, it was so so weird watching celaena fall for him when he was like criticising her without looking where they were living and how she got there in the first place. (she wanted so very badly to be happy egh) when it ended wrong and he was such an asshole in the fourth book to her it wasn’t surprising; he seemed to me like that kind of man since the start. you’re no longer with me, i can’t control you anymore, i don’t understand you; you’re a bitch and everything is your fault. look i guess he got better in the rest of the books but that’s the image that stayed with me after all this time. another thing: celaena weird hidden princess hidden fae hidden destiny thing. i was like, what?! the first time i thought it was pretty cool but even before the third book was released i was already disenchanted with the idea. it started my indifference towards the saga that’s for sure. i wasn’t sure of the reason that was necessary? it killed a lot of my own assumptions and the fact that she was a lost princess all along and not a nobody who got where she was simply by coincidences or well a bit of destiny too, but a princess…. and a fae too? talk about overfill, and the fact that fae are so powerful but she couldn’t wouldn’t? (i don’t remember if she was like blocked by magic or just psychologically blocked) transform felt like the narrative was saying all the bad things happened to her because she didn’t defend herself well enough which is such bullshit- it’s not your fault when people are abusive and just like, evil. elena was guilt tripping her in acting, yeah that’s what it feels like.and well. rowan and maeve and all that felt very unnecessary, like. i started hating both of them and then a bit meh with rowan but the romantic development caught me by surprise and i was like, why why why. they could have been friends. i was ready and hoping they’d be friends. why romance so soon? it feet so forced, just so that aelin could have a hot guy again and she could heal his manpain. brrr. creepy.

other minor things (for me, like, these are the things i disliked while reading them there are lots of people talking better about why these books are not very good ones) these time concerning both acotar and tog. the fae. just. at the start in acotar at least they seem very fae-like. sjm seemed willing to do them more justice than in tog  where she directly just forgets about it. but just in book one, the nearer you are to the end the more they seem like superpowered elfs. not fae. but just, she took a look to the aesthetic of tolkien took a bit of the fae and their legends and then just did whatever she wanted (which like, she is justified in doing because well, fanfiction is also full of things like that and nobody is there policing the mythos of the story) and it clashes so badly. it left with the impression she didn’t know if she wanted flashy magic or the more labyrinthic and thought out use of magic in fae stories. holly black managed it well, as did melissa marr and they experimented and did  a bit of whatever to mesh it in urban fantasy (well holly black isn’t exactly urban but you know it takes place in the modern world) (and melissa did more of whatever she wanted and includes also more flashy magic) (and they aren’t perfect either but you know, they were better written it feels) but they still feel very fae-like? more alien in the good sense, because they’re not human. instead in acotar and tog they were like humans with superpowers and super beauty even more so in tog where even the bad guys were so, like. stupid? human stupid? and there were demons, the adarlan’s king was summoning and possessed by them xD i don’t know it didn’t felt epic or fairy-tale like but just another fantasy about a king reclaiming his kingdom and derroquing the evil along the way, just with lots of angst because teenagers girl and women. 

plus the romance in acotar… eh. i felt deceived when rhysand was revealed to be like, the dream boyfriend for the audience and feyre. i thought they had like chemistry and i was at the start a bit like, oh he is the second love interest which is super interesting and has deeps but is also like dark and wicked and doesn’t end with her because he encourages her to be too much herself. you know the type xD (although recently the tendency is in reverse which good lol) it was interesting what they did with tamlin (abusive boyfriend i really didn’t need to see in a book hello, are you here to teach us ignorant girls what to watch for when in search of a boyfriend?) but it also took me for surprise, and the fact that well. tamlin was so powerful and feyre only could only runaway with the help of rhysand who then revealed that city of dreams and that the court of nightmares was a facade and only a little part of his territory felt cheap lmao. tamlin can go eat shitcakes, but i felt his villainy was sudden, if plausible given what we knew of his personality. only you know, for me it felt like it happened because it was a lesson for the audience and feyre. a bit fake. rhysand being so good after all: feels a bit fake, again. i could connect with feyre/rhysand better than celaena ships but it still left a weird taste in my mouth reading about them you know? same with the other pairings of the book. why everybody have to have a boy-girlfriend? grr.  

overall i think that in sarah j maas books there is a preachy feel. like she wants to tell things to the audience and uses her characters, and instead the characters feel like puppets for ideas instead of people. hollow. they do things by rote, and they pass the time being very badass but also very domestic because i can be feminine and masculine obvs lol.  it doesn’t make the readers close to the characters but the characters feel like poster-kids for different issues lol. maybe i’m a bit hard on them? EDIT: (au contraire, seems i’ve been too kind lmao) but it’s what i feel and this is tumblr. be kind to yourself and each other.

EDIT: wow. reading other posts that treat in more profundity the mess that are sjm books… i can’t believe how much i’ve forgotten. creeepy, really. knew there was a reason i was shocked when rhysand was presented as the paragon of a boyfriend; i’ve just remembered, reading a very shocking post) all the shit things he does at the end of book 1. grr. between other issues. it seems the vibe i was getting of punishing or making the woman guilty of the shittiness of others and their societies is a trend. grrr again. seems like i was subconsciously noticing something wrong and jumped off the wagon lmao