A Court of Wings and Ruin
A Court of Wings and Ruin
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summaries & Analyses
Author Insights
Quizzes
NEWReading Tools
Sarah J. Maas on A Court of Wings and Ruin
In her own words: quotes and insights from the author.
Why she wrote it
A trap she built for her own readersThe entire first book was a setup. Maas constructed Tamlin’s controlling behavior to feel like genre furniture so that ACOWAR’s reckoning would land with the force of recognition rather than surprise. She needed readers to have already made Feyre’s mistake before they knew it was one.
I wanted readers to experience book one with Tamlin and his controlling, alpha-male behavior and be like, ‘Oh, it’s kind of the norm,’ and fall in love with him the way Feyre does — not blindly, but accepting that that’s how things are. So then in book two when Rhys comes along and Feyre has her own journey, they can look back at book one and see all those moments where things that kind of got brushed over by Feyre weren’t exactly OK.
ACOWAR is where that retroactive look has consequences: making Tamlin simply a villain would have let readers off the hook. The discomfort had to be earned by their own earlier acceptance.
A separate motivation drove the way Feyre’s sexuality is written across the trilogy and comes fully into view in ACOWAR. Maas built it into the character from the start, as a structural decision rather than a detail.
I wanted her to have a sexual history that wasn’t something to be ashamed of, that was something that she was in charge of; I wanted her to be in charge of her body, her passions and desires.
How she wrote it
Seeds planted years before the payoffACOWAR’s reveals were not invented during the drafting of book three. Maas describes a method borrowed from a writer she grew up reading, one she began applying from the first pages of book one, knowing it would take years for readers to see why.
When it comes to the big reveals and all the stuff that happens in book three, a lot of that I’ll plan far in advance so that I can plant the seeds pretty early on in book one or two. I grew up with Harry Potter, and I feel like J.K. Rowling is the queen of little details that are on the page in book one and then in book six they come back in a huge way. That definitely left its mark on me when I was growing up as a reader and a writer.
She finished book two before the first book reached readers, which meant spending more than a year at public events performing enthusiasm for a love story she already knew would be dismantled.
One of the hardest things was when the first book came out, I had already written book two, so I knew exactly what was gonna happen with Feyre and Rhys. So having to keep all those little secrets and details to myself during events when readers would come up and be like ‘I love Tamlin!’ and I’d be like, ‘Weeell.’ I would just kind of smile at them and be like, ‘Yeah, sure, me too, I guess.’
The sex scenes in the trilogy were not added for atmosphere. Maas describes a structural test she applied to each one, and writing the first explicit scene came with its own cost: she told a LARF News audience that typing it felt as though every person she knew was reading over her shoulder, “and then also thinking, oh my god, my grandmother is going to read this.” [paraphrased from audio] The principle behind accepting that discomfort was consistent throughout.
I don’t throw in the sex just to have it in there, even though I’m a huge fan of erotic romance. I tried to make the sex tied to the plot and the characters, and make it feel like it is a real result of what’s happening in the world and these characters’ lives.
Advance planning has a limit in her process. When a character refuses to follow the prepared path, she describes the consequence of forcing it through.
The times when I try to force characters into following a path/outline I’d planned have always resulted in disaster (aka it sucks, and I have to cut/rewrite everything), so I’ve learned the hard way to trust my gut, even if it means veering away from earlier plans and into new, exciting/terrifying territory.
The personal thread
Her marriage inside the magicRhys and Feyre’s bond was not assembled from genre conventions. Maas named its origin at the May 2017 Baltimore signing for ACOWAR, drawing a direct line from her marriage to her husband Josh, whom she met at Hamilton College.
Rhys’ bond with Feyre is inspired by the bond I feel with Josh. It’s because of him that I can only really write about true love, because I have it every day. [paraphrased from event notes]
emiesnook.wordpress.com, “Meeting Sarah J. Maas! (Again) – Prose and Purls”The female friendships in ACOWAR carry the same weight as the central romance, and Maas gave a personal reason for that choice in the Cosmopolitan interview. At the book’s signing events she was watching those friendships land with readers in ways that matched what she’d intended.
I also love writing about the dynamics between these female characters and the bonds that they form together, because they’re just as crucial as the romantic bonds. My friendships with other women have been as defining for me as my romantic relationships.
What she wants us to sit with
Equal love and the scars of warThe Rhys-Feyre relationship was designed to demonstrate something against the backdrop of what Tamlin represented. Maas made her preference explicit in the Cosmopolitan interview, and it is the premise the whole trilogy’s emotional argument rests on.
I’m more interested in exploring relationships between equals. Guys who treat women like human beings, I find that to be very attractive.
Feyre’s sexual history was written to be unremarkable by design, and Maas described what she saw at signings when that choice connected with readers.
I love that at my events I have women of all ages coming up to me, glad to have a heroine who’s not slut-shamed. Slut-shaming really sets my blood boiling and it’s important for me to have sex-positive books.
ACOWAR is the war book in the trilogy, and Maas has said the emotional cost of that war was never meant to dissolve into a clean ending. In a TODAY interview she described what she believes characters who carry that kind of weight are owed by the story.
It felt like a natural thing for my characters to face emotional consequences. The fate of the world sometimes is on their shoulders. That’s going to leave a mark on them. [paraphrased from audio]
The heroines she writes are built to hold that weight without being simplified by it: women who can, as she put it in a TODAY interview, “be very feminine, but then also go kick the you-know-what out of the bad guy and save the world and look good doing it” — not because they are invincible, but because surviving costs something real.