A five-year wait ended at midnight on Tuesday when the sixth instalment of Sarah J Maas’s multi-million-selling A Court of Thorns and Roses series reached shelves, and the commercial moment was marked in County Antrim by an independent bookseller betting on fan devotion.
About 30 hardcore fans braved torrential rain and high winds in Carrickfergus to attend a midnight release event at The Secret Bookshelf, an independent bookshop just off the town’s main street, on Monday evening. Friends Katie Mccabrey and Amy Savage were among those hoping to secure one of the first copies when the embargo broke.
For the shop’s owners, the event was as much about sustaining a business model as celebrating a launch. Jo Zebedee, who runs The Secret Bookshelf alongside her husband, Chris, devised the midnight release, drawing on her experience helping to run midnight launches of the Harry Potter books.
“We are a big fantasy shop, I’m a fantasy, sci-fi writer so it’s in my blood, so we very much celebrate the world’s that sometime can be difficult to find a space in mainstream books,” she explains. “There’s something around the excitement of books and just that whole vibe of here’s something to really celebrate.. we just wanted to bring that all together to make a fun night.”
Jo enlisted local crafters to help run the event, and local businesses gifted treats to attendees for the late night, a small-scale example of how a single release can ripple through a town’s high street economy. She believes it is the role of independent bookshops like hers to foster excitement among young people for reading. “I think events is when a bookshop comes to life,” she says. “It’s about a love of books and tonight is just such a love of books.”
The commercial context is hard to ignore. Maas is credited with fuelling interest in the romantasy genre, which has skyrocketed in popularity through discussion on social media, particularly “BookTok”, the literary side of TikTok. A Court of Thorns and Roses, named after the first book, is set in the fictional world of Prythian, and fans have flocked in their droves to follow the protagonist’s dealings with love and the fae.
Five books have been published so far: A Court of Thorns and Roses (2015), A Court of Mist and Fury (2016), A Court of Wings and Ruin (2017), A Court of Frost and Starlight (2018) and A Court of Silver Flames (2021). Maas announced the latest instalment, A Court of Splintered Harmony, back in March, and publishers already have the next product in the pipeline: the seventh book, A Court of Forgotten Melody, is due on 12 January 2027, ensuring demand will not be left unsatisfied for long.
On Monday night, though, the value on display was loyalty. David Jeroen and Sami Patrick were hard to miss among the stacked shelves, wearing their finest mythical attire, crowns and elf ears included. The pair’s love of reading prompted them to start an Instagram account dedicated to books, and they spent their two-year “bookiversary” in an apt place. Sami, who says the five-year wait led her to some of Maas’s other series, which she prefers, was looking forward to talking about a favourite genre with likeminded people. “I’ve always been a fantasy reader and it’s just escapism really,” she says. David agreed: “You can’t ride a dragon in real life so you can read about it.”
Meanwhile, fans kept busy before the drop with felting, friendship bracelet making and a dedicated fan-chat area for discussing theories, some in pyjamas and slippers. “I couldn’t sleep, I’ve been so excited - I’ve been hyped up for two weeks straight,” Katie says. Amy joked that she would have to re-read a book she was 300 pages into, having been too distracted by the launch. “We’re all here tonight because we all share just needing to escape from everyday life in common and this is a great way to do it,” Katie adds. For booksellers and publishers alike, that appetite is precisely the market, and with a seventh instalment already scheduled, the question is whether midnight queues like this one become the new normal.