“That’s the key, isn’t it? To know the darkness will always remain, but how you choose to face it, handle it… that’s the most important part. To not let it consume. To focus upon the good, the things that fill you with wonder.”

Release Date: February 16th, 2021

Genre(s): Adult fiction, Fantasy

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Pages: 768

Rating:⭐️⭐️⭐️.25

Note: The following review contains two spoiler sections that have been hidden using toggles. You can reveal the spoiler sections of this review by selecting the toggles as you read.

Synopsis

A Court of Silver Flames follows Nesta and her life after the events of the war with Hybern. After a long period of struggling with her trauma alone, she is forced back into the eyes of The Inner Circle and is paired with Cassian to help her train and heal from her experiences. Meanwhile, the human queens who returned during the war have formed a new alliance and one that threatens the barely-stable peace that has settled since the war. And Cassian and Nesta may be the only ones that can stop their efforts.

Review

Up until the release of A Court of Silver Flames, I was honestly unsure of whether I’d continue with this series. While picking up this series two years ago re-introduced me to fantasy, it wasn’t until a few months after I read it that my interest in the series began to wane. I started to realize that some of the characters that were portrayed as the good ones were not as great of characters as I originally thought.

Interestingly enough, A Court of Silver Flames actually confirmed some of my feelings towards these characters. Showing the Inner Circle through Nesta’s perspective makes a really big difference as we get to uncover character traits that didn’t see the spotlight as much in previous books. For big fans of these characters, I can absolutely see how this would be an unwelcome change. But I personally liked being able to see the characters through a different lens (and especially Nesta herself).

Nesta’s journey was, in my opinion, the best part of A Court of Silver Flames. I liked the way that this book explored her trauma, and how recovery is rarely linear and varies from person to person. Throughout this book, you see the ups and downs that come with the healing process, relapses, the impacts of triggers, episodes of depression, and other elements that come with experiencing heavy trauma. And while I don’t think these sections were perfect, I think it showed so much about Nesta’s character and explored some of her motivations throughout this book.

While I enjoyed the character-focused sections of A Court of Silver Flames the most, I did feel that the plot was lacking in some ways. I personally am a fan of more character-driven stories as it is, but the secondary plot that takes place in this book does fall flat in some ways. I was expecting more of this portion of the story given the length of this book, but it is more on the backburner. 

I also was a bit bothered by the way magic was covered in this book, as I wish it were explained more than it was. Whenever magic is used for something, it’s not really explained in detail why it worked. If we had more exploration on this I would have been more likely to accept it, but for several cases in this book, it felt like a cheap solution to a problem because we don’t really get that explanation where it’s due. 

I’m also a bit iffy on how some feminist issues were tacked in A Court of Silver Flames. As part of Nesta’s story, there is a lot of good when it comes to illustrating the gender violence that took place in the world and how to empower women and put an end to that. However, there were some elements to this book that I felt shouldn’t have gone unchecked. 

In sum, while I feel like one of the central themes of this book was supposed to center on feminism in some ways, I feel like the above examples counteracted those themes. For me, it’s not the fact that these examples happened in the book, it’s that they could have contributed towards what this book’s message appears to be, but either detracted from or contradicted that message.

Despite the above, I did enjoy reading A Court of Silver Flames. I’ve always found Maas’s books to be entertaining reads, and it’s no secret that I read this nearly 800-page book over the course of one weekend. There’s definitely a lot that has changed since the last book now that this book is published as an adult fantasy, and I can see elements that readers would either like or dislike depending on their current impressions on certain characters, as well as their preferences when it comes to character-based storylines to the overarching plot. Regardless, I found those changes to make for an interesting twist to the series.

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