“The Wall” is a trope that popped up a lot in YA literature around the time I was growing up, so I get it, it’s intriguing and cool, and I think it can be done really well.
But SJM, smfh girl.
This is supposed to be the thing that not only separates the humans and fae, but KEEPS their worlds separate. There was a whole war and treaty and the humans escaped slavery and oppression, and now there’s a magical wall that keeps them apart. And at the beginning of ACOTAR, people in the village are worried and fearful because it seems like fae have been getting through the wall a lot recently, implying that something is wrong, and they would be so interesting except for the fact that fae and humans go through the wall all the fucking time?
Tamlin was sending soldiers over it to find a human girl. Then Tamlin crosses it to bring Feyre back with him. And then he magically knocks Feyre out on the journey back to Spring Court, so we don’t get to see HOW they cross the wall, and I wouldn’t even mind it if she explained it later in the book and it pertained at all to the plot (like maybe when Feyre is sent home by Tamlin?) but no, we get none of that.
They cross it multiple times in ACOMAF to meet with the human queens. When Tamlin was acting as an ally of Hyburn, he crossed it again to kidnap Feyre’s sisters at some point.
THEN, in ACOWAR, she tries to tell me that the big bad thing the bad guys are trying to do is break down the wall????? The Hyburn army should apparently just do what all the main characters have been doing the whole series, because it’s almost like the wall doesn’t really exist or do anything. There’s literally nothing stopping them from crossed over and doing what they want.
She really could have fleshed out the world a bit and made the wall something interest. Is it physical and/or magical? Maybe there are secret gates or portals where fae can get through? Maybe only high lords have the power to pass through the gates? Or maybe since it’s a magic wall, there’s some sort of price? Something important enough that not many would consider trying to get to the human world? It just could have been so much cooler :(