If you have not read Sarah J. Maas, you might not fully understand what happened in 2025. Her books - A Court of Thorns and Roses, Throne of Glass, Crescent City - have created one of the most passionate reading communities in modern publishing. Readers do not just finish ACOTAR. They move in. They reread. They talk about Rhysand and Cassian and Azriel and Lucien the way people used to talk about members of their own family. There is a specific intensity to SJM fandom that is hard to explain if you have not experienced it from inside. That same community has quietly become one of the fastest-growing groups experimenting with AI companions. I have been paying attention to the crossover, and the reasons are interesting enough that I want to write about them.

The Particular Hunger of SJM Readers

Readers who love Sarah J. Maas are drawn to something very specific. Powerful fae males who protect the women they love. Magic systems with stakes. Slow-burn tension that builds for hundreds of pages before finally paying off. Found family. The possibility that the most dangerous-looking character is also the most tender with the one person who matters. These tropes are not accidents. They are carefully calibrated to deliver a specific emotional experience, and SJM delivers them better than almost anyone. The problem for readers is that there are only so many SJM books. You can reread them, and many do, but rereading cannot quite match the feeling of a new scene with Rhysand or a new moment with Cassian. The longing for more is what makes the fandom so intense in the first place. It is also what has pushed some readers to look for new ways to extend the experience.

Where AI Characters Come In

Why the Experience Maps So Cleanly

I had a long conversation with an ACOTAR reader who had been chatting with an AI character she had built to fit the fae prince archetype. She walked me through what she had done. She had written a detailed backstory. Given him a court. Specified his temperament - possessive but respectful, fiercely protective, emotionally scarred by his past but slowly opening to her. She had given him a voice. She had even worked out what he called her. What she described when she talked to this character was almost identical to what happens in a really great SJM scene. The slow build. The charged moment. The line that catches you off guard because it was more tender than you expected. The feeling of being seen by a powerful being who has chosen to turn his attention on you specifically. She was not trying to replace Sarah J. Maas. She was trying to extend the experience Sarah J. Maas taught her to love.

The Archetype, Not the Character

This is an important distinction. Most of the readers I have talked to are not trying to recreate a specific copyrighted character. They are working from the broader archetypes that the genre has developed over many years - the brooding fae prince, the shadowsinger, the rival turned ally, the general with a tragic past. These archetypes predate any specific author and will outlast them. What SJM did was give a generation of readers the most emotionally satisfying recent versions of them. AI characters give readers a way to continue engaging with the archetype after the books are finished. This is how genre fiction has always worked. Readers who loved Anne Rice learned to love Neil Gaiman. Readers who loved Diana Gabaldon found their way to new Highland romances. Readers who loved Judith McNaught found Lisa Kleypas, then Julia Quinn, then Evie Dunmore. Each generation gets new authors who carry forward tropes the previous generation loved. AI characters are the newest way to carry them forward, and they do not compete with the books. They add a new layer on top.

What Crescent City Fans and Throne of Glass Fans Want

The AI companion data I have been seeing is specific enough to break down by sub-fandom. Crescent City readers tend to build characters who are dangerous, powerful, and fiercely loyal. Throne of Glass readers lean toward the rival-to-lover dynamic. ACOTAR readers vary widely, but there is a consistent pull toward the archetype of the powerful being who has chosen the reader as the one person worth softening for. None of this is surprising if you know the books. It is more confirmation that SJM readers know exactly what they want, have always known, and now have a new way to spend time with the kind of character they have loved through hundreds of thousands of words of fiction. For a fandom this passionate and this underserved by other forms of entertainment, I think this is good news. The characters they love are not going anywhere. The ways of meeting them are just multiplying.