A Court of Thorns and Roses

A Court of Thorns and Roses is the first novel of Sarah J. Maas's second series and the book that moved her from assassin fantasy into faerie romance. Bloomsbury published it in May 2015, and Maas has said the story began as a retelling of Beauty and the Beast and the border ballad of Tam Lin before the courts, the wall and the Great Rite took over the story.

The narrator is Feyre Archeron, nineteen, unsentimental and the only member of her family still willing to hunt for food. When she kills a wolf in the woods, a creature arrives at her door to demand payment for it, and she is taken across the wall that separates the human lands from the faerie realm. She is lodged with Tamlin, High Lord of the Spring Court, who is courteous, guarded and hiding how much his court has lost.

Prythian is the real architecture of the book. Seven courts answer to seven High Lords, each defined by a season or a quality, and a treaty and a curse connect the courts to the human side of the wall. Something older is loose in the country and draining the courts of their power, and Feyre learns how much of what she was warned about the fae was a lie. Maas tells the story through Feyre, so the rules of the world and the cost of them arrive together.

The series did not stay a single book. Three novels followed, along with a novella placed between the third and the fourth, and the later volumes move between Feyre's account and other points of view as Prythian's war spreads. The first book stands on its own as an introduction to the courts, the wall and the bargain Feyre takes on, and everything that follows assumes it. It is the natural place to begin.