ACOTAR Books in Order
- 01A Court of Thorns and Roses
- 02A Court of Mist and Fury
- 03A Court of Wings and Ruin
- 3.5A Court of Frost and Starlight novella
- 04A Court of Silver Flames
- 06A Court of Splintered Harmony 27 October 2026
- 07A Court of Forgotten Melody 12 January 2027
- 08Book eight announced, no date
Why the book numbers do not match. A Court of Frost and Starlight is a 229-page novella rather than a novel, so it is usually filed as 3.5, which makes A Court of Silver Flames the fourth book. The publisher counts the novella as book four, which makes Silver Flames the fifth and the next one the sixth. Same five books either way, two ways of counting them.
When Does ACOTAR Book 6 Come Out?
Book six is A Court of Splintered Harmony. Book seven is A Court of Forgotten Melody. Both carry a Valkyrie Cycle subtitle: Splintered Harmony is Movement I, Forgotten Melody is Movements II and III. It has been five and a half years since A Court of Silver Flames came out, long enough for the detail to go quiet: who owed what to whom, which bargains are still standing, where everyone was when the last page turned. There is comfortably enough time before October to bring all of it back.
Want a Free Notion Tracker for Your ACOTAR Reread?
It is somewhere to write down what happens as you read, so book six opens with all of it still fresh. The pace is yours, or there is one already set to finish all five by 27 October.
ACOTAR Characters
The cast below fills in as far as you have read. Anyone you have not met yet shows only the book they first appear in.
Every card below is sealed. The spoiler control needs JavaScript, and with it switched off the cards stay that way rather than opening into a cast list you did not ask for.
The Archeron Sisters
Feyre Archeron
The narrator of the first three books
A nineteen-year-old huntress keeping her family alive in a village on the wrong side of the wall. Everything that follows starts because she kills the wrong animal.
Where she ends up
She is Made High Fae by the end of book one, becomes High Lady of the Night Court in book two, and by book five is a mother. Her narration hands over after book three.
Nesta Archeron
The eldest sister
Cold, sharp and unhelpful in the first book, and the most argued-about character in the series by the fifth.
Where she ends up
She is Made against her will in book three and spends book five, which is hers, working out what to do with the result. Her arc divides readers more than any other in romantasy.
Elain Archeron
The middle sister
The gentle one, who gardens and was engaged to a human lord before any of this started.
Where she ends up
Also Made in book three, and given a gift she does not want. Her story is the one readers most expect to be told next, and her romantic ending is the most active argument in the fandom.
The Night Court
Rhysand
High Lord of the Night Court
The most powerful High Lord alive, and the one everyone in the first book warns her about. What he is doing and why is not clear until later.
Where he ends up
The warnings turn out to be a performance he spent fifty years maintaining to protect a city nobody else knew existed. He becomes the second lead.
Cassian
Illyrian general
Bastard-born, enormous, and the warm one. Commands the Night Court’s armies and is the reason its found family holds together.
Where he ends up
Book five is as much his as Nesta’s. His patience through it is either the best thing in the series or the most frustrating, depending on the reader.
Azriel
Spymaster
The quiet one, who carries shadows and a knife with a name and says very little.
Where he ends up
Still largely unwritten, which is why he is the centre of the fandom’s loudest argument. Book six is widely expected to be his.
Morrigan
Third in command
Travels between continents in a heartbeat, and holds a court together by force of personality.
Where she ends up
Book four gives her a private admission that recontextualises how she has been behaving since book two. Readers have wanted more of it ever since.
Amren
Second in command
Small, ancient, and not what she appears to be. Older than the land she lives in.
Where she ends up
Book three asks her to give up the body she is wearing. What she chooses afterwards costs her most of what made her frightening.
Nyx
Introduced in book five
The next generation, and the reason book five’s final act is as tense as it is.
Where he ends up
His birth nearly kills both parents, and the cost of preventing that falls on someone else entirely.
The Spring Court
Tamlin
High Lord of the Spring Court
The first book is his love story. He is a High Lord under a curse he cannot explain and is not allowed to.
Where he ends up
What reads as protection in book one reads as something else in book two. Where he ends up is one of the few threads the series has left open.
Lucien Vanserra
Emissary
Red-haired, one-eyed, and the only person in the Spring Court who treats her like a person. A refugee from his own family.
Where he ends up
Book three gives him a parentage he does not know about and a bond he cannot act on. Five books in, he is still waiting for his own story.
Ianthe
High Priestess
Charming, well-connected, and extremely helpful, which is the problem.
Where she ends up
She sells out everyone who trusts her, and the way she is dealt with in book three is one of the series’ most satisfying moments.
The Other Courts
Helion
High Lord of the Day Court
Runs the largest library in the world, breaks spells nobody else can, and enjoys himself enormously.
Where he ends up
Book three reveals a fifty-year-old secret about his private life that changes someone else’s entire history.
Eris Vanserra
Heir to the Autumn Court
Cruel in public and hard to read in private. Everyone who knows him disagrees about what he actually is.
Where he ends up
Books four and five suggest the cruelty is survival in his father’s court, and that he has been quietly protecting people he could not defend openly.
Graysen
A human lord
Engaged to one of the sisters before the wall came down.
Where he ends up
He does not handle what happens to her well, and his prejudice ends it.
The Ones to Be Afraid Of
Amarantha
The first book’s antagonist
She has held the whole of Prythian for forty-nine years by the time the story starts, and everyone is too afraid to say her name.
Where she ends up
Book one ends with her, and with three trials and a riddle that cost more than the reader expects.
The King of Hybern
The war
The reason the wall exists, and the reason it does not stay up.
Where he ends up
He drives books two and three and is dealt with at the end of the third, by someone nobody was watching.
Koschei
Unfinished business
Named early, bound to a lake, and still there when book five ends.
Where he ends up
Nowhere yet. He is the most likely antagonist of what comes next, and the fifth book leaves him deliberately unresolved.
Briallyn
Book five’s antagonist
A mortal queen who asked the Cauldron for youth and was given something else.
Where she ends up
She works for someone larger than herself, and the way she is stopped is the proof of book five’s whole argument about its lead.
Older Than the Courts
The Suriel
A truth-bound faerie
Catch one and it has to answer you. Every important thing the narrator learns early on, she learns from it.
Where it ends up
It helps her one last time in book three, and it costs it everything.
Bryaxis
Whatever is under the library
Kept in a pit beneath the largest library in the Night Court, and not described, because it looks like whatever frightens you most.
Where it ends up
It fights on their side in book three in exchange for one thing it has never had, and then it is gone.
Clotho
High Priestess of the library
Runs a library that doubles as a sanctuary, and writes with magic because she cannot use her hands.
Where she ends up
She is the quiet argument the series keeps making about what survival looks like afterwards, and she is central to book five.
Emerie
Introduced in book five
Runs a shop in an Illyrian mountain village and is not supposed to.
Where she ends up
She becomes one of three, and what the three of them do at the end of book five has not been done before.
The Pairings
Named only once you have finished the published books, because the list itself gives away half the cast.
Feyre and Rhysand
Settled from book two, and the spine of everything after.
Nesta and Cassian
Book five is theirs. Slow, difficult, and the reason that book is 757 pages.
Elain and Lucien
Canonically bonded and entirely unresolved. The most argued-about pairing in the series.
Elain and Azriel
Not canon, and the reason the fourth book’s bonus chapter is the most discussed twenty pages Maas has written.
What Happens in Each ACOTAR Book
Pick a book. The setup is spoiler-free; the plot stays shut until you open it.
Every book is listed below. With JavaScript enabled you get one at a time, chosen from the covers.
A Court of Thorns and Roses
A huntress kills a wolf in the woods and something comes to the door to collect the debt. She is taken across the wall into a country she has been taught to fear, and the estate she is taken to is under a curse nobody there is allowed to name.
SpoilersRead the full plot of A Court of Thorns and Roses
Feyre is taken to the Spring Court by Tamlin under an ancient treaty. She learns the blight on Prythian is not a blight, breaks the curse too late, and follows him to the mountain where Amarantha has held the seven courts for forty-nine years. Three trials and a riddle later she wins, dies, and is remade High Fae by the seven High Lords. She leaves with a bargain she made in desperation still outstanding.
A Court of Mist and Fury
The turn the whole series is built around. Surviving the mountain turns out to be the easy part, and the bargain comes due one week in every month.
SpoilersRead the full plot of A Court of Mist and Fury
Feyre is not recovering, and the Spring Court's answer is to keep her safe by keeping her still. Rhysand's bargain takes her to the Night Court, where the villain of book one turns out to have spent fifty years performing that role to protect a hidden city. She trains, finds a court that treats her as an equal, and learns she is mated to him. Hybern moves, the Cauldron is used on her sisters, and she ends the book choosing to walk back into the Spring Court alone.
A Court of Wings and Ruin
The war book, and the end of the original arc. Seven courts that have never agreed on anything have to agree on something.
SpoilersRead the full plot of A Court of Wings and Ruin
Feyre dismantles the Spring Court from inside, then spends the book assembling an alliance across courts that loathe each other. The armies meet, the Cauldron is turned against Hybern, and the cost is spread across most of the cast. The King of Hybern is killed by the sister nobody was watching. The book closes on an ending that holds if you stop here.
A Court of Frost and Starlight
A novella set in the winter after the war. It is the series catching its breath, and quietly setting up the one after it.
SpoilersRead the full plot of A Court of Frost and Starlight
Velaris rebuilds. Feyre and Rhysand settle into peace, Nesta does not, and the gap between them widens into the thing book five is about. Mor tells Feyre something she has never told anyone. The final pages hand the series to Nesta and Cassian.
A Court of Silver Flames
A new narrator takes over, and the series goes darker and more explicit than anything before it. At 757 pages it is also the longest book of the five.
SpoilersRead the full plot of A Court of Silver Flames
Nesta is drinking herself through the aftermath of the war and is given a choice between the mountains and the human lands. She trains, climbs, and finds two friends, while Briallyn and Koschei move against the courts. The Blood Rite ends with three women who should not have survived it. The last act is a birth that nearly kills Feyre, and Nesta gives up what the Cauldron gave her to stop it.
How Spicy Is ACOTAR?
Spice Rating Scale
- Closed door, no on-page content
- Mild. Kisses, fade to black
- On-page intimacy, restrained
- On-page intimacy, multiple scenes
- Explicit and frequent
- Erotica-adjacent, dark themes
Content Warnings
A Court of Thorns and Roses
- Violence
- Sexual content
- Sexual assault
- Torture
- Death
- Captivity
A Court of Mist and Fury
- Sexual content
- Sexual assault
- Abuse
- Violence
- War
- Captivity
A Court of Wings and Ruin
- Violence
- War
- Death
- Sexual assault
- Grief
A Court of Frost and Starlight
- Sexual content
- Grief
- War aftermath
A Court of Silver Flames
- Sexual content
- Addiction
- Grief
- War
- Sexual assault
- Suicidal ideation
A Court of Silver Flames carries the heaviest of these. Its opening chapters sit with addiction and self-destruction at length. If that is something you avoid, it is the premise here rather than a passing scene.
Where to Buy the ACOTAR Books
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A Court of Forgotten Melody
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Book Eight
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