The next day Tamlin takes her out to the art gallery in a part of the palace she hasn’t seen before.

The marble floors shone so brightly that they had to have been freshly mopped, and that rose-scented breeze floated in through the opened windows. All this—he’d done this for me. As if I would have cared about cobwebs or dust.

While we’re at it, can we let lines like this die in a fire? Tamlin didn’t do shit; did you forget he has servants? Probably, since you only bothered to learn one servant’s name and only barely mention the existence of the rest of them. Still, your class-blindness does not erase the fact that Tamlin probably didn’t life a finger to get this place clean, he just ordered someone else to do it.

When he paused before a set of wooden doors, the slight smile he gave me was enough to make me blurt, “Why do anything—anything this kind?”

…what does she think he’s doing? It’s a hall full of art that literally already existed. He told someone else to clean it and then walked over to it. I’m at a loss for why Feyre is so flummoxed with ‘kindness.’

Like, I get that this is mirroring the beast ‘giving’ Belle that library, but at least Disney had the common sense to keep Belle’s wonder to “OMG BOOKS” instead of “OMG HE’S PUTTING FORTH SO MUCH EFFORT BY OPENING A DOOR.”

“I never knew,” Tamlin said from behind me, “that humans were capable of …” He trailed off as I turned

I feel like the book was trying to set him up as sympathetic towards humans, but then also it turns out he wasn’t aware humans had…basic human emotions? This line mostly just makes me want to stab Tamlin through the eye.

So after sucking Tamlin’s ego for a while page, Feyre is finally left alone to admire the art.

For a whole sentence.

Choices like this matter. Regardless what actions are going on in a story, the amount of words and page-space devoted to a particular idea carry weight. It sets the focus of the narrative and lends importance to certain things over other things. You can say Feyre was just grateful for a few seconds and then spent hours and hours looking at the artwork, but that’s a difference that we, the reader, don’t get to feel. It’s a difference that isn’t evocative, that doesn’t stick in the mind. We spent more time with glowing proclamations of Tamlin’s generosity, and it’s clearly the focus of the scene. There are a finite amount of words in each book, and the time spent on one subject is time not spent on another subject. Feyre’s love of art is literally being sacrificed for crowing over Tamlin’s “gift.” We are literally subsuming part of the female character’s personality for the sake of praising the male character.

And it’s not like her art appreciation was getting great attention and development to begin with.

Weeks pass in summary, and Feyre paints most of that time, calling her artwork “awful and useless.”

Sigh.

Look, I get it, she’s untrained and what little practice she had is 8 years rusty. I don’t mind that she’s not good at it. But couldn’t she at least enjoy it. Couldn’t she talk about improving with practice? Couldn’t she mention what a relief it was to be able to express herself freely, even if she wasn’t quite up to scratch?

“Weeks passed, the days melting together. I painted and painted, from dawn until dusk, pouring all thoughts onto the canvas. Most of my efforts were discarded as soon as I made them, but just being able to create was such a relief. I spent hours in the art gallery, studying the techniques of those masterworks and trying to duplicate them. Putting my own spin on them. My works didn’t nearly compare, but I could tell I was improving with practice. Every time I mastered a brushstroke or got any one detail perfect, it made all the frustrations worthwhile and I redoubled my efforts to improve. I didn’t show anyone my work yet, though. I wanted to make something truly impressive first.”

See? See how easy it is to make someone not good at something but still having fun with it? It’s really not hard to give someone more than one line to their hobby, and that whole line being an insult.

So there’s some random other stuff, Feyre just settling into a routine and crushing on Tamlin and then having some angst about missing her family. She ends up in a rose garden.

“My father had this garden planted for my mother,” Tamlin said from behind me. I didn’t bother to face him. I dug my nails into my palms as he stopped by my side. “It was a mating present.”

Authors…everywhere, everyone, please. You cannot use words interchangeably. If you try it, you get lines like this.

I mean, come on. Not only does it just sound weird, but mating is more of a concept than an event. It’s an ongoing thing. It’s a process. You can do wedding presents because it’s a set, planned, one-and-done event. Dafuq is a mating present, though? Did they only have sex once a year and Dad gave her a present before each time?

And yes, you can change the meaning of words in fairy land, but you can’t change them to the point of being an entirely different concept unless you plan on, at the very least, letting your thoroughly human character go “bweh?” And even then I wouldn’t suggest doing it a lot. We’ve already got characters and plots to keep track of; don’t make us basically learn a new dialect on top of that. Wedding is a perfectly serviceable word, so is handfasting or union if you want to distance yourself from certain traditions. The English language, while not perfect, is still pretty robust.

Feyre has a pretty good little moment of angst, a bunch of conflicting emotions of grief and guilt over her family coming together. Of course, it turns into a shipping moment with Tamlin trying to reassure her, but eh. That’s only annoying because I’m already annoyed. It’s not that bad.

Except.

“Don’t feel bad for one moment about doing what brings you joy.” [re: painting]

If she’s had any joy at all from painting, we haven’t seen a lick of it.

This book is so bound and determined to make fairies the absolute fucking bee’s knees that it won’t let anything non-fairy be described in even a smidge of a good light, and I fucking hate it.

The next day there’s more shipping stuff. Again, not bad, but I really don’t care because I’m bored.

Later she finally asks about the whole “mating present.”

“High Fae mostly marry,” he said, his golden skin flushing a bit. “But if they’re blessed, they’ll find their mate—their equal, their match in every way. High Fae wed without the mating bond, but if you find your mate, the bond is so deep that marriage is … insignificant in comparison.”

Oh, joy, another ‘my love is better than your love because reasons.’

I half expect the book to go “GOD, MOM, YOU JUST DON’T UNDERTAND, OUR LOVE IS SPECIAL.”

Though this bit of “GOD FAIRES ARE JUST SO MUCH BETTER THAN YOU YOU DIRTY HUMAN YOU CANNOT EVEN COMPREHEND HOW MUCH BETTER THIS THING I MADE IS THAN YOU ARE BECAUSE HUMANS ARE PLEBES AND FAIRES ARE THE BESTEST EVER IN COMEPLETELY UNDEFINED WAYS BECAUSE YOU SUCK AND MY FAIRES ARE THE BEST YOU HEAR ME THE BESTEST THING EVER GOD I’M SO GREAT BECAUSE I CAN SAY THE THIGN I MADE IS SPECIAL TEN MILLION TIMES WITHOUT PUTTING ANY ACTUAL FUCKING EFFORT INTO IT”

Ahem. Anyway.

That bullshit explanation still doesn’t excuse the use of the word ‘mating’ for me. “Finding a mate” and “mating” are not the same thing. I’ve heard this book gets explicit sex scenes later, so it can’t be that the implications behind the word “mating” are just somehow unknown here.

Feyre asks what happened to his parents, and Tamlin says his dad was a tyrant and Dad and older brothers kept slaves pre-treaty and that left a mark on Tamlin, which is why he’s insistent on treating Feyre better. A page later, he finally answers the actual question and says the whole rest of his family was killed by a rival High Lord, and he was spared for [Reason Not Found].

“Most High Lords are trained from birth in manners and laws and court warfare. When the title fell to me, it was a … rough transition. Many of my father’s courtiers defected to other courts rather than have a warrior-beast snarling at them.”

But.

HOW.

Courtiers aren’t just those friends that hang around at your house all the time and eat all your food. Generally speaking they are peers who have deep, hereditary interest in the realm being ruled. They’re nobles who have lands and financial holdings and tenants and obligations. You can’t just pack all that up and move because the new ruler was rude to you.

And we still haven’t seen much in the way of residents of the Spring Court; did all of those pack up and move, too? So far the whole fairy society seems to be random creatures and unattached rich people, in which case why does Tamlin have to be in charge of anything? Why can’t he just be a dude with a big house and a lot of magic? That’s all he is in practice.

They talk about an upcoming holiday that involves a lot of bonfires and visitors, and Tamlin says Feyre will want to stay hidden for that. Then, random encounter time! Feyre has to hide, but she spies on Tamlin and Lucien talking to a disembodied voice. More vague mentions of ‘she’ doing bad things and Tamlin needing to do something but not doing. I don’t care, because we’ve already seen this. And we know how it’ll play out: Feyre does nothing and no one explains. At this point, the book is just taunting me, letting me know there’s a plot out there somewhere but I’m not allowed to see it.

Several days later, Feyre is alone in the house and bemoaning the fact that she can’t go to the bonfire party. You know, the one with all the hostile fairies and lots of magic being slung around? Yeah, so unjust that the squishy human can’t go.

Even the garden, usually buzzing with the orchestra of its denizens, had quieted to hear the drums.

…dafuq? Every time you describe the place you point out it’s silent and empty. Make up your mind.

Feyre hides in her room as instructed, but after a while just can’t stand it and goes out to the party anyway. Probably because magic, though that nicely downplayed in the narration. She finds hundreds of High Fae about.

Where had they come from—where did they live, if they belonged to the Spring Court but did not dwell in the manor?

All these questions and more you had months to ask, but didn’t.

All the fairies are headed towards a cave at the center of activities, but before Feyre can figure out what’s going on a couple of humanoid fairies come by to sexually harass her because FUCK THIS BOOK.

Yeah, that’s all I’ve got. Sorry. I’m tired. I’m too tired. I can’t make snarky comments about this, I can’t make commentary, witty or not, I can’t delve into meta or implications or society or whatever the fuck. I’m too tired. I’m exhausted. Fuck this bullshit. If you don’t know why, fucking google, because I can’t right now. I’m tired and I’m sick and this shit keeps popping up no matter what anyone says or how loud they scream it and I can’t scream anymore. Maybe I’ll get a second wind next book, maybe not, but fuck this book.

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, pretty dude, end of chapter. Anyone surprised? I’m not, I’m just crying.