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• Shania Twain is no stranger to daring fashion; she’s been rocking bold outfits since the ’90s.
• In the past, she’s worn cutout dresses, plunging necklines, and see-through looks.
• More recently, she’s opted for floor-length gowns and statement accessories.

Who would Shania Twain be without her daring wardrobe?

The country musician has been rocking eye-catching, envelope-pushing outfits since her career began in the 1990s. And she’s only continued to evolve her style over time.

These are the most daring looks she’s worn, from the stage to red carpets.

Shania Twain has always been a fan of daring fashion. Just look at the velvet cutout dress she wore in 1998.

The black gown was asymmetrical with a single strap, an uneven cutout across her waist, and smaller slits down its skirt that extended the length of her leg.

There’s also the corseted minidress she wore while performing at the 1998 Grammys.

She accessorized the bold look with crystal-lined gloves, a satin choker, semi-sheer tights, and knee-high boots.

Next, the musician took her daring style to the 2002 CMA Awards.

She wore a form-fitting halter dress that was most daring up top, with a plunging, scooped neckline.

Twain donned the glittering, gold gown with diamond jewelry, long earrings, and her hair styled in curls.

By 2003, it was time for Twain to experiment with edgier looks, like the dress she wore to the American Music Awards.

Her black, long-sleeved dress was made from sheer mesh, but it was wrapped with opaque black fabric and matching straps. It also had a tulle piece attached to one side of its skirt that created a short train.

To complement the unique look, Twain also wore a crimped hairstyle and thigh-high lace-up boots.

The country star perfectly mixed glamour and drama that year when she performed at the Super Bowl XXXVII halftime show.

Her outfit included a crystal-covered bra, black shorts over fishnet tights, a sparkling black duster jacket, and a sequined white belt that wrapped around her waist and hips.

She also wore thigh-high leather boots.

She tried bold prints and colors at the 2003 CMA Awards months later.

Twain performed onstage in low-rise black cargo pants and a puffer vest buttoned only halfway.

The latter piece had a green, black, and pink swirled print that perfectly matched the design of her slouchy boots.

Fast-forward to 2012, Twain kicked off her Las Vegas residency in a semi-sheer catsuit.

The long-sleeved, high-neck piece was decorated from top to bottom with black beads in a tiger-stripe print, and her black gloves were lined with long, fabric fringe.

She wore the outfit with heeled, belted boots.

When she performed at the 2017 Grey Cup, Twain came prepared for Canada’s snowy weather.

She hit the stage in a red catsuit with a plunging neckline and a sparkling chainmail piece worn over it.

Twain also rocked furry boots, a matching jacket, and red leather gloves.

Last year, Twain put a new, daring twist on one of her most famous music-video looks.

She walked the People’s Choice Awards red carpet in a custom Rodarte dress. It had a sheer, long-sleeved bodice, a leopard-print bralette, and a floor-length velvet skirt with a waistline that dipped below her belly button.

The outfit — which seemingly called back to her ensemble from the “That Don’t Impress Me Much” music video — also included a leopard-print hood and shoulder piece.

Then, at the 2023 Grammys, Twain arrived with hair as red as the carpet and a hat as big as the event.

Harris Reed designed her black-and-white polka-dot look. It featured bell-bottom pants, a bustier top, and a blazer worn on top.

She returned to her country roots in a bold way at the 2023 CMT Music Awards.

She first walked the red carpet in a butterfly-print dress, but later changed into a sparkling purple Chanel set that included a crop top and matching shorts. 

When some people on social media criticized the look, particularly the cut of her shorts and the plunging neckline of her top, Twain defended her daring outfit.

“For me fashion is a powerful tool that helps to convey my personality and express my creativity,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “And other than getting to hang out with my friends for the night, it’s one of my favourite things about attending award shows!”

During a 2023 concert in North Carolina, Twain hit the stage in a vibrant outfit and equally bold accessories.

She wore a pink, loose-fitting top over what appeared to be a yellow leotard, and matching jelly sandals with straps that wrapped around her legs.

She then performed in Michigan while wearing a see-through leotard.

The black garment was covered in crystals, as were her fishnet tights and knee-high boots.

To complete the outfit, Twain also wore a pink-and-purple cape that flowed behind her and layers of chunky necklaces.

In 2024, Twain arrived at the People’s Choice Country Awards in sparkling denim.

In collaboration with Levi’s, Twain helped design her denim evening gown.

The halter piece had a form-fitting bodice, a mermaid skirt, a thick, pointed collar, and all-over crystal detailing.

She wore the dramatic dress with denim gloves, a chunky ring, and a ’60s-inspired hairstyle.

This year, she chose a statement silver gown for the Academy of Country Music Awards.

The silver, strapless gown was designed by Falguni Shane Peacock.

It was covered in silver and black sequins, the latter of which were arranged in the shape of a panther across its skirt.

The dress, which was accessorized with black leather gloves, also had satin strips that flowed from her waist.

• Google delayed its Gemini 3.5 Pro AI model, disappointing some developers.
• The smaller Gemini 3.5 Flash model now powers Google’s Antigravity AI coding service.
• Feedback from 3.5 Flash will likely be used to enhance Gemini 3.5 Pro, via reinforcement learning.

Google usually saves its biggest product launches for its I/O conference every year. This time, CEO Sundar Pichai held back, and it says a lot about where the company stands in the AI coding race.

During the keynote address, Pichai told the crowd that Google’s new flagship Gemini 3.5 Pro AI model wasn’t ready yet, drawing groans from the crowd.

I was there, and I’ve spent the rest of the event coming up with a theory for the apparent delay: Google is holding this new model back for a while to get it even better at AI coding tasks.

Anthropic’s Claude Code took the world by storm last year, and OpenAI’s Codex has gotten much better recently. These frontier labs are scooping up developer mindshare and generating big revenue by enabling coders to use AI tools with agents to automate and speed up coding tasks.

It’s a revolution that’s upending Silicon Valley, and Google was probably a bit behind. But not for long.

Instead of releasing 3.5 Pro, Pichai spoke at length and with passion about another new model, the Gemini 3.5 Flash. This is a smaller model that’s faster and a lot cheaper, while being only slightly less powerful than the world’s current top models.

Google has already made 3.5 Flash the main model powering its Antigravity AI coding service. Starting today, software developers will use this tool to churn out code.

This will generate a mountain of anonymous and highly valuable data. For instance, if an engineer starts a new coding project in Antigravity and suddenly halts the task, it suggests that something in the output from Flash 3.5 wasn’t right.

Google can use this feedback data to improve the larger 3.5 Pro model, likely through reinforcement learning—a technique in which a new AI model is refined by rewarding good outputs and punishing bad outcomes.

Signals from running Antigravity on the smaller 3.5 Flash model will likely help with this process in important ways. That’s because coding is particularly good at generating clear signals for AI model development. If the code is good, it likely works. If it’s bad, it often breaks stuff.

This should give the larger 3.5 Pro model strong clues about which coding outputs worked and which didn’t.

“I know you can’t wait to get your hands on it,” Pichai said onstage. “Give us until next month to get it to you.”

So, when this big new model finally lands, I expect it to be a lot better at coding — the hottest application of generative AI right now.

Sign up for BI’s Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com.

• A New Jersey city has banned new data center developments.
• The decision effectively blocks a proposed data center giant.
• The ban comes amid a backlash against a data center boom in southern New Jersey.

A city at the heart of an AI data center boom in southern New Jersey has voted to ban them.

That means one of the largest data center proposals in the state’s history is unlikely to happen.

The Millville Board of Commissioners made the decision during a meeting on Tuesday evening, writing in an ordinance that “data centers are incompatible with the City’s land use planning objectives, infrastructure capacity, and community character.”

“The Commissioners therefore determine that the construction and operation of data centers within the City would be detrimental to the public health, safety, and welfare,” the commissioners said.

The decision brings to a halt the proposed 1.4 gigawatt Millville Energy & Data Center Campus, which would have spanned over 60 acres. A1 Data Center, the company behind the project, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Southern New Jersey has emerged as something of a hub for AI data center construction, in part because of its proximity to major cities like New York and Philadelphia and its access to natural gas and transmission networks.

Several other data centers have been proposed — or are already being built — in the area, including a 300-megawatt data center in neighboring Vineland that would supply compute to Microsoft.

While large data centers have been around for decades, their scale has grown exponentially as AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic seek more compute to power their products.

Many Americans — a majority of whom are unexcited about AI, according to a recent study — are now resisting these massive data centers in their communities. They worry that they could drain their water supply, raise utility bills, cause unwanted noise, raise temperature levels, and impede their quality of life.

In its ordinance on Tuesday, the Millville commissioners cited many of these issues, writing that “large-scale data centers and similar facilities generate significant infrastructure demands.”

It also said any jobs created by the project were limited relative to its size. The companies behind data centers have argued that they are good for communities because they create jobs, though many of those jobs are in construction and temporary.

The Climate Revolution Action Network, an environmental nonprofit based in New Jersey, told Business Insider in a statement that it spent months organizing residents to oppose the Millville data center.

“This is a winning coalition and something we need to see more of across the country,” one of the group’s leaders, Kayleigh Henry, said. “These corporations may have more money than us, but they’re no match for people speaking out and making their voices heard.”

The Climate Revolution Action Network and other groups are now working to secure a statewide moratorium on data center construction.

This month, a coalition of anti-data center groups asked New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill to impose a moratorium on approving and constructing new data centers that use at least 20 megawatts of power “until regulations or legislation are implemented to protect ratepayers and consumers, maintain electric grid reliability, and minimize environmental impacts.”

• Stony Brook University is using AI to improve recycling efficiency and reduce landfill waste.
• AI models help identify non-recyclable waste to prevent contamination in recycling processes.
• Researchers are testing whether AI recycling systems can scale in real-world plants.

A pizza box can feel like a recycling pop quiz. It’s cardboard, but there’s also the greasy bottom and cheese residue. Should the box go into the blue recycling bin or into the trash?

The wrong decision may seem like a harmless toss, but it can have serious consequences — ones that technologists are hoping artificial intelligence can remedy.

Recycling facilities, or materials recovery facilities, sort and process recyclable materials such as plastic, glass, and paper, which are then sold to manufacturers to create new products.

However, if an unrecyclable item, like the grease-soaked pizza box, gets mixed in with the other valuable materials, the whole batch can be rejected and sent to a landfill. Large landfills threaten the environment and human health, and the US is among the world’s largest per-person generators of waste.

At Stony Brook University, researchers are exploring AI as part of the solution by developing an AI-assisted system to analyze and characterize municipal solid waste with far greater speed and scale than traditional methods.

Stony Brook’s project reflects a broader national trend, as scientists and engineers across the country increasingly place AI at the center of efforts to streamline recycling programs and build more efficient, effective waste management and sorting systems.

Training AI to sort trash smarter

The Stony Brook project officially kicked off in January 2025. As part of her preliminary work, Ruwen Qin, an associate professor and the project’s principal investigator, visited material recovery facilities on Long Island and spoke with staff about the challenges they face and the solutions they are interested in. “Without the collaboration from local facilities, it is impossible to conduct this type of research, because that data is essential for developing artificial intelligence algorithms,” she said.

During these site visits, Qin and her team used low-cost cameras, such as GoPros, to capture video and audio. Qin said this data was used to guide the development of the AI model.

Subsequently, the Stony Brook AI model was trained to identify paper, plastics, food waste, and fabrics and automatically estimate their quantities. The work is supported by the Stony Brook University AI Innovation Seed Grant; after receiving the grant, Qin was able to involve graduate students in the research. Qin has also closely collaborated with the university’s Waste Data and Analysis Center throughout the initiative.

“A very important task is to sample and sort the waste and try to determine what materials are in the waste stream and what the quantity is,” Qin told Business Insider. “As we train the algorithm, we can analyze samples in large quantities more efficiently than a human being.”

This process of identifying, separating, and analyzing components of a waste stream is known as characterization. It’s time-consuming and detail-oriented work. But Qin said AI can ideally expedite the process. AI models, like the one she’s developing, can pinpoint whether something unrecyclable has been mistakenly mixed with other recyclable products and prevent it from being rejected and sent to landfills.

While the project is in its early stages, Qin said her short-term goal is to provide high-quality data to researchers, which she hopes will be used to develop more affordable and accessible open-source models.

Qin added that her team will continue training the model so that it can eventually “identify different waste materials under all conditions.” She also hopes to secure additional funding to transfer the technology into real-world applications, such as material recovery facilities.

In the future, Qin said that she’s interested in merging AI with robotics: the algorithm could instruct robots on what they can and can’t take from the waste stream.

Scaling the tech

AI’s recycling algorithms are starting to trickle into the waste management industry. For example, in Colorado, AMP Robotics has developed an AI-robotics system for the factory line. And Greyparrot, a London-based startup, has an AI sorting system used in more than 20 countries in North America, Europe, and Asia.

Aurora del Carmen Munguía-López, an assistant professor at the University of Buffalo who researches recycling solutions, said when it comes to developing AI-sorting systems, there’s still work to be done. As pilot projects move from different universities into plant facilities, Munguía-López told Business Insider that part of the challenge is determining whether these algorithms can work at the scale required in professional settings.

While AI’s energy-hungry data centers are creating environmental risks, Munguía-López said its overall impact could still be positive if the technology increases recycling rates, reduces reliance on fossil-fuel-based plastic production, and lowers greenhouse gas emissions.

Given the tech’s potential to improve recycling and reduce emissions, Qin wants to ensure that Stony Brook’s AI model is an intellectual product that anyone can use to their advantage. “We want to make the data, the model, and the technology publicly available to benefit society,” she said.

• A Google executive said he’d bet that AI will not lead to mass layoffs.
• SVP James Manyika said AI will eliminate some jobs, create others, and change many more.
• He joins other tech executives pushing back on AI job-loss fears as public skepticism grows.

Will AI crush the jobs economy? James Manyika, a senior Google-Alphabet executive, bets it won’t.

On Casey Newton’s “Platformer,” released on Tuesday, Manyika said he does not buy the most extreme predictions about near-term mass job loss from AI.

Newton asked Manyika about Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei, predicting that unemployment is about to spike because of new tech.

“I’ll just say: let’s take the bet,” he replied. “Some of those predictions were made two years ago — that in two years, 50% of jobs would be wiped out. Well, two years is up. Let’s take a look. And anybody who makes that prediction for two years from now, I’m willing to take the bet.”

Manyika has a deep background in AI research. He has a Ph.D. in AI and robotics from Oxford, co-chaired the UN Secretary-General’s AI advisory body, and has served as chairman of the McKinsey Global Institute while studying automation and the future of work. He’s now a senior vice president at Google and Alphabet, where he focuses on research, technology, and society.

In 2017, he coauthored a widely cited McKinsey report titled “Jobs lost, jobs gained,” which argued that automation would produce a mix of effects on workers: some jobs would decline, some new jobs would be created, and many more existing jobs would change.

Manyika said that the framework is still accurate.

“The research hasn’t changed very much,” he said. “The debate that people have is, what’s the mix of those three things? As opposed to, are these three things going to happen?”

Public skepticism toward AI is growing. In early May, YouGov published a poll finding that seven in 10 Americans believe that AI is advancing “too fast.” Gallup also found that seven in 10 Americans opposed local construction of the data centers that fuel AI systems.

Those concerns are showing up in public life: some college graduates have booed commencement speakers who talk about AI, while several data center projects have sparked protests.

Manyika suggested the AI industry has contributed to public anxiety by talking about mass job losses, and said companies also need to show that AI infrastructure will not raise energy costs for communities.

“It doesn’t help when we in the AI field talk about wiping out 50% of jobs,” he said. “We’re probably impacting the possibilities of this technology having extraordinary impact by, quite frankly, scaring everybody — when in fact that fear is unfounded.”

He joins a growing number of tech executives pushing back on predictions of mass AI job losses.

Palo Alto Networks’ CEO, Nikesh Arora, called concerns that AI is supplanting jobs a “fallacy,” while Amazon Web Services’ CEO, Matt Garman, said his company is still planning to hire 11,000 software engineering employees this year.

Silicon Valley has gone through a fresh wave of job losses. Layoff-tracking firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that through April, tech companies have announced 85,411 layoffs, a 33% increase from the same period last year.

“That’s not to say we shouldn’t worry about AI’s labor market effects. We should,” Manyika said. “I just don’t think they’ve happened yet at the scale anybody’s concerned about.”

Manyika maintains that AI’s largest impact will be on how workers complete their tasks.

“The biggest effect is the jobs-changed part,” Manyika added. “The nature of the job itself shifts. This is what happened with bank tellers. This is what happens with radiologists. We still have the category ‘bank teller,’ but I can guarantee what a bank teller does today is not what a bank teller in 1970 did.”

Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Sarah J. Maas announced the release dates for the next two “ACOTAR” novels on “Call Her Daddy.”
• The two books will be released on October 27, 2026, and January 12, 2027.
• Maas said the two books will be separate volumes of the sixth “ACOTAR” story.

After five long years of waiting, Sarah J. Maas fans can rejoice — the sixth “A Court of Thorns and Roses” book finally has a release date. Well, it actually has release dates.

On March 4, 2026, the author appeared on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast with Alex Cooper, where she announced the next “ACOTAR” book would be published on October 27, 2026.

The work is eagerly awaited not only by fans but also by Maas’ publisher, Bloomsbury. The company’s sales fell 10% for the 2025-2026 fiscal year because Maas didn’t release a new book, Publishers Weekly reported.

Interestingly, though, Maas said her next novel will be just part one of the sixth “ACOTAR” story, with parts two and three released together in January 2027. Part four will be released separately.

Here’s everything we know about “ACOTAR” book six so far.

Warning: Some spoilers for Maas’ work ahead.

Maas is releasing book six of ‘A Court of Thorns and Roses’ in multiple volumes

In July 2025, Mass posted a reel on Instagram revealing that she had finished a first draft of the sixth “ACOTAR” book. In the video, Maas closes a notebook labeled with “ACOTAR 6” and an arrow, shuts a laptop, and pops a bottle of bubbly.

“First drafts DONE,” she captioned the post.

Fans quickly flooded her comments with questions about why “draft” was plural and what the arrow next to six meant, but Maas didn’t explain further until Cooper asked her about it during her “Call Her Daddy” appearance.

“I will say that that was ACOTAR six with the arrow pointing forward to indicate things going ahead of that,” she said. “And it is for the next ACOTAR book, which is coming out on October 27 of this year.”

Maas went on to say that she finished the book while writing in Montana over the summer of 2025, but declined to reveal the book’s title or which characters from the world of “ACOTAR” will be telling the story. She also didn’t share the novel’s length, which she said was for a specific reason.

“OK, well, part of why I guess it’s tricky to talk about the length of this book is because this book’s coming out October 27, and then on January 12, like two months later, I can’t do math, whatever that is, the next ACOTAR book will be coming out,” Maas said. “So there will be two books within, like, a very short span.”

As her fans will know, Maas’ books are typically split into parts, separating different sections of the story she is telling. However, when it comes to the sixth “ACOTAR” book, Maas said the individual parts became longer than she anticipated as she started writing, with part one coming in at 400 pages at one point. At first, that seemed like a problem, as the book would be difficult to print if it were too long.

As she continued writing, Maas decided the parts didn’t have to live in one physical book.

“I decided I wasn’t gonna approach this project from a traditional format of a book,” she said. “What if this book was really long? Like, what if it took me more than a thousand pages to tell the story that needed to be told, the arc that I wanted to create from start to finish?”

Maas said the story for “ACOTAR” six was ultimately divided into four parts, though it is still one cohesive story. Part one is the novel that Bloomsbury will publish on October 27, 2026, and parts two and three will be published together as one volume on January 12, 2027. Maas has yet to write or give a publication date for part four, but she said all three volumes would be published “in a very short time.”

Although the works will be published individually, Maas told Cooper she still hopes readers treat them as one story once they are all out in the world.

“It’s meant to be read ideally as one massive, massive story as opposed to in a trilogy,” she said. “It’s not a trilogy. Like, arcs aren’t wrapped up.”

Maas also posted about the new books on her Instagram on Wednesday, sharing a photo of her notebook and two photos of a Montana skyline. She gave more insight into why she decided to publish the parts as separate volumes in her caption.

“I know how long you’ve waited,” she wrote. “I know how much these characters mean to you. And I also know these stories deserve more than speed and deadlines. They deserve my best self. They deserve the right moment.”

“When the moment came, what I thought would be one book… very quickly became something else,” she added. “The story just kept expanding, and I couldn’t wait to share a single part of it any longer!!”

The next ‘ACOTAR’ has been in the works for years

Although Maas hadn’t given detailed information about the sixth “ACOTAR” book before her “Call Her Daddy” appearance, it wasn’t a total shock that her next work would bring readers back to Prythian.

In March 2023, Bloomsbury announced that Maas had signed a deal for three more books with the publisher. At the time, she was already under contract for four titles, including “House of Flame and Shadow,” the third installment in her “Crescent City” series, published in January 2024.

In September 2023, Maas gave readers their first clue as to what would come next in the six books she had left under her contract, telling Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings during a “Live Talks Los Angeles” appearance that she was “drafting” the next “ACOTAR” book — and having a blast doing it.

“I will say that I’ve become so focused and obsessed with writing this book,” she told Hobbs and Billings. “It’s like that feeling of having a crush or when you’re first, like, obsessed with someone, and you’re just thinking about it nonstop.”

Likewise, in a January 2024 interview with Jenna Bush Hager, Maas said her next published work would be the sixth installment of “ACOTAR.”

“I’m very, very excited about that one,” Maas said of the coming book, though she didn’t give any details about it.

The book seems to have transformed since those comments based on Maas’ conversation with Cooper.

Clues about the future of ‘ACOTAR’ in Maas’ other works

Maas has been tight-lipped about the contents of her coming work, but the other books in “ACOTAR” and her “Crescent City” series can offer clues.

The most recent book in the “ACOTAR” series, “A Court of Silver Flames,” was released in 2021 and focused on Nesta Archeron. The first four books were told from the perspective of Feyre Archeron, while Maas seemed to usher in a new era of the series by writing from her sister’s perspective in “ACOSF.”

Nesta also appeared in “House of Flame and Shadow,” which created a multiverse between “ACOTAR,” “Crescent City,” and the “Throne of Glass” series. It also offered insight into what might be happening in Prythian at the start of a new “ACOTAR” novel.

In “House of Flame and Shadow,” Nesta and Azriel discover the magical prison in Prythian, which lies atop what was once a powerful fae court, alongside Bryce Quinlan, the protagonist from “Crescent City.”

They also learn that Rhysand’s lineage traces back to the fae who ruled the prison, which would have been the Dusk Court, creating the potential for Rhys to rule two courts.

Nesta also seems to have connections to those long-forgotten fae, as she bears an eight-pointed star tattoo that matches a chamber in the prison and the design on a sword called Gwydion that had been missing from Prythian for centuries. The sword had been with Bryce’s family on her planet, Midgard, where it is called the Starsword.

In “HOFAS,” Bryce brought the sword to Prythian with her when she sought aid from the fae there, and she ultimately stole Gwydion’s twin, a dagger called Truth-Teller, from Azriel. She used the weapons together to bring peace to her planet, but she returned the dagger to Azriel — alongside a magical mask Nesta let her borrow — at the novel’s end. In the same scene, she gifted Gwydion to Nesta.

“I think that eight-pointed star was tattooed on you for a reason. Take that sword and go figure out why,” Bryce told Nesta.

It’s possible Maas was setting up a continuation of Nesta’s story for her next “ACOTAR” story in the scene, which may see her explore her power and connections to the Starborn fae, as they are called on Midgard.

Elain’s role in future ‘ACOTAR’ books

Maas tied “ACOTAR” and “Crescent City” together primarily through Nesta and Azriel in “House of Flame and Shadow.”

Still, Maas might turn to other characters in Prythian in her next “ACOTAR” novel, or she may balance multiple plots given the length of the coming volumes. For instance, Maas told Eva Chen during an appearance on “Live Talks Los Angeles” in February 2021 that she planned to write a book from the third Archeron sister’s perspective — Elain.

In “A Court of Silver Flames,” Elain had settled into life at the Night Court, refusing to explore her mating bond with Lucien. After breaking ties with Tamlin and the Spring Court, Lucien served as an emissary to the human lands for the Night Court, keeping his distance from Elain because being around her was painful.

Maas also spoke to Cooper about Elain and Lucien’s mating bond, indicating that she was eager to explore how it differs from others we see in her works.

“I think Elain’s got her own trauma and shit that she’s going through right now,” she said, adding that Lucien’s involvement in bringing Elain to the fae world is a barrier to their relationship.

“So exploring a concept of a free will, what does that look like with a mating bond?” Maas said. “What does that mean? And does nature get it wrong sometimes? Does it get it right sometimes?”

Maas said she was “interested” as a writer to explore what it meant for someone not to desire to be mated, which could mean she wrote about that topic in her coming work.

Elain also seems to have an attraction to Azriel in the text, though Maas juxtaposed their bond with how ill-fitting aspects of life at the Night Court are for Elain during a visit to the Court of Nightmares in “ACOSF.” Some fans think Maas set up a storyline for Elain to find a home at a different court, and that Azriel will find love with Nesta’s friend Gywn instead of Elain.

Maas also hasn’t explored the full potential of Elain’s Seer powers in the series, so she will likely write more about her abilities in future “ACOTAR” novels.