There’s a general consensus that reading is a good thing, and reading from actual physical books an even better thing. There are some books, though, that test that theory to destruction and one of them was launched this week to universal rejoicing, with midnight queues at bookshops reminiscent of the 90s launch parties for Harry Potter. Funnily enough the publisher in both cases here is Bloomsbury.
It’s not often I’m ashamed of my sex but this makes you question the wisdom of universal suffrage. It’s quite astonishingly badly written
It is, of course, the latest instalment of A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas. This one, called A Court of Splintered Harmony has got a pink cover shading to orange and the thing about it is that almost all the readers – at a conservative estimate say nine in ten – are young women. The Telegraph reports that ACOTAR is huge with middle-class women. It’s not often I’m ashamed of my sex but this makes you question the wisdom of universal suffrage. It’s quite astonishingly badly written.
I tried, dear knows, I tried to read it but I kept stumbling over sentences like this:
‘Cassian’s lip curled. I didn’t come to debate the ethics of this invasion. And if you have nothing of value to tell me, then we’re done here. Enjoy your perfectly balanced holiday of bullshit.’
Or: ‘The Queen of Valhallan smoothed a tattooed hand down her furs. “Prythian has its toys”, she preened. “We shall have our own.” She lifted her blue eyes to Rhys, lips curving upward. “If you wish to arm yourself with the Dread Trove, to meddle with the Cauldron, then don’t be surprised when we, too, retrieve our lost birthrights.’
Or: ‘A month after the baby’s arrival, I’d been needed in the Court of Nightmares, and had donned one of my usual gowns. It somewhat lessened the Get in line or there will be hell to pay speech I was delivering when breast milk had begun darkening the front of my gown.’
It’s that combination of portentousness, archness and banality which is SJM’s distinctive touch.
I could go on endlessly but it’s romantasy, a genre with which you may be unfamiliar, otherwise known as fairy porn – that is, a grandiose mythical backdrop to lots of sex featuring hot people with pointy ears and wings. It’s Game of Thrones with superpowers and longevity. The characters refer to their experiences five centuries ago and there’s a mating bond between the High Lord and High Lady of the Night Court which means they can communicate by telepathy, her sister can winnow, which I think means transport herself over distance, and another character has a handy truth-telling power – and that’s just for starters. Spouses are mates, men are males, every infant is a babe, the deity is the Mother and people swear ‘by the Cauldron’ when they’re not using contemporary swearwords.
The verbs are terrible; characters ‘slam’ into things, ‘growl’, ‘preen’, breath ‘singes’ throats, people ‘breathe’ by way of speaking, teeth ‘flash’, women ‘stalk’, thoughts ‘propel’ and you never look at something when you can ‘survey’ it; problems are ‘trashed’. Let’s see how it all rubs off on readers.
As with all these genres, the thing is to strip it to its essentials. Just as 50 Shades of Grey, without the stupid eyemasks, can be boiled down to one element (how attractive you can be with lots and lots of money) so A Court of Splintered Harmony, without the pointy ears and superpowers, can be summed up as a small group of people jostling for position, with a peculiarly American fixation with status and real estate.
Consider the following: ‘Nesta had taken a seat in the highest section of the theatre… The hall was half full and most of the patrons sat in the downstairs sections. A middle-of-the week performance was rarely packed to the rafters but she liked it this way… She could afford a better seat – in fact there was a gilded box several levels below that technically belonged to her. She’d been donating nearly all of her court paycheck to this orchestra and a few others.’ Look, you can either be a player in a quasi-Icelandic saga, circa 900 AD, or you can be a tax-efficient corporate donor to an arts institution circa 2026; you can’t be both.
But the thing is, Sarah J. Maas has sold 75 million copies of her books; she’s onto something. That something was summed up by the actress, Anne Hathaway: ‘There’s a reason why people freak out about ACOTAR [A Court of Thorns and Roses]… such yummy reading.’ If that were all, it would be mean to carp, but nope, the word is that this is a feminist faery tale, on account of the women characters being so very empowered.
Stuart Lee, who is an Oxford academic and IT specialist at the faculty of English, says it is a ‘pioneering book about romance and fantasy… It balances the fantasy side really well with the relationships.’ Prof Lee’s speciality is Tolkien; let me say right now that Tolkien wouldn’t have had anything by Sarah J. Maas in the house; he was a fastidious man. This is the guff you get when academics adopt popular culture, in this case fantasy.
A Times columnist has suggested that men should read the book to know what women really want, to which a friend of mine declared he was very much up for trying out the idea. I advised him against; the High Lord, for instance, is not only physically irresistible but his powers include being able to spirit clothes off a girl and, after congress with his mate, ‘with a wave of his magic, we were both cleaned.’
Then there’s the perennial justification for bad books: that at least people are reading. A number of the young women in the queue for A Court of Splintered Harmony declared that this was their gateway back to books. You know, literacy may be overrated. If it’s a choice between Sarah J. Maas and watching the washing machine go round and round, give serious thought to the wash cycle.
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