A Court of Mist and Fury

About A Court of Mist and Fury

A Court of Mist and Fury is the second novel in Sarah J. Maas's A Court of Thorns and Roses series, published in 2016 by Bloomsbury. It picks up immediately after the events of the first book: Feyre Archeron survived the deadly trials Under the Mountain and helped defeat the evil Fae queen Amarantha, but she is deeply traumatized by what she endured and by what she was forced to do to survive. She is returned to the Spring Court and to her betrothed, Tamlin — but finds herself suffocated by his overprotectiveness, by the Court itself, and by a grief and rage she cannot name or process.

Under the terms of a bargain made Under the Mountain, Feyre is bound to spend one week per month with Rhysand, High Lord of the Night Court — the most feared of the Fae courts. What begins as what she expects to be a captivity becomes something far more complicated. The Night Court, and Velaris in particular, is nothing like she imagined. Rhysand and his inner circle are not what they appeared in the first book. As Feyre begins to discover her own power — she alone among human-turned-Fae absorbed the powers of all seven High Lords — she also begins to reckon with what freedom and love might actually look like.

The novel is substantially longer than its predecessor and considerably more explicit in its romantic content. Maas develops the relationship between Feyre and Rhysand slowly over hundreds of pages before their relationship becomes physical. The novel has been praised by fans as one of the best entries in the series and has been enormously influential on the "romantasy" subgenre.

The ACOTAR Series

The A Court of Thorns and Roses series currently includes five novels and a novella. All five have been the subject of banning attempts, primarily targeting the series's sexual content rather than any single book. The series is marketed as new adult or adult fantasy despite being commonly shelved in young adult sections; this ambiguity about its intended audience has driven much of the controversy around it in school libraries.

Maas is among the most-read fantasy authors of the past decade. The ACOTAR series, along with her Throne of Glass and Crescent City series, has sold tens of millions of copies worldwide. Her readership is primarily composed of teen and adult women, and devoted fan communities around her work are among the most active in contemporary genre fiction.

Why A Court of Mist and Fury Has Been Banned

A Court of Mist and Fury has been banned or challenged across 12 states in 77 school districts. The challenges are almost exclusively focused on the novel's explicit sexual content. Scenes between Feyre and Rhysand are described in detail that exceeds what is typical in the young adult genre. Some challenges have also cited the novel's violence and its exploration of trauma and mental health.

The banning of the ACOTAR series — all five books of which appear in PEN America's data — reflects a broader pattern of challenges to romantasy and new adult fiction shelved in teen sections. Whether this content belongs in a school library is a genuine question of collection management, but advocates for the books argue that readers seeking them out are doing so purposefully and that removing them from school shelves leaves teenage readers to find them in other, less supervised contexts.