Review: A Court of Frost and Starlight

A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Time for an unpopular opinion: A Court of Frost and Starlight was extremely difficult to work through.

If I’m being completely honest, my enjoyment of Sarah J. Maas books has been on a downward slope since Empire of Storms. With Empire of Storms I felt as though things were far too much like A Court of Mist and Fury. I brushed it off, though, and thought it was a one off. Then A Court of Wings and Ruin failed to wow me, and I realised the things I had once enjoyed about Sarah J. Maas books were outweighed by the things I disliked. Nevertheless, I needed to finish the Throne of Glass series, so I gave Tower of Dawn a read. Tower of Dawn was the hardest one to get through to date, and I decided I would read Kingdom of Ash them wipe my hands of Sarah J. Maas. I know many will be fans for life, but I would not be one.

Then the library got a new phone app, and I was curious to try it. There were no books on there that really interested me, yet A Court of Frost and Starlight was appearing repeatedly. As a way to try the app, I decided I would give it a try. It was a short story, after all, it couldn’t hurt too much.

At least, that’s what I told myself.

A part of me wanted to give this one a two-star rating. There were a couple of points where I felt a small degree of something towards the story. However, it was not enough to outweigh the rest of the book. A book in which nothing happened. I’d known from the outset that I should have avoided this one, but I kept telling myself it couldn’t be that bad. There had to be something happen throughout – hence why I continued to turn the pages – but I was wrong.

Nothing happened. At all.

There were attempts to get us interested in the future books in the series, but it wasn’t enough. In fact, this one made me less interested in reading them. A part of me had thought I would give them a try, had considered reading them, yet A Court of Frost and Starlight was so painful to get through I now have no wish to read any more. In fact, I’m now questioning whether I really do want to dive into Kingdom of Ash.

You see, the fact I wasn’t able to enjoy this story meant the annoying little things were more obvious than usual. In truth, I spent more of this book asking why an editor didn’t do a better job than I did enjoying the story. Not only was it repetitious, it seemed there was a serious aversion to question marks. Every time there was a question ending with a full stop, something else in me died.

So yeah, I’m part of the group that could not deal with this story. I know many enjoyed it, but I found it extremely hard to finish.

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