A Court of Silver Flames

By Sarah J. Maas

Genre: Fantasy Romance
Published: 2021
My Rating: ★★★★★
Storykeeper’s Verdict: A Story Worth Keeping

Have you ever read an entire series only to discover that the character everyone else seems to hate is somehow the one you understand the most?

Of all the books in the A Court of Thorns and Roses series, A Court of Silver Flames is the one I cannot stop thinking about. It’s raw, frustrating, painful, empowering, and, for me, deeply personal.

I’ve heard countless readers bash this book because it’s a “Nesta” book and they strongly dislike her. Some won’t even give the book a chance. Yes, I know. Nesta is mean. Nesta is selfish. Nesta treated Feyre horribly. Nesta pushes everyone away. Nesta says things specifically because she knows they’ll hurt. I won’t argue with you about that. In fact, I hated Nesta, too, for a little bit.

But, guess what….

Nesta is still my favorite character and I’m here to defend her and this whole book. Her story is worth telling.

You don’t have to like Nesta to understand her.  When Silver Flames begins, the war with Hybern is over. Everyone is healing, rebuilding, and moving forward.

Nesta isn’t.

She’s drinking too much. Sleeping with strangers. Spending money recklessly. Isolating herself. Lashing out at the people who love her and doing everything possible to destroy the relationships she has left. Her story is not pretty. And it’s not supposed to be either.

Nesta is drowning in trauma, guilt, anger, grief, and self-hatred. Some of that pain comes from the war and what happened to her during it. Some existed long before she ever entered Prythian. Instead of expressing that pain in a way that’s easy for other people, or readers, to sympathize with, Nesta weaponizes it.

She knows how to hurt people, so she does. That doesn’t make the things she says okay. Trauma can explain behavior without excusing it and I think that’s one of the reasons I connected so strongly with this book. Sarah J. Maas didn’t give Nesta a version of trauma that was easy to love. She gave her rage, shame and self-destruction. She believed that she was so undeserving of love that she’d rather make everyone hate her than risk discovering they might leave her anyway.

But Nesta fights her way back.

She doesn’t wake up one morning and decide she’s ready to become a better person. She resists it. She resents the people trying to help her. She falls backward. She struggles. She has moments of progress followed by moments where it feels like she’s right back where she started. Her healing isn’t linear and neither is ours.

Slowly, though, Nesta starts doing something she hasn’t done in a very long time.

She starts showing up. She trains. She gets stronger. She finally allows herself to form friendships.

Eventually, the woman who believed she deserved absolutely nothing begins to discover that maybe she is stronger than she thought. That she does deserves love. And it wasn’t her sisters that fixed her or Cassian that saved her, even though he did help her tremendously along the way, but because Nesta started doing the work herself.

DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE VALKYRIE!

Nesta, Gwyn, and Emerie becoming Valkyries are easily my favorite part of this entire series. I loved them so much.

These are women carrying different wounds and different histories, but they don’t magically heal one another. They just refuse to let each other face everything alone. Watching their friendship grow alongside their physical strength was one of the most satisfying parts of Nesta’s journey for me. Without giving away spoilers, they accomplish the impossible together and it’s so damn inspiring.

Nesta begins this book determined to isolate herself from everyone. She ends up finding her people. She finds her own Inner Circle.

This is where Silver Flames stopped being just another fantasy novel for me.

I know what it means to carry difficult experiences with you. My work as a firefighter has also shown me how stress and trauma can follow people long after the moment itself has ended.mAnd I know what it feels like to find somewhere physical to put all of that energy.

I’ve trained in jiu-jitsu and Muay Thai for years. For me, training gives stress somewhere to go. It requires me to be completely present. It gives me something physical to work toward when the things inside my head aren’t nearly as easy to organize. So, when Nesta began training, I understood it. Not the Fae-warrior-and-magical-sword portion, of course. But the feeling behind it?

Absolutely.

There is something incredibly grounding about discovering what your body can do. About becoming stronger. About walking into a place carrying everything that’s weighing on you and walking out having left some of it on the mat. Watching Nesta find that outlet felt familiar to me.

So Yes, I’m Defending Nesta Archeron. I don’t love her because I think she’s flawless. I love her because she isn’t. I don’t need female characters to always be kind, agreeable, selfless, or easy to root for. Nesta’s story isn’t powerful to me because she becomes perfect. It’s powerful because she chooses to keep going.

So, you don’t have to like Nesta. You don’t even have to forgive everything she’s done. But I will absolutely defend her right to have this story. Because sometimes the character who is hardest to love is the one who needs a healing story the most

Nesta Archeron is my Valkyrie.

★★★★★

A Story Worth Keeping

~Chelsea

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