A Court of Splintered Harmony Review: I Loved It. I Also Have Complaints.

The Gilt List · At a glance

A Court of Splintered Harmony review: takeaways

• The experience

  Fast, emotional, full of impending disaster. One of those books you’ll want to read in one go.

• What I loved

  Azriel’s opening, the well-handled different POVs, Nesta’s competence, and the constant invitation to form theories.

• What frustrated me

  Rhys’s authority over other people’s choices, some of the Cassian/Nesta conflict, and the amount of cross-series information needed.

• Who should read it

  Established ACOTAR readers who like high-stakes ensemble fantasy and can tolerate unanswered questions. If you’ve skipped Crescent City, expect some extra homework…you can read that series or use my cheat sheet.

• My verdict · 8/10

  I enjoyed the hell out of it, great read, 8/10, and as with all good books, I have arguments against it too. Because real lit makes you feel.

I finished A Court of Splintered Harmony and I cannot wait for the larger story to really get going. This first instalment flew by far too quickly. I swear this enormous book felt about a hundred pages long at most. Sarah J. Maas is extraordinarily good at getting me back into Prythian as if I never left, and making me turn the page even when I’m cross with half the people on it.

And I am cross with a few of them. Yeah, you’ll need to keep reading to hear why, because it’s a real issue. And I’m also disappointed that Maas, a brilliant writer, couldn’t make this story easy for those who haven’t read every series and spin-off before it. But there is a lot to love. Like Azriel, the dialogue, the impending doom, the way the different points of view just really work. So, let’s get into the review, and why you should or shouldn’t read it, spoiler-free, with spoilers at the end, of course.

This review begins spoiler-free. The spoilers are tucked away in dropdowns farther down, so don’t open those until you’re ready. For more reviews like this, check out my review section.

Should you read A Court of Splintered Harmony?

Yes. If you’ve followed ACOTAR this far and still want these characters in your life, you’ll get them again and fall back into the groove easily. It was a whirlwind experience from page one, and I never lost the desire to keep going, even though by the end of the story it honestly felt like nothing really happened (this is definitely a setup/story-promise kind of book).

If you’re coming to it after a long break from the series, though, do yourself a favour and refresh your memory first, or you will be so, so frustrated. I ended up needing a recap while actively reading, which is not usually how I want to spend my evenings. I don’t normally want to Google what happened in another book and interrupt my reading time. And frankly, an author as good as Maas should be skilfully weaving that information in so we don’t have to, especially at this point in her career. It could be that she wants us to take all her books as one enormous series, and this is her way of forcing our hand. But it made the reading experience less exciting, let’s say, than I would have liked. (I made a reader cheat sheet and ACOTAR 6 guide partly because I needed one myself, so if you don’t want to read Crescent City or reread Silver Flames, this is your get-out-of-jail-free card.)

How does A Court of Splintered Harmony feel to read?

The opening Azriel chapter made me cry. I was listening to it on my drive to drop the kids off at school that morning, and…sobbing. Luckily, I live in Florida where sunglasses are still a thing in October. What this tells me is this book will have you invested, fast, which is hard to do. Maas has this way of leaning on big topics, like slavery and trauma, to make readers feel certain ways about certain characters. It’s a trick she likes to pull out for many of her series beginnings. If you hate that sort of thing, it happens here again.

Azriel has always been fascinating to me. He seems more internal than his brethren, and getting inside his head really shows he needs CBT, stat, or at least some internal family systems work. Does this work for a character so ancient? I’m not sure. It certainly works well to show how emotionally stunted he is right now, and I’ll bet my bottom dollar we will see him come to life, and thrive as the series goes on.

The broader plot has that racing feeling I love about Maas. The impending doom is almost constant. You can tell something big is in the room with us, but we still get the funny, the tender, and the quirks that make this found family feel like home. Plus, the mysteries she is always able to weave together, so delicately, are right there under every sentence. You could smell that certain scenes were going to bring the drama before they did, and that’s what a good story should bring to the table.

Do all the points of view work?

Swapping POVs like this is NOT easy, and NOT for a new writer. Keeping the distinct voices and transitions clear would be enough to make any editor’s head spin. So the fact that we glide from one POV to another, barely noticing the shift, is incredible. You never get that moment of, sigh, I don’t like this character’s POV, because you’re in it and the drama is happening before you even notice the room has changed.

I love that these relationships keep growing too. We don’t go back to arguments from book one unless they have yet to be resolved, and we don’t lean on the same boring tropes to create melodrama, like miscommunication or someone hiding a secret so everyone can argue and make up over and over. This story keeps you in that tension, makes you feel the pain of an actual relationship tearing apart over a real fundamental issue between them, and doesn’t try to smooth things over. Many stories, even the big titles out there, have not achieved this. So, bravo to that.

Having said that, the amount of arguing between the characters didn’t bother me or feel overdone. I was all in. BUT eesh, don’t come for me with pitchforks when I say that some of the arguments didn’t feel true to the characters we’d come to know and love. They clashed with the characters’ morals and choices they’d made in the past. And when you start asking questions like, “Wait, why is that character so bothered?” You’re looking less at the characters’ choices, and more at the writer’s choices, which pulls you out of the story and ruins the magic.

Do you need to read Crescent City before A Court of Splintered Harmony?

If you’re tracking the crossover beyond this book, I also have a Crescent City 4 and ACOTAR crossover guide, covering what Maas has confirmed and what is still theory. The opinion below is about my experience reading Splintered Harmony without the whole of Crescent City behind me.

I hadn’t read Crescent City before picking this up. I know, shocking. I often have to spoil books for myself to write about upcoming releases and news, so I can know quite a lot about a story without reading it completely. And also, I mean, I have picked it up a little, but I didn’t get very far. I lead a busy life, and looking at the length when I have so many other reads to get through is really what made me say, “You know what? I’ll read this one first.” Which, to be fair, is exactly what’s going to happen to someone who picks up ACOTAR as their first Maas series and tries to read it all the way through to the end. They’re not necessarily going to Google, “Should I read a different series first?” Which is a massive problem because…

Sarah didn’t make it easy to understand what the heck was happening in this book without reading the others. I’m sorry, but I was completely lost, and I had to spoil parts of other books I intended to read just to get through this one. Which, for a reader, just feels really yucky. To get halfway through an expensive hardback you paid for, and realise you have to go buy three more massive, expensive books is not cool if you can’t afford to do that and don’t have the time.

Issues included: There were magical items mentioned without enough backstory, and huge, huge chunks of conflict I couldn’t take sides on because I didn’t understand what had happened well enough. By about chapter 7, I had to give in and read the extra spoilers I needed in order to keep going. It got a bit better around chapter 12.

I don’t want to mistake my own missing background knowledge for a problem every reader will have, though. Some will have read every series and will be very excited. But others will have read every series a while ago. Let’s be fair, these books aren’t new, and some people simply won’t remember what happened.

I think this issue should have been handled with real care by the editors, maybe an editor on the team, or betas on the team, who had not read other series to point these issues out. Or maybe, that care could look like a glossary in the back, or a teaser chapter in the front that explained some of what happened in other books with a spoiler warning. Or maybe scenes we needed from other stories, told from these characters’ POVs. Journal entries, even. SOMETHING other than characters suddenly arguing with no real orientation. Also, this can be done well, by the way. There are series, and authors that manage this to the point you can pick up a book in the middle of the 12-book series and completely follow it. Kelley Armstrong is one of them, and there are thousands more.

So this is my biggest complaint about this story. I’ve seen it done, I know it can be done, and it wasn’t done.

A writer can reward longtime fans for their memory without making everyone else feel they’re walking out of the test with an F and are an “outsider” now. Especially if they’ve read the rest of ACOTAR which is the whole darn book series this is in.

My problem with Nesta, Rhys and Cassian

I love seeing Nesta (who I didn’t much like in the beginning of the series) become more capable and more certain of herself. What bothers me is the way Rhys continues to behave as though his authority automatically extends to her choices. Rhys is not Nesta’s king. He has real responsibilities, and those deserve to be taken seriously BY HIM, but there is a difference between having an argument about danger and deciding someone else doesn’t get to choose what is good for them, because you’re a big king of your own world. Hello? Maybe Nesta is the queen of her world, have you considered that shadow daddy big boss man?

This complaint might come from the fact that I despise a bossy man. I might be biased. But also, not really. Imagine if the president of your country started bossing around a parliament or council member in another country? That’s just not really how this works.

Rhys became such an important romantic hero in part because of the choices he allowed Feyre to make. We love Rhys BECAUSE he wasn’t Tamlin, the big bossy man, telling everyone what they can and can’t do because he owns some land. Watching Rhys exercise control over other women while apparently resisting the idea of becoming High King is…ach…BUT but… Maybe deliberately uncomfortable. I think that might be a theme we’re about to explore.

What happens to someone when they get a little bit of power? What happens when they want something and have a bit of power? Will we get another Tamlin situation but from their POV? Will this, in a slight way, be a Tamlin redemption arc? Maybe maybe. Ok no Tamlin will always be an ass. I just want the story to recognise that contradiction on the page at some point please.

As for Cassian, I understand why he has reasons to be upset with Nesta…ah, no, I can’t lie, screw him too…he’s also not her boss. He needs to do less griping about teamwork, when teamwork means doing what he wants, and more supporting the saving of lives. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

I have much stronger feelings about particular scenes, which I’ve hidden in the spoiler section below.

And yes, I liked the Feyre and Nyx scenes

Again, don’t come for me. I’ve seen a lot of people online complain about the amount of baby and breastfeeding material…I have four children. Do you KNOW how time-consuming breastfeeding is? You breastfeed, it takes an hour, baby falls asleep, and you have to feed them every two hours. That means you now have an hour to rest and get politics done before…oops, time to feed again. Every. Two. Hours. 24/7 BTW. It doesn’t stop just because you want to sleep. So, I think her talking, and thinking about it all the time was realistic. That’s how it is, folks, and there’s a special feeling of comfort and glowy joy that comes with it for a lot of women too.

Now, do I appreciate other scenes that came out of that? The ones that almost sexualised it? No. I got the real ick. Beta readers were needed there. Also, the description of her breasts still being swollen after feeding didn’t ring true to my own experience, so I don’t know, it all felt really wrong.

My spoiler-free verdict

I loved reading this. I finished it wanting the next book, wanting to talk about the magic and spoil all of it for everyone, and tie all the threads together, and figure out what would happen next. I wanted to send several characters to a very long group therapy session, and yell at them, and cry with them. The pace, dialogue, emotional pull and sheer volume of possible theories are exactly why I keep coming back to Maas. She is incredible time and time again. Criticism comes for every good story. If I have no complaints? That’s when I know the book is eh.

So…read it if you’ve missed Prythian, love a big ensemble, and enjoy solving mysteries. Go in knowing it asks a lot of your memory and that this is only one movement of a bigger story, so the ending will feel a bit cut short.

Spoiler discussion: the characters, the magic and that ending

Major spoilers below. Open only the sections you want to read. If you’d rather spend your time on the possibility that followed the ending, I’ve put those in a separate 10 biggest Splintered Harmony fan theories article.

Spoilers: Nesta’s choices, Rhys’s power and Cassian’s anger

Ok, I know I went hard above with my choice of words, but I really had a lot of feelings around this. Which is GOOD. Taking sides, and feeling this dramatic about it is a sign the writer knows what they are doing. So let me start there. And then tear Cassian a new one. The conflict around Nesta helping Bryce’s world was the point where I got properly annoyed. For a group that makes such a big deal of protecting others and standing against terrible powers, the Inner Circle seemed remarkably uninterested in the people Nesta was trying to help…while begging others to help them, and oh, making them feel bad in the process aka Lucien. I kept coming back to the same question: is that hypocrisy a deliberate part of the story, or are we supposed to accept their reaction because Rhys is Rhys? And Cassian is hot?

The weapons Nesta is allowed to have, then denied, make that question deeper. Having Rhys decide when Nesta can have back objects tied so closely to her power and choices does not suddenly become generous because he eventually relents. It’s frankly a little gross. Like, I was pleased for her, go Nesta, but I wanted the question of who had a right to take them in the first place to matter. And not go…oh well you really wanted to protect Nyx and us at the naming ceremony so I guess you’ve proved you’re good enough for us to give a bit of power too now…but don’t let it go to your head, we can take them back at any time.

Cassian’s anger frustrated me for similar reasons. I believe the fear, and I believe he’d be hurt she didn’t come to him. But that’s not the choice Maas made. Cassian in this story was hurt because “they were not a team”. Meanwhile, he sees her as ready and capable as soon as she backs his team with physical violence. Then to top it off, the way Cassian treats Nesta, using her as a sexual object, while messing her feelings around, shutting her out, and punishing her for SAVING LIVES is just insane to me. This is war, not high school. If we’re going to fracture a relationship I care about, give me a conflict that earns that scale of damage.

Spoilers: Elain, Azriel and Lucien deserve adult conversations

Elain gets treated as though everyone else’s political and romantic preferences are the deciding factors in her life, and I’m honestly really upset about it. I feel for Lucien, I do, what a poor baby Lucien who just wants to love and snuggle. But a mating bond does not give him ownership, she doesn’t even owe him a hello. A woman does not OWE anyone a smile. And the fact that some people are questioning if she does is NUTSO to me. If a man came up to you in a bar, claimed to be the love of your life, then proceeded to make your life a living hell because you were creeped out, you would be the victim, not the villain. And Rhys? Rhys is getting to decide what she can and cannot do now? Please. Can we not make Rhys a Tamlin 2.0 I thought we established he enjoys choice. And come on Lucien! I’m sorry the girl you’re stalking is freaked out and doesn’t want to jump your bones, but does that mean people now have to die? That you can’t show up for the agenda and, you know, stop world wars?

These are adults. The world is on fire. Surely an alliance cannot be allowed to collapse solely because someone doesn’t want the romance other people have chosen for her.

I want Elain to have a proper life and an actual opportunity to discover what she wants without one of her sisters, a mate, or a shadowsinger doing the deciding for her. Let the woman make mistakes, she’s young, and those mistakes should not be punished with mass murder and she should not be forced into a room with a predator willing to hurt other people because she won’t give out to him.

Having said all this, her going with Mor was the best choice ever. I was squealing and clapping for her, and side eyeing Lucien and Az the whole way. Please yes. Let her do something for herself, let her show how amazing she is. Or the villain she might turn out to be (I have theories).

Azriel is someone I adore too, big time, but he needs to look at the effect his secrecy and self-loathing have on his decisions, and GO TO THERAPY. He’s relying far too much on a woman who can make the shadows go away for him (Edward from Twilight 2.0 I swear).

This whole storyline really brought me to life though, and has clearly caused arguments in comment sections. It’s brilliant writing.

Spoilers: Bryaxis, Nyx’s Naming Day and the little moments I loved

I loved the Nyx material. And the naming day disaster that happens is so well drawn out, you feel it coming, and it grips you when it does. The moment with Bryaxis also gives Nesta her moment to fight through the fear in a way the other characters couldn’t muster.

There’s even a practical little combat detail I adored! How often in fantasy do we think, “She’d never be able to fight like that in heels”? So the dress making it harder for Nesta to fight was chef’s kiss.

Then we have the mystery of Clotho’s ribbon and the priestesses’ song. Yes yes. Like, what exactly does the thread do? Does ending Nyx’s ceremony early mean something? Does Clotho have an agenda we don’t know about yet? I was drawing spider-and-thread connections almost immediately, which is what you want in a good fantasy. I explore those possibilities in the separate theories article because it would be too much here.

Spoilers: Nesta’s winnowing, Gwydion and the Prison ending

That ending, though. It starts with the crawling mist near the beginning of the book, and Nesta trying desperately to winnow. We get it again in the middle. And at the end? It finally happens. What a beautiful way to connect the story and give us a thing to watch throughout. And then the Prison, Gwydion and that theft of the sword leave us with just enough of a cliffhanger to be excited for the next book, without ruining the ending by leaving you unsatisfied. It’s artful.

I am especially interested in the possibility that Nesta’s future is tied to the lost Dusk Court, too. I wonder if all of these boys bossing her around will lead her to take her own crown and put her damn foot down. That’s what I want to see. And if that’s what this book sets up? Genius.

Come argue about ACOTAR with me on Instagram and TikTok

Still thinking about Nesta? Or already building a conspiracy board? I’ve been posting my theories as I go, especially the suspicious business with Clotho’s thread and those Stygian spiders. I’ve picked two of my own posts below, one from Instagram and one from TikTok. Both have spoilers, obviously. Come tell me where you agree, where I’m talking nonsense, and what I missed.

Instagram: spiders, threads and more theories

My Splintered Harmony fan theory post. Spoilers ahead.

See the theory on Instagram and join the comments

TikTok: Clotho’s thread theory

Spoilers for Splintered Harmony. I spotted that thread at Nyx’s Naming Day and immediately thought of the Stygian spiders. Please tell me I’m not the only one.

Watch my Clotho theory on TikTok and join the discussion

For the Writer: What Splintered Harmony Gets Right (and Where It Lost Me)

Put my reader hat down for a moment and the editor’s hat goes straight on, it’s a top hat by the way, editors are fance you see.

There are two craft lessons I keep coming back to with this book. First, pacing is not the same thing as a lot happening. This is largely a setup story, yet I raced through it because the POV changes, dialogue and emotional tension made every scene feel like something was about to happen. That’s a skill worth studying if you’re writing fantasy or romantasy.

The second is reader orientation. You can have all the lore in the world, but if your reader doesn’t understand why a character is furious or why a magical object matters, the emotional payoff suffers. And if a beloved character suddenly makes a choice that clashes with everything we know about them, you need to show the reasoning clearly on the page. Otherwise we start looking at the author instead of the story.

These are the kinds of problems I look for when editing manuscripts. If your opening isn’t making the promise you think it is, start with my fantasy and romantasy first chapter critique. For bigger questions about character arcs, worldbuilding, the romance and the plot across the whole novel, look at my developmental editing services or the fantasy manuscript critique.

Or join my separate writer email list for craft notes, revision tools and writing resources. The reader emails are for the TBR. These are for the WIP.

A Court of Splintered Harmony Review: Frequently Asked Questions