Previously, Lucien and Feyre argued with one another about which way to head as they escape from the Spring Court. Lucien, who is from the Autumn Court, highly recommends NOT going through it. Feyre insists they do. They are almost immediately captured by Lucien’s family.
Yes, I did copy/paste this directly from Ariel’s last post. Would you believe there are still ongoing issues from Feyre assuming she knew best about this one? Shocking.
Also, this is the last chapter in the book before Rhysand shows up again, so enjoy it while it lasts.
A Court of Wings and Ruin: Chapter 13
We last left our heroes Feyre and Lucien trying to cross a large frozen lake, trapped by Lucien’s brothers Eris and whatever the other two are named. (I honestly don’t think the book even bothers naming them; they’re that important.) Eris puts his hand down on the ice and begins to use magic to melt it.
“Run,” Lucien breathed.
I didn’t dare take my eyes off his brothers. Not as Eris lowered that hand to the frozen edge of the lake. “Run where, exactly?”
Flesh met ice and steam rippled. The ice went opaque, thawing in a line that shot for us—
Honestly, if you pause and visualize it, this is a pretty hilarious scene where Feyre and Lucien are aimlessly running on ice, which of course means they’re slipping around everywhere, and the descriptions of their slipping and sliding are interspersed with Lucien shouting things like “Faster” and “Zag”, as though 1) that makes any fucking difference because they’re running on ice, and 2) “zag” means anything. I shit you not, in a moment of desperation, motherfucker directs Feyre to “zag”. It’s amazing these two aren’t dead yet.
Until Feyre remembers she has magic powers. Again. Feyre has “oh, yeah, I have magic powers” moments with the same frequency that normal people have “oh, yeah, I have salsa in the fridge” moments.
Ice. I had ice in my veins, and now that we were over the border of the Winter Court—
I didn’t care if they saw it—my power. Kallias’s power.
I’ve long since stopped understanding the pros and cons of what Feyre is and is not keeping a secret. Remember the time she planted a false memory in a sentry that was supposed to kick in after she didn’t return and he’d think she was murdered by the maybe-incest twins? But then when everything went south she instead inceptioned Ianthe to tell everyone that she fled in self-defense after the maybe-incest twins were murdered by her? And then the first sentry was never mentioned again? Do you think he still had that false memory pop up later and was just super confused why the entire rest of the world remembered this happening the opposite way?
Joking aside, it’s a pretty thrilling fight scene. Feyre uses her ice powers to re-freeze the ice they’re on that Eris is melting, but then Eris and the other brothers just teleport into different positions to attack. Feyre gets grazed by an arrow, which gives Eris an opportunity to trap her in the ice.
“This can end with you going under, begging me to get you out once that ice instantly refreezes,” Eris drawled. […] “Or this can end with you agreeing to take my hand. But either way, you will be coming with me.”
Feyre briefly gets away by using the same magic powers she used when tricking the Spring Court into thinking she was blessed by the sun to blind Eris, but he quickly traps her again and uses his fire magic to gag her and bind her limbs with fire. BUT THEN-
I couldn’t remember—couldn’t remember what to do, how to move, how to stop this— […]
A shadow slammed into the earth before us, cracking the ice toward every horizon.
Not a shadow.
An Illyrian warrior.
THE SUPER FRIENDS FINALLY FIND FEYRE.
Seven red Siphons glinted over his scaled black armor as Cassian tucked in his wings and snarled at Eris with five centuries’ worth of rage.
Not dead. Not hurt. Whole.
His wings repaired and strong.
Oh, good, I see that the one consequence any of the Night Court bros suffered in the last book for fucking up all their plans so badly and pissing off the whole world along the way has already been undone. Glad to see that the stakes are still bafflingly nonexistent in these books.
Azriel shows up too. Cassian calmly tells Eris to let Feyre go, but also gives Feyre a “hey, uh, I trained you for this exact situation” look. (Which is quite a look.) I appreciate it though, because as much as I complain about how Feyre is too overpowered with too much magic that feels like it just appears out of nowhere, it’s great that she’s actually given agency. Think about it – her boyfriend’s friends show up in the nick of time, and in any other action scene they’d just save her, but here they basically just show up to assure her that she’s got this. Look at that allyship. Look at these good, good boys.
I twisted, spinning on the ice, and slammed my bound legs up between his.
He lurched, bending over with a grunt.
Right into the fisted, bound hands I drove into his nose.
The fight continues, and Cassian soon overpowers Eris and stabs him in the gut. Feyre realizes that if this goes on much longer, the High Lord of the Autumn Court will suddenly have lost three sons, and since Rhysand has never exactly tried to gain any allies… like, ever…
For a heartbeat, I saw how it would play out: three of Beron’s sons dead at our hands. A temporary satisfaction for me, five centuries of satisfaction for Cassian, Azriel, and Mor, but if Beron still debated what side to support in this war …
I had other weapons to use.
“Stop,” I said. […]
The Illyrians fell into place beside me. Eris, a hand pressed to his gut, was breathing wetly, glaring at us.
Glaring—then considering. Watching the three of us as I said to Eris, to his other two brothers, to the sentries on the shore, “You all deserve to die for this. And for much, much more. But I am going to spare your miserable lives.”
Feyre removes her disguise and reveals that – oh shit – she’s actually half in charge of a whole fucking country now.
The markings of my new title—and my mating bond.
Lucien’s face drained of color as he strode for us, stopping a healthy distance from Azriel’s side.
“I am High Lady of the Night Court,” I said quietly to them all.
Even Eris stopped sneering. His amber eyes widened, something like fear now creeping into them.
“There’s no such thing as a High Lady,” one of Lucien’s brothers spat.
A faint smile played on my mouth. “There is now.”
Soooo I have a few things I want to unpack here.
First, Feyre’s approach here is diplomacy. However, the story has always framed Rhysand’s open antagonism towards the rest of the world – the total opposite approach – as a strength. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that this story is rewarding Feyre and Rhysand for stereotypically gender-coded behaviors. The female leader is praised for extending an olive branch after the entire previous book in the series praised the male leader for keeping the entire world at arm’s length. I’m not confident the story sees the contradiction.
Second… wow, this story really can’t resist beating us over the head with how Feyre and her superfriends are the badassiest badasses that ever badassed, constantly to the detriment of the moral high ground they’re supposed to have. I recently read an interesting analysis of a popular misreading of the ending of the original Star Wars trilogy (I’m going somewhere with this) where Luke doesn’t kill Darth Vader. The argument is that what happens is that “Luke tries to avoid fighting but gives into anger. As he bests Vader in combat, Luke realizes his great mistake, winning this fight means losing his soul” so he “throws away his weapon”, but a lot of people mis-interpret the scene to mean that “Luke Skywalker uses his great warrior skills to defeat Darth Vader. Once he’s proven himself in combat and stands victorious, Luke does the honorable thing by showing mercy and sparing his enemy”. The distinction between the two is that the misreading posits “Luke as a badass warrior and reframes his refusal to kill Vader as an act of mercy stemming from a position of power”.
Clearly what happens here in ACOWAR is the latter. Now, obviously this is all a little different – Feyre and Lucien certainly didn’t ask for a fight and this is mostly self-defense. Mostly. Let’s think about what the “Luke is a badass” misreading says about the power dynamics and heroism. The tide obviously turns when the Illyrians show up, because they handily best Lucien’s brothers in combat and demonstrate that they’re an unquestionably stronger force. It’s not insignificant that Feyre calls for an end to the fighting before anyone is killed, but after they’ve already made it clear they absolutely could murder the shit out of them no problem, because if you consider this from Erin’s perspective (and everyone else that the Night Court superfriends constantly fuck up because they know better) there is a world of difference between reconsidering your relationship with someone who won’t fight you vs someone who absolutely will overpower you and kill you if you cross them again.
Did they have to prove that they could best Lucien’s brothers in combat? Maybe. But are their actions largely justified by the Ayn Randi-ian mere quality of being more capable? Once again I’m looking at Feyre the gaslighter and Rhysand the gentrifier and I gotta ask, how heroic do our heroes really feel?
Third, a friend was reading ACOWAR over my shoulder just now and just said “did someone get a tattoo as a mating bond? Like a brand? Ew.” Which has nothing to do with the points I’m making about the story’s murky glorification of badassery, but is worth remembering is a really real thing in this book.
I said to the Autumn Court’s scions, “We’ll see you on the battlefield.”
Let them decide whether it was better to be fighting beside us or against us.
…IS THAT WHAT SHE THINKS THAT SOUNDED LIKE? This is totally in line with my point above: in what fucking world does “see you on the battlefield” not sound like a threat?
The superfriends fly back to the Night Court border, where Mor and Feyre reunite. Mor explains that Rhysand isn’t showing up until next chapter, thank god is away but racing home, and they’ll meet up with him in Velaris. Also Lucien is there.
Mor swept her attention over Lucien once more. I almost pitied Lucien for the weight in her gaze, the utter judgment. The stare of the Morrigan—whose gift was pure truth.
I still have no idea why they call her “the” Morrigan whenever she’s, I dunno, extra important?
If you’d like to support us in the making of BBGT, consider buying us a cup of coffee? That’d be swell of you!
“…the Morrigan, whose gift was pure truth.” Okay, but like, we never see any of that action. It’s just reported to us that “the Morrigan” is a thing and that pure truth somehow meant something…once. This is the weirdest attempt to characterize Mor as important, and it plays right into the way this book constantly tells the reader about a whole lot of action entirely off screen, when it would have been just as easy to do it on screen. And probably more powerful. That’s not even to mention that pure truth isn’t quite a gift. There are moments when truth is not for the best.
In any case, I really enjoyed this post’s tangent! Great analysis, and articulate as always.
Seeing this blog update is the highlight of this day. Even when you tell me Rice man is coming back it doesn’t dampen my enthusiasm for the next chapter
Oh wow, I meant Rhysand. I would like to apologise to all rice everywhere…
I thought that might be an autocorrect typo, but not after I thought “comparing a male love interest to a single bland food is pretty on brand for our blog community”
Every time Feyre mentions “mating bond” I’m like “ew”
When a book becomes very popular and the demand for sequels rises, the job of an editor becomes, paradoxically, more important to the story but less important to the publishers, and I think these past few chapters are a good example. Was there really a need for Feyre and Lucien to get captured, escape, get captured again, escape, and THEN have a fight? Plot-wise? Character-wise? What was established that couldn’t have been articulated in one capture, one harrowing escape, and then reuniting at the Night Court with the superfriends?
Note that I’m not blaming the editor, who probably was told to give a summary “this comma is misplaced and you forgot that character X had blue eyes” effort before shuttling the manuscript off to the printer to meet a deadline. Such is life. I want authors to have full creative freedom to express their ideas, of course, but I also wish that the “door-stopper” part of “door-stopper fantasy” wasn’t seen as a mark of quality.
My biggest issue with the capture+escape+capture+escape was that it felt less about creating tension than it did about trying to explore new locations… which it barely even did. I don’t feel like I actually learned anything about these two new courts.
If they had all this control over fire why didn’t they just walk out of the cave in the last chapter…or oh yeah winnow or teleport out, since clearly they can do such things?
And then randomly the super friends find her. Did she send out a distress signal once when she got to the winter court lands? Like a magical lo-jack that only works in certain areas.
And wasn’t her disguise magical? so how did it not go away when everything else did (sort of, when convenient of course)
This book is so confusing and I am not even the one stuck reading it! I wondered about that sentry too, but these books sort of make everyone feel confused and WTF, so it seems fair that a few characters should share our pain.
Not that it matters, but I full support you referring to Rhysand as Rice Man from now on.
TBH the way Mor was being treated at the beginning had me thinking she was basically a vampire from another dimension and SJM was just trying not to use the word “vampire”, which I mostly got from expecting cringe out of this series and little tidbits like “I don’t eat the food you do” or whatever she says there.
Love what you mentioned about how her tattoo is like branding. I feel like what she was going for was a sort of wedding ring type representation of “I’m taken yo” (but there are also wedding rings in this universe), or conceptually something like a bindi (though those don’t mean someone is married all the time either). But something about it just doesn’t feel right. I think it’s because although Feyre accepted the mating bond she never consented to such a big and public mark about it? And because she didn’t know and couldn’t choose whether to have that or not, like you can with a ring, it feels more like she’s being claimed as belonging to Rhysand than a symbol of her own importance or power. Also, I hate the sentences I end up writing to share thoughts about this series. You are so amazing and have endured so much to write this blog. Basically, like most other things in this series, the concept is okay and could be interesting if done well. But it misses the mark and is weird instead.