Why Crescent City convinced me I should never read ACOTAR

Covers of the Crescent City books by Sarah J. Maas

If you were to dive into the bookish spaces of the Internet, you are likely to find thousands, if not millions, of posts about how much people love the "A Court of Thorns and Roses" series, typically abbreviated to ACOTAR. People talk about how the series got them back into reading after stopping for years, how much they swoon over the characters, how different first-time reactions are canon events, and how they look forward to seeing how people's opinions change as they read the stories. ACOTAR is a cultural milestone for many millennial readers.

And I have never read it.

Now, I put off reading any of Sarah J. Maas' books for years. And a good part of the reason I put them off was that I have strong feelings about what ACOTAR did to the book industry - in that it ruined the YA genre. For a genre that used to be mostly for teens, ACOTAR came in with a 19-year-old protagonist, opposed to the usual 16, and because it did so well, publishers started pushing out similar titles. Gone were the coming-of-age stories and characters teens could relate to, and in their place was a market that catered to adults. When I saw Ally Carter last year, she even mentioned that the YA books she started her career with - the ones that I grew up with and related to as a teen - would never be published today because the characters are now considered "too young." The "New Adult" genre came and flopped as a way to try to fix this issue, with many bookstores and libraries still shelving it with YA books. And a trade secret not many people know: if a series starts in a genre, it can't change - even if the characters age out of the genre. As a result, ACOTAR still is technically YA, even though the series itself is incredibly adult.

However, I did once try to put those feelings aside and read the series. In fact, it was so long ago that I actually have the original A Court of Thorns and Roses cover sitting on my bookshelf instead of the updated one. I was so bored I DNF'ed the book....twice. I legitimately had forgotten I had tried reading it before, started reading it a second time, and was SHOCKED to find a bookmark in there. I figured Sarah J. Maas just wasn't an author I would be interested in; however, I then started reading the Throne of Glass series. It's fun, I'm enjoying it (though Celaena has annoyed me enough that I had to take a break from it). But the book of hers that caught my attention was always House of Earth and Blood.

I am a girl who loves heist books. I adore urban fantasy settings. I mentioned I wanted to start my SJM journey with House of Earth and Blood on TikTok, and everyone in my comments went crazy telling me not to. In fact, I was told not to even buy the books until I had finished all of the A Court of Thorns and Roses books AND Throne of Glass. Now, I hate being assigned homework for my reading hobby, so I kept writing the series off. Over and over. Until one day, I got all three Crescent City hardcovers on sale and decided I was going to read them anyway. And I immediately fell in love. I read all three of these 800+ page books at speeds I haven't achieved since I was in high school. The plot, the worldbuilding, the characterization, I adored. In fact, I finally understood why Sarah J. Maas got the hype she does because I finally felt it when reading these books.

And to all the people who told me I needed to read her entire backlist to understand the books: I was never confused, and to be honest, she explained everything you needed to know. There were some fun Easter Eggs I may have missed, but overall? Everything was explained.

But that is not the reason I won't be reading ACOTAR - the reason is because of the crossover that Crescent City had with the series that put SJM on the map. Spoilers incoming for Crescent City and for ACOTAR below:

At the end of House of Sky and Breath, Bryce Quinlann portals out of her world and into the world of ACOTAR. A world where the villainous Asteri had previously ruled and been overthrown by the fae, who also happened to be Bryce's ancestors. There she meets some of the big names from the series: Rhysand, Nesta, Amren, Feyre, and Azriel. Bryce spends about 25% of the book with them: discovering that Azriel's knife is the twin to the Starsword, finding out exactly how the Asteri were able to get her ancestors to come to Midguard despite not even a whole generation passing after they defeated them, and overall, Bryce learning that the fae that came before were just as terrible as the fae leaders she already knew.

But here's the thing about this crossover: it's boring. So. Incredibly. Boring. In fact, if I had been the editor for this book, I would have cut out about 100 pages from this section because so much of it seemed to be extended out for the crossover's sake, and not for any plot relevance. However, the fact that every single answer to all of the problems for the series was in Prythian made it an annoying and cliché deus ex machina. It could have been a chance to bring new readers to the series, ones who had avoided ACOTAR because of the hype machine that fuels it. Instead, it felt wedged in there to fix the corner that Sarah J. Maas had written herself into, giving Bryce all the magical answers before sending her on her way.

I've heard other critiques of the crossover from ACOTAR readers who also hated it, saying the different characters were acting out of character, which may or may not be true. If you consider it's written from Bryce's perspective, and the characters are dealing with what can best be described as an alien, some of it might make sense. However, that argument also worries me about reading ACOTAR. If these characters annoyed me like this, who is to say they won't annoy me more? I already wasn't impressed with Feyre and Tamlin (though I know everyone hates him) in the little of the first book I remember reading.

I had truly hoped the crossover would make me want to read ACOTAR. It would let me see into the story's future and make me excited to find out how they got there. Instead, I got a boring look at why I had hated the series in the first place. And there's not enough convincing in the world that will make me want to pick it up.

The Crescent City series? I will recommend it to the moon and back. But A Court of Thorns and Roses? I'm content to never hear a thing about that series ever again.