A Court of Wings and Ruin

Wow. This book is a ton plot-wise - just reading the goodreads recap before writing this review reminded me that the whole thing started with Feyre back in the Summer Court! Hah! Feels like forever ago in the timeline of this series. Is there such a thing as too plotty? If so, perhaps this verged on that. But I liked it. It's fine! The novelty of #1 is gone, clearly, the sexy suspense of #2 is past, and this is just a good ole-fashioned battle between good and evil. I will say that the major perk of this part of this series is that roughly 1/4 in, I was talking all things Pride with a friend and sharing my two cents that the ACOTAR series would be better if it was more gay...and then Maas made things more gay! I hope the trend continues in the remainder of the series. The cast of characters is now also more diverse. I do think a weird thing that happens in fantasy is that although it's pretty clear the primary protagonists don't think this way, others in the world distinguish between High Fae and Lesser Fae. Which perhaps is an intentional choice on Maas' part to reflect hierarchical structure in that society, but like, why? Why not, if one is world-building, build a world in which that society, whatever its flaws, doesn't have that particular one, and instead sees the Fae that populate the story as neither higher nor lower than anything else? There is enough animism in Maas' world already that it would be completely consistent (maybe more so) to extend that to flattening philosophical distinctions among Fae and between Fae and other creatures. ANYWAY. I'll keep reading, but this was enough of a temporary conclusion to a bunch of plotlines that I'll be reading some other stuff before #4.