This was The Most disappointing sequel I have read in a long time. It was peak Maas, and I mean that in the worst way. Every quality I have ever disliked about this author's "style" was on full display in this book:
- Tone deaf juxtapositions of traumatic and erotic details.
- "Strong" female leads being arrogant and catty rather than having sympathetic depths.
- Vague world-building/magical system building, so that when something "spooky" or "threatening" or "powerful" shows up, it's not fully conveyed to the audience, not impactful.
- A whoooole lot of randomness and coincidences in the finale that aren't really earned, but the audience is still supposed to be impressed by the hero watching a Marvel-esque laser light show, instead of showing any of the skills or grit the hero has hitherto honed.
- Every major dialogue, backstory, character arc, and conflict, are all reduced down to the melodrama of who has had sex with whom, as if that is the ONLY plausible motivation for anything in this fantasy 'verse.
- Appropriating Judaism, Paganism, Greek myths, famous fairytales, famous other works of fantasy (like The Black Cauldron or The Lord of the Rings), and Disney movies, and throwing them in a blender, rather than writing any original content.
- Selling out, or writing out, characters she has built sympathy for in order to set up sequels and prequels, instead of honoring them and being genuine to the character.
- Queer baiting, throwing a bunch of unimportant LGBTQA characters into the background of this book (too little too late), and giving one main character the tired "I'm in the closet and afraid to tell my friends and family" storyline, even though it doesn't make sense for FAERIES to be closeted in this 'verse, doing both the character and the world-building a disservice in the name of fanservice.

I felt the full range of negative emotions while reading this book. At first I was disheartened by Feyre, Tamlin, Rhys, and Mor's arrogance, cruelty, and spitefulness, but I held out hope that the beginning of the book was a low point for them all, and they would learn from it and redeem themselves before the end. But as the book went on, I grew angry and even heartsick that they constantly absolved themselves of wrong-doing instead of having tough, honest conversations. The central theme and conflict of Part 2 is about building alliances, but our heroes make NO effort to actually forge friendships, instead cattily showing off their powers or making cheap jibes about people's sexual activities. In between the pettiness were slogs of redundancies: Feyre reads a book, Nesta reads a book, Amren reads a book, Feyre studies, Nesta studies, Rhys studies, Lucien gets a book, Feyre takes a bath, and another bath, and another bath.... snore... But I pushed through feeling angry, heartsick, and sometimes bored, and by Part 3... I was just LAUGHING at how BAD it was XD. Feyre doesn't even DO anything, she WATCHES the whole finale! That spitfire from book 2? Gone. That arrogant High Lady from the beginning of THIS book? Gone! She watches as Nesta and ELAIN get the killing shot at Hybern. ELAIN! Elain, who blanched at the sight of a small knife, who has no formal training, who vomited at the sight of bloodshed and needed to be winnowed to the outskirts of the battle, somehow E-FREAKING-LAIN got the killing blow! I just, I can't! Nothing has ever been LESS genuine! XD XD XD What a let down... Right up there with Bran is now the king of Westeros!

I'm hurt. I will be hurting over this book for a LONG time. So many rich characters flattened and wasted, and for what I don't even know. Time constraints? Publishing demands? Because Maas had too many ideas but didn't know how to execute them all? Or, too few ideas, and didn't know how to braid OTHER people's stories and myths into a proper homage? I understand the fanbase for ACoTaR, I really do, I fell in love with these characters too. But they were not done justice in this book. And I don't understand how there is such love and loyalty to the series when the characters we love so much were betrayed so thoroughly by the author. There are better, more fulfilling, more genuine fantasy series out there. Let ACoTaR be a cautionary tale for writers and readers, not the benchmark to strive for. Something CAN be SO GOOD and SO BAD at the same time XD.

Now go read something better.