A Court of Splintered Harmony came out on 27 October, marking the return of Sarah J. Maas’s popular series. Many bookshops sold out during midnight parties. The story follows the Night Court as a death god wakes. Maas said, "A lot was going on in her life that she had to sort."

Five years after her last ACOTAR novel, the Night Court returns with a war to mop up and a death god waking in a lake.

A Court of Splintered Harmony came out on 27 October, and many bookshops marked it with midnight parties the night before. Most of them sold out. It is the sixth book in Sarah J. Maas's A Court of Thorns and Roses series, which readers call ACOTAR, and it follows the last novel by five years. In that time fans re-read the lot, argued over it and built theories on every scrap Maas left lying around.

The story

Prythian is still hurting from the war, and the Night Court wants to bring its factions together. It will need allies, because Koschei the Deathless is getting stronger. The death god has been confined to a lake for thousands of years. His power is growing, and it is pulling in people who want the human lands for themselves. The cover carries the line "What was broken will be remade," which Maas shared on Instagram on 17 August when she revealed the title.

Splintered Harmony is Movement I of what Maas calls the Valkyrie Cycle. A Court of Forgotten Melody, due on 12 January 2027, carries Movements II and III. Under three months separate the two books, a short gap for a series that once left readers waiting for years. Maas hasn't said whose point of view leads, and Bloomsbury's descriptions avoid naming most of the major characters.

The five-year gap

Maas explained the wait on Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy podcast on 4 March, the same episode where she gave the dates for both books. A lot was going on in her life that she had to sort through, she said, and it took a while to find the right story and the right headspace. Once she had it, the book kept growing. The first part alone ran past 400 pages, and she said the whole thing would have been too long for any glue to hold. She split it.

Sarah J. Maas in brief

Maas was born in 1986. At sixteen she started writing Throne of Glass and posted the early chapters on FictionPress under the title Queen of Glass. It became one of the most popular stories on the site. Bloomsbury bought it in 2010 and published it in 2012. ACOTAR followed in 2015, and Crescent City in 2020. The third Crescent City book, House of Flame and Shadow, won the 2024 Goodreads Choice Award for romantasy. Her publisher says her books have sold more than 75 million copies and appear in forty languages.

Launch week

The run-up was messy. Leaks from the book went around online before publication, and Maas issued a statement asking fans to stop sharing them. The crowds at the midnight parties suggest it did no damage to demand.

Next date to mark is 12 January.