Everything You Need to Know About the Upcoming ACOTAR Books

After 19-year-old Feyre Archerson kills a faerie disguised as a wolf, she is taken to the land of faerie, Prythian, by her captor, Tamlin, an immortal faerie and the High Lord of the Spring Court. During her time with Tamlin, Feyre pursues her love of painting and starts to find her footing living in Prythian. However, dark things are in motion across Prythian, and everything seems to come back to a mysterious female faerie who has all of the High Lords fearful. Sensing danger incoming, Tamlin decides to send Feyre back to the human realm where he has ensured that Feyre’s family is taken care of. The night before she leaves, Feyre and Tamlin make love, and Tamlin confesses that he is in love with Feyre. Though she loves him too, she cannot say the words aloud.

After some time in the human realm, Feyre’s sister Nesta convinces Feyre to return to Prythian and fight for Tamlin. When Feyre arrives in the Spring Court, she is captured by Amarantha, the mysterious female faerie and the new High Queen of Prythian. Feyre is taken Under the Mountain, the dark, underground court and fortress ruled by Amarantha, where she finds out that in her absence, Amarantha had taken over Prythian by force, putting all of its inhabitants under a curse, including Tamlin. Feyre journeys to Amarantha’s faerie court. Amarantha tells Feyre she'll release the curse if Feyre can solve the following riddle: 

“There are those who seek me a lifetime but never we meet, and those I kiss but who trample me beneath ungrateful feet. At times I seem to favor the clever and the fair, but I bless all those who are brave enough to dare. By large, my ministrations are soft-handed and sweet, but scorned I become a difficult beast to defeat. For though each of my strikes lands a powerful blow, when I kill I do it slow...”

The other option is making Feyre complete three trials to save Tamlin and Prythian. She is aided by Rhysand, the High Lord of the Night Court, who in exchange for the help, makes Feyre promise to spend one week each month with him in the Night Court. When Feyre agrees, he marks her with a swirled tattoo on her arm and a tattooed eye on her palm.. 

After succeeding in each trial, Amarantha announces that their agreement said she would release the curse but she never said when she'd release it. She begins to kill Feyre by snapping each bone in her body, and right before the final bone is snapped, Feyre realizes the answer to Amarantha's riddle is love. With the riddle solved, all of Prythian's inhabitants are released, including Tamlin and Rhysand, who kill Amarantha in a rage. With the help of all of the courts, Feyre is resurrected as a High Fae.

In the second installment of ACOTAR, Feyre must deal with the trauma she underwent in her time Under the Mountain. As her marriage to Tamlin nears, Feyre’s nightmares consume her, causing Tamlin to become overprotective and keep her trapped at home. Feyre is skeptical and feels stifled, moreso, Tamlin tells her she will not be High Queen, leaving Feyre wondering what her official title will be once they marry. On the day of their marriage, Feyre has a panic attack and Rhysand saves her, whisking her away to the Night Court. Feyre’s opinion of Rhysand hasn’t changed much but she realizes the Night Court is not as bad as she thought it was.

Rhysand tells Feyre that a war is coming and the wall that separates the faerie realm from the human realm will be destroyed if that happens. When Feyre returns to the Spring Court, Tamlin and Lucien question her about the Night Court. When Feyre enters Lucien's mind during the interrogation, she accidentally reveals that she, like Rhysand, is a daemati, a rare type of Fae able to read and influence someone's thoughts. 

Rhysand takes Feyre to Velaris, the capital of the Night Court, and the House of Wind, Rhysand's personal residence, to meet his inner circle, where Feyre learns that the King of Hybern plans to use the Cauldron, the source of the powerful life-force from which all of Prythian comes from, to remove the wall between the faerie and human realms, and she decides to ally with Rhysand to counteract the Cauldron. Feyre also learns that she and Rhysand are mates. 

After Hybern attacks Velaris, he captures both of Feyre’s sisters and transforms them into High Fae, proving that the Cauldron works. Unbeknownst to Tamlin, Feyre becomes the High Lady of the Night Court and then returns to the Spring Court with him, ready to act as a spy for the Night Court.

A Court of Wings and Ruin picks up right where Maas left us, with Feyre spying on Tamlin and the King of Hybern, waiting for the perfect moment to turn his forces against him. Feyre’s anger at the thought of what happened to her sisters is burning hot, but she manages to play it cool in front of the Spring Court. 

She passes information from the Spring Court to the Night Court through her mating bond with Rhysand and eventually manages to destroy Tamlin’s court by revealing the fact that he sold out Prythian and his people by allying with the King of Hybern to get Feyre back in the Spring Court. The High Lords then meet with other allies to forge a front against the King of Hybern and a war ensues.

While Feyre and her sisters heal and train, Rhysand gets word that the King of Hybern has attacked the Summer Court and no aid has arrived. When the inner circle gets there, they find the Summer Court slaughtered, and after another meeting with the High Lords, a huge wave of power ripples over the land, and Rhysand tells everyone that the Cauldron has broken the barrier between the faerie and human realms. In destroying the wall, the King of Hybern kills Feyre’s father. 

Elain, Feyre’s sister, then kills the King, and Rhysand sacrifices himself to restore the Cauldron. The High Lords once again pool their power together to resurrect Rhysand, and peace is restored to Prythian, with Feyre calling a meeting to discuss a new treaty with the human and Fae lands.

True to its title, the fourth installment takes place during Winter at the Night Court. Feyre wakes up to snow falling outside, but the upcoming Winter Solstice brings up old memories of the Spring Court with Tamlin and of Rhysand saving her. While Feyre looks through the damage in Velaris, she meets Ressina, a faerie who assures her that Feyre’s work in saving the faeries has not gone unappreciated. Feyre and her friends start rebuilding the Night Court and preparing for the festive winter season.

When the Winter Solstice arrives, Feyre wakes up to presents from Rhysand and the festivities begin: they have a snowball fight, Feyre gets cake for her birthday, and Nesta arrives to celebrate with them. After the festivities, Rhysand changes the mark on Feyre’s hand to the Night Court’s logo (a mountain with three stars). With the change done, Feyre is now a permanent member of the Night Court. The next day, Tamlin asks Rhysand if Feyre will ever forgive him, and Rhysand doesn’t know how to answer his question.

The most recent installment in the series switches the focus from Feyre to her sister, Nesta. Nesta has always been swift to anger and slow to forgive, and ever since being turned into a High Fae against her will, she has been struggling to adapt to the strange, deadly world she inhabits. 

Worst of all, she cannot get past the horrors of the War with Hybern and everything she lost with it. What ignites her anger more than anything (or anyone) else, however, is Cassian, whose position in Feyre’s Night Court keeps him constantly in Nesta’s orbit, but the chemistry between them is undeniable, and it only burns brighter every time they come near each other.

A Court of Silver Flames starts with Nesta thinking about the Cauldron and the consequences it had on her life until Cassian enters her apartment and tells her to sort herself out and get ready to go to Feyre’s home. Nesta speaks with Feyre and tells her that she’s tired of being constantly supervised. She tries to get out of training but Feyre doesn’t give her any options, Rhysand warns Cassian that Nesta’s dangerous, and they discuss her powers since the Cauldron broke. 

Cassian then meets up with Morrigan, one of the members of the inner circle who was sent to Vallahan to set up a treaty with the king. Mor tells Cassian that Vallahan isn’t interested in peace and that Cassian should visit a mortal queen named Vassa, who might be useful. On their way to meet the mortal queen, Cassian and Mor discuss the disappearance of multiple soldiers while on patrol and the rumor that the mortal queens are planning on starting a war.

Nesta finally starts training after Cassian takes her to an isolated training ground when he realizes that she was self conscious. Training together finally allows the pair to talk instead of argue. After meeting with Elain, Feyre and Nesta’s third sister, Nesta’s anger fires up and she blames Elain for their father’s death. Nesta summons her silver flames and Elain asks Rhysand to let Nesta go home. 

Nesta and Cassian are summoned by Azriel to the river house when they talk about Briallyn, one of the mortal queens who has been building an army. Koschei, an immortal, has teamed up with Briallyn and Beron, the ruler of  the Autumn Court, to find the Cauldron again. Azriel suspects the group will be after four Trove items, and they already know where three of them are: The Mask (for raising the dead), The Harp (for opening doors), and The Crown (for influencing). 

The inner circle wants Nesta to look for the fourth Trove item, which she finds a potential location for in the Bog of Oorid. Cassian, Nesta, and Azriel head to the bog, where the water is black and devoid of life. Azriel vanishes and the pair search for him, but instead, find Eris’s missing soldiers. After a close encounter with a kelpie, Nesta feels the Mask, which has been put away in a warded room, calling out to her.

After more training, Nesta sees the Harp and knows that it’s below the prison. Her and Cassian go find it, and Nesta gets a vision of war. Briallyn appears and traps Nesta, who then uses the Harp to escape. Nesta and her friends, Gwyn and Emeria, complete an obstacle course that was set up by Cassian and Azriel to qualify for the Blood Rite, which is how you can officially become an Illyrian. 

After a dangerous journey, the trio make it to the base of the sacred mountain where the tradition takes place and, even though they are tired and injured, they decide to climb it. Cassian and Azriel find Eris, who seems unaffected by the foggy brain everyone seems to have, and find out it’s because he’s holding on to one of Nesta’s power infused weapons. Eris then puts a knife to Cassian’s chest, and Cassian and Azriel realize that he’s being controlled by Briallyn.

Koschei then captures Cassian and takes him to Briallyn, who curses him with the same brain fog affecting everyone else. Nesta sees her friends reach the top of the mountain but is attacked and loses her sword. In the middle of the fight, Cassian interrupts Nesta and asks her to kill him. Briallyn had arranged for Nesta to be taken to the Blood Rite in order for her to attack Cassian. Briallyn wants Nesta to trade the Trove for Cassian. 

Briallyn orders Cassian to “kill” so he kills himself instead of Nesta, causing Nesta to go wild and explode at Briallyn. Mor and Azriel arrive while Nesta is cradling Cassian and tell her that something has gone wrong with Feyre’s pregnancy and childbirth. Nesta uses the Harp to help Feyre give birth. The Cauldron agrees to Nesta relinquishing her power in exchange for Feyre and the baby’s lives. 

Cassian survives, and he and Nesta decide to get married. 

Announced on March 6th, 2026 during Maas’s appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast, the sixth installment in the ACOTAR series is set to come out on October 27th, 2026, and we can fully expect it to be packed full of the romance, danger, and intrigue that readers have come to love about the series.

 With the release of the book’s synopsis, we can expect Koschei, the chthonic immortal being from another dimension that the Prythian Fae refer to as one of their Old Gods, to be at the center of the chaos. Though he’s been stuck in the mountain lake for a millennia, the threat of his return has all of Prythian on high alert, bringing back powerful allies that are hell-bent on reclaiming what was once theirs: the human realm. 

The Night Court cannot idly stand by while innocent faeries are being attacked, but with Prythian still recovering from the Hybern war a couple of years ago, banding together is going to be more difficult than they believed. To make matters worse, the inner circle is still reeling from recent betrayals and revealed truths. What divides them seems irrevocable, but to defeat Koschei’s threat, they must find a way back to each other and recover their former alliances. 

Additionally, scheduled to be published on January 12th, 2027, A Court of Forgotten Melody is the upcoming seventh novel in Maas’s ACOTAR series, however, fans diverge on whether or not ACOTAR 6 and 7 will heavily lean on Maas’s Crescent City series. 

Both A Court of Splintered Harmony and A Court of Forgotten Melody are now available for pre-order anywhere you can buy books, and based on what we know about A Court of Splintered Harmony and the synopsis for A Court of Forgotten Melody, we know that Prythian is struggling and might never be the same again. Traditional alliances are crumbling and nothing seems sufficient enough to repair them. With Koschei’s continued threat on the horizon, unity is crucial and farther out of reach than ever before. 

The Night Court’s Inner Circle will disperse far and wide, searching for any advantage against Koschei and his allies. Prythian’s peace hangs by a thread but hope can always be found in the darkest of shadows and the Night Court will have its own part to play in the looming crescendo.