Do we like Sarah J. Maas?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean record on harm and no mistreatment allegations, but little public stance or charity of her own to point to.
Maas is the New York author who more or less built romantasy as a genre. She started Throne of Glass at 16, and it came out in 2012. Since then she has written 16 books across three series: Throne of Glass, A Court of Thorns and Roses and Crescent City.
The legal stoush attached to her name wasn't her own. In 2022 two Virginia Republicans sued to stop Barnes & Noble and a school district giving young readers access to A Court of Mist and Fury and Gender Queer. A judge dismissed it, ruling the obscenity law behind it was “unconstitutional on its face”. The article I read names Maas only as the author, not as a party.
On the harm check, I found nothing. No statements from her about trans people, women, migrants, vaccines or the climate, and no reporting that she has campaigned or donated for anything harmful. Her publisher is Bloomsbury and her recent coverage is about books and screen rights. That's a clean sheet, but also a quiet one, and a quiet record is a thin record.
The recent news is a comeback. On Call Her Daddy she said she has “the rights back to everything now” after the Hulu ACOTAR series was shelved. She wants to be closely involved in any adaptation. A Jezebel columnist, otherwise admiring, said that does sound controlling. Fair enough: she wants her own story told her way.
So would we support her? Yes, comfortably. There's no scandal, no slide into grievance and no harmful company. What stops it being a nine is the lack of evidence that she has used her enormous platform to lift anyone else up.