Review: A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas

A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas is the first of the continuation/spin-off trilogy of the A Court of Thorns and Roses series. If you haven't read the original trilogy book, four will make zero sense, and this review will probably be tremendously not useful. This book follows Nesta and Cassian, and each subsequent novel will be following a different pair of characters (I would assume Elain and Lucien, maybe an Azriel book? Or Mor, Mor seems the least likely, but I would be interested to see if SJM can pull off a female/female romance).

I found this book compulsively readable. I think I just find Sarah J Maas a compulsively readable author, but I haven't read Crescent City, yet so the last thing I read of hers was the winter novella from 2018, so I had forgotten exactly how quickly I can fly through her books. I read about 50 pages the night I got the book; the next day, I stayed up until 4 am reading (which is technically two days, I know) and got 600 pages read. I gave myself eye strain so bad that I couldn't read the book until like 3 pm, then I flew through the last hundred pages. So this book is quite long, but I had an excellent time reading it. I was enthralled.

The whole time I was reading, I was trying to guess what would be the overarching plot for the trilogy and what was going to be solved in book one; I was very not good at this. So much happens in this book; we have a romance, an intense emotional journey, a Feyre related plotline, and a pretty involved quest storyline. I also just really love a big book.

As a follow-up to the events of the A Court of Thorns and Roses main trilogy, there is obviously a lot of trauma following the whole trilogy and specifically the battles of the last book. Nesta's emotional journey is focused on her trauma and mental health. We see her reflecting on her own behavior, spanning from childhood until through her appearances in the original trilogy. It was a really nuanced and interesting look at a character that was such an antagonist in previous encounters. I really thought Nesta's emotional journey throughout this book was incredibly compelling. I wanted to see Nesta succeed; I liked the context behind Nesta's previous actions; I felt deeply for her hurt and cannot emphasize enough how strong the emotional journey through this book was.

I also really appreciated that the narrative wasn't 'I found love, and now I am healed,' Nesta's journey certainly involves other people as one of the things she struggles with is the ability to trust other people, but others involvement is a signifier of her work on trusting and accepting others actually like her. I liked that so much of her learning to trust other people came from forming friendships with other women. This is by far the Maas book with the strongest emphasis on friendship; the connections Nesta is able to cultivate are deeply related to the emotional arc of the story and impact the plot in a really fun way. I particularly thought the friendship bracelet thing was adorable and nostalgic.

There are multiple points in this book that focus on violence against women; this is not a surprise as most of Maas' books have some focus on this. This book really focuses on women healing through connection to each other. It focused on the importance of finding people who treat you with empathy and want to support you. I really love a friendship story and thought this one was very sweet. I especially appreciated that Nesta's friendships got to be outside for Feyre's group. Nesta got to build her own circle of people to rely on and didn't have to only gain that connection from Feyre's circle.

Nesta's story also focused on her healing familial relationships. The idea of confronting shared trauma and accepting both responsibility and forgiveness. Not all of the book ends in a perfect place; I think it hit the balance of not trivializing mental health concerns while also letting the book have a satisfying conclusion to the plot.

I will say I wasn't sure that I loved the way Nesta's drinking was handled. The story totally does talk in-depth about the root cause of Nesta's reliance on alcohol, but I think part of me expected more of a focus on the physical symptoms. I don't think this is a completely fair critique of the book, because the author is clearly allowed to focus the narrative wherever she wishes, and she didn't trivialize being addicted to alcohol. Just a heads up! Though the story does absolutely discuss the reasons, Nesta relies on drinking as a coping strategy.

The biggest critique I have of the book is that there is a point in time where Nesta reveals a secret and is then villainized for this action. This bothered me because literally, Nesta was the only person who did the moral thing, in my opinion. She is not treated as having done something terrible for very long, but I am not sure I actually liked the way the other characters and the plot seemed to feel about it.

A quick aside about the cover, I don't love it; it is by no means a contender for my favorite cover ever. But I don't get the vitriol these covers get. The original trilogy will not match the trilogy that extends it, but I would assume that all of the extensions will match each other. Also, the point of the cover change is to market the books differently. I think the new covers make the book look less like YA book covers; this is good because these are very much not YA. I am not arguing that everyone should love the new covers, but I find the intense hatred a little over the top. I think the paperback copies of the earlier books are incredibly striking, and they stand out excellently on store shelves. I think they are doing what they were designed to do. But, yes, I do think the mask is very busy and not the most visually pleasing.

I haven't spent any time talking about Cassian, and half of the book was from his point of view. I did like his character, I liked his relationship with Nesta, I thought he had purpose in the narrative and contributed to the plot, but this is so Nesta's story that I was really compelled to focus mostly on her. This book is already huge, so adding more elements would only contribute to the massiveness of the story, but I would have liked a bit more conflict for him earlier in the plot. But overall, I liked his character, and I was never annoyed to have to switch to his point of view.

I gave this book five stars on Goodreads and The StoryGraph. I am so ready for the next two in this series, and I very much want to know who the couples will be. I am sure I will be reading the next books as soon as I can again.