Sarah J. Maas Has a Taylor Swift Problem

Welcome back to Prythian, the fictional faerie world Sarah J. Maas has held us hostage in for years now (complimentary). A Court of Splintered Harmony, the sixth book in Sarah’s hugely successful A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) series, hit shelves on October 27, 2026, after a five-year wait from its predecessor. That sound you’re hearing right now? That’s the internet collectively falling into Maas Hysteria.There’s no denying the chokehold Sarah has over romantasy readers. Ever since she exploded onto BookTok during the pandemic, her career has taken on a pop-star level of celebrity status. She sells out bookstores for midnight book release parties like Harry Styles sold out his MSG residency. Professional celeb gossiper Deuxmoi covers blind items about her. To announce the next two books in her ACOTAR series, she went on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast. You know, the same venue Chappell Roan used to reveal her new relationship status and Zayn Malik used to break his six-year interview hiatus.It’s fitting that her career has taken off like a pop star’s because each new release feels like a Taylor Swift album drop. The noise on social media surrounding their new releases could literally shake the ground you walk on—and you just know they’re going to immediately sell out everywhere. Both their audiences are hugely engaged with sky-high, emotionally specific expectations, but it’s also what’s starting to get them into trouble.Both women have reached godlike levels of commercial success in their respective fields—and each has faced questions about whether the artistry of their recent work still matches that commercial success. Like Taylor, Sarah’s success and her brand might be the very things usurping her creative output.Taylor and Sarah built their careers on being true Machiavellians. They have visions for their work that extend beyond one album or book. Sarah described her latest installments to the ACOTAR world as “a four-part volume-defying narrative.” Part one takes place in the newly released A Court of Splintered Harmony (ACOTAR 6). Parts two and three will be released together in January as A Court of Forgotten Melody (ACOTAR 7). Part four has yet to be announced.If that sounds confusing, well, welcome to the Maasverse. Like Taylor, Sarah has created a universe for her fans complete with its own languages, inside jokes, and, of course, an intricate network of fan theories that would take an FBI task force decades to disentangle. Not only does each book in her series build on the last, exposing twists and turns that were hinted at four or five books ago, but she leaves breadcrumbs for readers from the larger Sarah J. Maas multiverse connecting her three worlds together: Erilia (Throne of Glass), Prythian (ACOTAR), and Midgard (Crescent City).And it’s making her millions. Since 2015, Maas has sold more than 75 million copies. Her net worth sits somewhere around $60 million. She’s also building on it in a way that was previously only reserved for the likes of The Hunger Games and Twilight—books that crossed over to Hollywood via box-office-breaking films—even with a canceled TV project that is back on the market after several years of development hell. Target released its own ACOTAR-themed collection. Knix dropped a line of lingerie, complete with court-specific panties and negligees (the Nesta Silver Flames corset retails for $150). The series has even ventured into the world of luxury goods with its For Love & Lemons collection, where a Night Court minidress will run you almost $700.In terms of critical success, though, both women have seen a downward trend with their last works: Taylor’s The Life of a Showgirl and Sarah’s Crescent City: House of Flame and Shadow.Kirkus called House of Flame and Shadow “pure entertainment, for better or for worse.” Meanwhile, Miss Willa’s Book Club, a popular account on TikTok, said it was an “info dump” noting that, “It was so long and so dense that I absorbed so much less of it.”“This is kind of the issue with these authors who decide to build these huge universes,” BookTokker Antoinette Cea-Lopes says. “The audiences are left waiting until the end of the universe in order to determine whether or not the author is any good.”It speaks to the pressure monoliths like Sarah and Taylor face when releasing new work. There is an intense pressure to write more and release faster than ever. However, it’s not enough to write a good story anymore; it needs to be epic. It needs to bring in new fans while upping the stakes for old fans.When fan expectations are this high, how can anyone—even the reigning queen of faerie smut—ever live up to that hype? Where is the line between giving fans more at the expense of good writing?MANON BELIOT//Getty ImagesAs a longtime Maassassin myself (yes, she totally has her own form of Swifties), I hold the bar high because I know what she is capable of. I’ll admit that when she announced a four-part volume-defying narrative, I worried the art was being sacrificed in the name of having a Maasverse. The bigger the worlds got and the more they crossed over, the less attention to detail there would be in the writing. As much as I’d like to see Manon and Nesta have a queen off in the future, that doesn’t mean it serves the larger narrative arc. Precision has always been Sarah’s strength, but the ballooning of her worldview feels more like a brand move and not an artistic one.Taylor, too, has been accused of putting the brand before the art. The Life of a Showgirl has fans split on whether the album represents a deeply personal account of her happily ever after era or if it’s a full-on marketing cash grab.The truth is good art is counterintuitive to good branding. It requires time and space, something Sarah, who publishes at a breakneck pace these days (16 books in 14 years over multiple series, to be exact), hasn’t taken advantage of since the early days of her career.But that’s the thing about branding—it requires a near-constant stream of content. When Sarah first started gaining popularity on TikTok, she already had two completed series for readers to dive into: Throne of Glass and ACOTAR. She then decided to revisit the ACOTAR world and turn it from a trilogy into a massive multi-part series.Even if I don’t always know where Sarah is going with a plotline, there’s a moment at the end of each book when, as she would say, even the gods give pause. A moment when I can feel in my bones something big is on the horizon. When the story shifts from character study to fantasy epic. But those high-impact moments were missing from the last two ACOTAR offerings, A Court of Frost and Starlight and A Court of Silver Flames.Despite the criticism, there’s a reason Taylor and Sarah have amassed the fan bases they have and that stick with them no matter what products they produce. Even my recent disappointment won’t stop me from purchasing future reads by her (shoutout to Trope Bookstore’s midnight release party!). Part of being a Maassassin—and a Swiftie—is a willingness to go on the journey with them. And as they’ve both proven, they operate well from the underdog position. Just when the world counts them out, that’s when they strike the hardest.Although I sometimes like to think of myself as a Suriel (hot, pale, mysterious, gossipy), right now, I can’t see the truth when it comes to the future of Sarah J. Maas. I’ve been wrong about her before and I’m happy to be wrong again. Maybe she’s like the Asteri (IYKYK) gobbling down the book market and pop culture at large—at the risk of her own implosion. Or maybe she’s the true High Queen of Faerie, just biding her time until her vision reaches maturation.One of her characters once asked, “What if we go on only to more pain and despair?” Dramatically, that is sometimes how I feel as a reader. But I’m reminded of Sarah’s aptly written response to the question, a response that reflects all my feelings about reader loyalty: “Then it is not the end.”