Previously, Feyre has very sneaky plans and she’s fooling everyone because she’s so sneaky. Except for Lucien, who totally knows she’s up to something, but trusts her anyway? Oh, and also except for Alis (Feyre’s maid) who just asked her not to murder her sons, and Feyre was like “What? Murder? Never heard of it!” (because she’s SNEAKY) and Alis was like “Glad we understand each other.” Otherwise FEYRE IS THE SCHEMIEST.
A Court of Wings and Ruin: Chapter 4
For this chapter’s sneaky, sneaky scheme, Feyre’s got plans for the Summer Solstice! You might recall, wait, that’s a bit of this fantasy world’s lore we’ve seen before! You’re right! Feyre was in the Summer Court for this ceremony during ACOTAR, when things between her and Tamlin were very different.
A year ago, he had kissed me on this day. A year ago, I’d danced amongst these people, carefree and joyous for the first time in my life […] What did he make of it [now]–where did he think [my engagement] ring had gone, if Lucien had hidden the evidence? For a heartbeat, I pitied him.
Pitied that not only Lucien had lied to him, but Alis as well. How many others had seen the truth of my suffering—and tried to spare him from it?
Seen my suffering and done nothing to help me.
Also this minor character who totally matters is here too.
Summer Solstice was exactly as I had remembered: […] But what had not existed here a year ago was Ianthe.
Feyre tells us they’re all up before dawn because Ianthe wants to do the ceremony more traditionally, and all the important people are on top of a hill, “with a gathered crowd of hundreds” all watching them. It’s a little funny because Ianthe is making the other boring minor villains (Jurien and the incest twins whose names I still don’t remember) participate in the ceremony and they’re grumpily going along with it. I only kind of get why they’re humoring her; I’ve long since stopped understanding what the power dynamics in this book are supposed to be.
I had made sure she knew precisely how disgusted they were with her rituals. How they would do their best to stomp out her usefulness as a leader of her people once they arrived. She now seemed inclined to convert them.
I love how this is apparently some sneaky, underhanded thing that Feyre had to manipulate. “Mr. President… did you know… the House Minority Leader… doesn’t agree with your ideas? JUST SAYIN. YOU DIDN’T HEAR THIS FROM ME.”
Then the ceremony concludes as the sun begins to rise and the first cracks of light over the horizon will light up Ianthe and magically bless her.
Ianthe stood before a rudimentary stone altar bedecked in flowers and the first fruits and grains of summer […] standing in the precise spot where the sun would rise between her upraised arms, filling them with light. Her acolytes had discreetly marked the place in the grass with a carved stone.
Right? WRONG. ENTER SNEAKY FEYRE.
The crowd began to murmur.
Then cry out.
Not at Ianthe.
But at me.
At me, resplendent and pure in white, beginning to glow with the light of day as the sun’s path flowed directly over me instead. […] I made a show of looking surprised […]
No one had bothered to confirm or even notice that Ianthe’s marker stone had moved five feet to the right
Everyone loses their shit, and the hundreds of faeries spend the next few hours praising and thanking Feyre. But most importantly, Ianthe is apparently genuinely baffled how this could have happened. If she has any suspicious towards Feyre, it isn’t hinted at at all in this chapter, and instead she scrambles to control the narrative.
The Cauldron had blessed her chosen friend, she told whoever would listen. The sun had altered its very path to show how glad it was for my return.
The sun altered its path. Hot damn. I can’t decide if this is good PR or if my entire understanding of Ianthe now is that she’s fantasy Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
A little later, in a moment of privacy, she decides it’s worth risking exposing that she still has a bond with Rhysand and fantasy texts him.
The longest day of the year, I said into the bond, sending along flickers of all that had occurred atop that hill. I wish I could spend it with you.
They send a few short, loving messages to each other. Rhysand asks when comes home. She says she’ll “be done soon”. MOAR SCHEMES.
She dances with Tamlin, tearfully tells him that she heard that he didn’t complete the sex ritual for Calanmai, and asks him if Ianthe is mad that the sun blessed her instead. SCHEEEEEEEMES.
A Court of Wings and Ruin: Chapter 5
Feyre wakes up in the middle of the night, screaming from a nightmare, and, intriguingly, runs to Lucien’s room.
“I heard you–what’s wrong.” [He was] bare from the waist up […]
“I dream about it,” I rasped. “Under the Mountain. And when I wake up, I can’t remember where I am.” I lifted my now-unmarred left arm before me. “I can’t remember when I am.”
Truth—and half a lie. I still dreamed of those horrible days, but no longer did they consume me.
WAIT YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THIS IS ANOTHER SNEAKY SCHEME????
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m sorry.” He held me, stroking soothing lines down my back […]
“What’s going on.”
Lucien whipped his head toward the door.
Tamlin stood there, face a mask of cold calm. The beginnings of claws glinted at his knuckles.
We pushed away, too swiftly to be casual. “I had a nightmare,” I explained, straightening my nightgown. “I—I didn’t want to wake the house.”
Tamlin was just staring at Lucien […]
“Good night,” I said, and shut the door in Tamlin’s face.
FEYRE.
I wondered if Lucien had pieced it together. That I had known Tamlin would come to my room tonight, after I had given him so many shy touches and glances today. That I had changed into my most indecent nightgown not for the heat, but so that when my invisible snares in the house informed me that Tamlin had finally worked up the nerve to come to my bedroom, I’d look the part. […]
A nightmare, I’d told Tamlin.
I was the nightmare.
Feyre’s plots are so convoluted and overexplained, this has all kind of circled back around to being so silly it’s amazing? I kind of love that after the intense plot twist at the end of the last book, this one kicks off with a long series of Feyre increasingly stressing out everyone at Summer Court and totally hamming it up.
Sure, this chapter’s scheme is more obviously stirring up shit than some of her others, but having any of this make any sense is still quite a tightrope to have to walk:
I had no doubt Tamlin was now running through every look and conversation since then. Every time Lucien had intervened on my behalf, both Under the Mountain and afterward. Weighing how much that new mating bond with Elain held sway over his friend.
Feyre: “Ha HA! He’s fallen for my cunning trap! My grand scheme is to make Tamlin think that Lucien will BETRAY HIM! Because, you see, Lucien will do anything to be with my sister! Anything! He’d even go behind Tamlin’s back and fuck me in order to get with my sister! Wait. This might have made more sense in my head.”
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God damn it, I forgot that this book insisted on never using question marks when people are asking questions. “What’s going on.” Just, why?
This is a really weird time to bring this up, but it pisses me off so much that fantasy races are always otherworldly beautiful. What in their genetics makes everyone, every single member of this race supernaturally hot? I don’t get it, aren’t they just magic? Are they using their magic to glamour themselves and make the humans perceive them as beautiful, to earn their trust or get them to worship the fey, like the Children of the Blessed? Idk it’s just a really irritating trope I see in all subpar fantasy novels.
She wouldn’t have as much fun wanking off to her characters if they weren’t all divinely beautiful lol
Just my observations, but I’ve always seen this as a perception thing. For example, here, we’re getting Feyre’s first person perspective, and I think she would either see everyone as beautiful or purposefully portray them as that because the people we see all play an important role on her life. It IS flawed insofar as even the people she hates she describes as beautiful, etc., but I’m not actually surprised that she would only portray the pretty things about the people she likes. The same probably happens in a limited third person novel–the author wants you to see what the main character sees, and if the main character is generous with his or her friends, perhaps they just see all of the people around them as pretty 🙂 objectively, they may not be, but their own perception is limited by their affection. This is just how I’ve always justified this issue in books, and actually what happens in my own writing, so I thought maybe I could provide something useful here. In a wide ranging 3rd person perspective like Game of Thrones, you’re more likely to get accurate descriptions of people, but even then, you can see the faults of the character’s perspective come through on occasion.
Oh thank you, that’s a really interesting point that I hadn’t thought of! You really know your stuff when it comes to writing, you’ve been so good at answering my questions 🙂
That’s so nice of you to say!! It’s really just one of the few things I feel like I know well enough to provide perspective on. We all have our own preferences for what we do and don’t like to see in books, but I’ve kind of been on the other side of it where I’ve written something that maybe I don’t even like to run across in a story, but at the time and from the character’s point of view, it feels justified and organic to represent it that way. It’s simultaneously made me less critical of books and also more likely to get frustrated with a story where I don’t think the author had that explicit intention.
FR tho Sarah J. Maas wants these books to be like Game of Thrones so bad