Hi friends,

We've gotten to know each other some, right? Right.

So here's somethings you might know about me:

• I love starting projects, but I genuinely suck at finishing them

• I have been having a hard time with reading and content creating since I went back to working in an office full time

• I hate everything I've ever read by Sarah J. Maas

Alas, Maas is back all over my feeds with the announcement of ACOTAR 6-8 following her (deeply disturbing and upsetting) (to me) Call Her Daddy episode. What I'm seeing is one part fan excitement, another part fan defensiveness, another part reminders of how Maas has behaved badly, and a final part people on all sides insisting we should stop talking about it.

Unfortunately for those who think we should never, ever talk about wildly popular, culture defining, industry shaping work, I've never relaxed in my entire life.

If you are thinking, "damn, here comes Mari again to talk about this for clicks." Yes, sure. Thank you for clicking. Consider signing up for free to have it delivered right to your inbox next time.

If you are thinking, "we should just ignore SJM and her work," I disagree. That's how we create a vacuum where all that exists is uncritical praise of her work, where the only argument against her is what she's done, and not that AND how that is reflected in her work.

And if you still don't understand why I'm doing this, these posts were largely already written for Patreon several years ago. I'm reposting them here and will hopefully (finally) get around to finishing them. It's a nice little content buffer for me as I continue to do my best to get my life and schedule together.

We good? Great.

Chapter One

We start with Feyre (unnamed in this chapter, but we know what's up) hunting in the snowy woods but having no luck. Probably because it's winter and storming outside, but what do I know? I'm no romantasy protagonist hunting to feed my family who has fallen on hard times. 

Feyre tells us a little about the migratory patterns of deer and also that there are faerie lands bordering the human ones. She's sitting there telling us about the ice she's clearing off her eyelashes, but it's the very thought of faeries that makes a "shudder [skitter] down [her] spine." I'm no romantasy protagonist hunting to feed my family who has fallen on hard times, but maybe you're just cold, girl. 

In the next paragraph, we get the first example of one of the most annoying things SJM does in this book: use three-part repetitions or descriptions. It's not a bad thing in and of itself and could be used to create rhythm, but SJM does it so much, it becomes monotonous. I'll try and keep track of all the times she does it for the first couple of chapters, but I won't add it to the drinking game because I want to live. 

"That was all I could do, all I'd been able to do for years: focus on surviving the week, the day, the hour ahead."

It's snowing too hard for Feyre to see, so she climbs down the tree and tells us some more about what a fruitless hunt this has been. Night will be falling soon and she was recently warned by other hunters of giant wolves prowling in the woods. 

"Not to mention whispers of strange folk spotted in the area, tall and eerie and deadly.

Anything but faeries, the hunters had beseeched our long-forgotten gods—and I had secretly prayed alongside them. In the eight years we'd been living in our village, two days' journey from the immortal border of Pythian, we'd been spared an attack—though traveling peddlers sometimes brought stories of distant border towns left in splinters and bones and ashes." 

"Immortal border." Fuck a border, but extra fuck a border that lives forever.

Feyre tells us again how dangerous it is this deep in the woods and how hungry she is and how skinny she is from hunger. She keeps pushing, though, because her family is out of food. "I knew the expression that would be on my two elder sisters' faces when I returned to our cottage empty-handed yet again." Ah, yes, her sisters. For now we'll just ask: what are they doing while you are being a romantasy protagonist hunting to feed her family who has fallen on hard times?

Feyre finds a new spot to crouch and wait for deer while she thinks about her dreams of days past. 

"Once I'd dreamed and breathed and thought in color and light and shape. Sometimes I would even indulge in envisioning a day when my sisters were married and it was only me and Father with enough food to go around, enough money to buy some paint, and enough time to put those colors and shapes down on paper or canvas or the cottage walls."

I'm going to go ahead and add "Feyre thinks about painting" to the drinking game. If my memory serves, this may indeed be the entire drinking game, but we'll see.

Alas, eating and painting are far away dreams, so Feyre is left with admiring the snow storm or whatever. (I actually don't really know if it's snow storming because it felt like it was earlier, but now she's all like "wow, I'm just standing here admiring snow" which doesn't seem like the thing you do with the wind howling and snow so thick, you don't have visibility fifteen feed ahead, which is how Feyre described the night.) 

"I couldn't remember the last time I'd done it-- bothered to notice anything lovely or interesting.

Stolen hours in a decrepit barn with Isaac Hale didn't count; those times were hungry and empty and sometimes cruel, but never lovely." 

What an awkward segue. She says she doesn't remember the last time she "bothered to notice" something lovely and then is like "the sex I have isn't lovely." Like, okay, who asked bestie? I mean, of course she didn't bother to notice it as lovely if it isn't in fact lovely? What's happening here?

We get told AGAIN about the howling wind. Do I need a wind count? 

Okay, this isn't a three-peat but it counts towards adding to the rhythm that makes me want to join in by banging my head against a wall: 

"Mesmerizing-- the lethal, gentle beauty of the snow. I'd soon have to return to the muddy, frozen roads of the village, to the cramped heat of our cottage. Some small, fragmented part of me recoiled at the thought."

Feyre hears some rustling and a doe appears. As "quiet as the wind hissing through dead leaves," Feyre takes aim. That feels like that's some genuine rustling she's doing? And aren't deers famously jittery? But what do I know. I'm not a romantasy protagonist hunting to feed my family who has fallen on hard times. 

Feyre thinks about what she'll do with all the meat and skin. She needs new boots, her sister Elaine needs a new cloak and "Nesta was prone to crave anything someone else possessed." I know people have very strong opinions about Nesta, but I gotta tell you that my first impression is "feed her to the faeries."

Unfortunately, there's a wolf in the bushes that also has its eyes on the doe. It's not just any wolf, though, and we know this because the snow suddenly stops and the wolf is as big as a pony and has unnatural stealth. He's not rustling as loud as wind and dead leaves, I bet. Feyre guesses it's a fae, but then she convinces herself that it's just an animal. But then she decides that she's going to use an iron arrow specifically made for fae, just in case.

"From songs sung to us as lullabies over our cradles, we all knew from infancy that faeries hated iron." 

What an awkward sentence. 

The arrow is also made of ash, which stops the fae's healing abilities, or so people say. The only proof they have that that's true is that ash trees are now really rare after the High Fae burned them all down. 

"So few remained, most of them small and sickly and hidden by the nobility within high-walled groves."

I'm not sure why they would be small and sickly if they are all walled-off and I'm also not sure how Feyre knows they all small and sickly if they are hidden by the nobility.

Feyre takes aim and thinks a lot about the shot and then she's back to thinking that the wolf is a fae. I'm actually not sure what's going on here. Like if she thinks this is a fae, and is justifying the kill because the wolfae might attack her village, what does she think is going to happen when the other fae discover the dead wolfae? And if she thinks this is just a wolf, how does she explain the fact that it magically stopped snowing? Feyre isn't thinking clearly. We'll blame it on hunger and, uh, the snow but I have a feeling we are going to quickly run out of reasons to excuse Feyre's stupidity. 

"The wolf shot from the brush in a flash of gray and white and black, his yellow fangs gleaming. He was even more gargantuan in the open, a marvel of muscle and speed and brute strength."

The wolf kills the doe and then Feyre shoots the wolf with the ash arrow. The wolf looks at her like "what the hell?" And so Feyre shoots it again through the eye. The wolf's magical snow stopping ability (????) ends, so it starts snowing again. The wolf is dying slowly, and Feyre just stands there and watches it and has more stupid thoughts. 

"Was he in much pain, or was his whimper just his attempt to shove death away?"

Feyre, what? He's whimpering while shot with two arrows to... shove death away?

"I stared at him until that coat of charcoal and obsidian and ivory ceased rising and falling." 

Feyre suddenly decides this pony-sized wolf, who made it magically stop snowing, and who looked at her with intelligence and who didn't immediately die from two arrows, is definitely just a wolf and not at all magical. 

Feyre looses a sigh—a phrase I despise in a pet peeve sort of way. Feyre can't carry both the wolf and the doe, so she decides to leave the wolf's body out there, which will for sure not at all come back to bite her in the butt. She does skin the wolf, picks up the doe, and starts to make her way out of the forest. She looks at the wolf carcass one last time but doesn't feel bad for killing it because it's rough out here in these winter streets. 

That was 8 Kindle pages, 32 em dashes, 1 mention of painting, 7 winds and 19 snows. 

A truly promising beginning. 

See you in chapter 2! 

❤️

Mari