Tome Thursday: The Assassin's Blade

Hello everyone!

This week I'm going to be talking about an author and a book that I discovered completely randomly, or depending on how you look at it, but I did really, because I watched this youtube channel right here in need of some new fantasy books inspiration. Christine kindly enough provided a full list of book series that could help me with my problem, and among them were books written by someone named Sarah J. Maas.

Okay, so I will admit, I seem to be late on the Maas train, or better still the Celaena train, but in my defence I will say that a lot of my over-the-seas online friends say I live in a medieval village, so sometimes things take a bit longer to arrive here (maybe these are actually in the process of being translated? I know I saw some from a different author at one point ...).

But I digress.

I found that there's a full series of books about a strong, female lead character, and I'm always fond of those, so. Not to mention ANOTHER series of ANOTHER strong, female lead character! Gotta love this type of thing.

So the books I'm talking about, as you may already tell from the title, are the Throne of Glass series, featuring skilled assassin Celaena Sardothien (I had to check that spelling, twice). The book I'm going to talk about in this post is the prequel to the famous series, The Assassin's Blade, and it holds within its pages five different novellas, all following the timeline set by the author, one after another, eventually leading us to just what landed Celaena in trouble (and in the mines) in the first place.

Obviously, being late to this book reading ride I had the privilege of reading these novellas prior to heading into Throne of Glass itself, and I have to say that there are very few books I can remember of late which caught my attention within the first page.

This one did.

There's a sixteen-year-old girl, among grizzled older assassins, woken in the middle of the night and sitting there at the table in nothing but her very expensive, silken nightgown, blood-red in colour. Plus, she has attitude.

I mean, come ON.

The first novella, The Assassin and the Pirate Lord, gives us an insight into who Celaena is and who she works for (the King of Assassins in Adarlan, Arobynn Hamel), and her incessant squabbling with another assassing named Sam (I will admit, I didn't see that coming until the end of the first novella, but I have been told I've been slow recently). They are to go together and arrange for a shipment with a notorious pirate lord, only to find the shipment is of slaves - which kicks our heroine right in the gut, and she goes on Mission Impossible: Free Slaves Without Anyone Knowing. Of course, Sam helps, but going against Arobynn's orders might get them both killed, as the Assassin King owns the both of them.

In the second novella, The Assassin and the Healer, a lot of the story is written from the point of view of a young woman working in a tavern, watching a foreign girl who's always hidden under a cloak. We learn Celaena did in fact pay for what she did, with Arobynn beating her and sending her on a 'mission' (aka exile) into the desert to train with the assassins there. While here though, she helps save the healer and teaches her some useful tricks before going along her merry way.

By novella three, we're in the desert, and the story is aptly titled The Assassin and the Desert, in which Celaena seeks to train with the Mute Master and makes a very good friend in another girl trainee, but time seems to pass without any indication for her proper training for a while, until finally she manages to get in, so to speak. However, not all is peaceful, as she is forced to fight for the place and the people she has come to care about, betrayed by someone she thought she could trust, earning the letter of recommendation from the Master as well as chests of gold to buy her freedom. By this point, we also know she's worried about Sam, having not seen him since their return from the Pirate Lord, her last memory being of him screaming 'I'll kill you!' to Arobynn as he beat her.

Novella four, The Assassin and the Underworld, has us going through the merry dance of does-he-does-she-love-me-or-not with Sam and Celaena (and obviously we all know what THAT means) as well as Celaena suspicious of Arobynn's sudden kindness and apology for beating her. She takes on a difficult assignment of killing someone apparently in the slave trade, only to learn AFTER she's murdered him that he was actually helping slaves, and Arobynn had tricked her. This is the turning point for our heroine as she presents the chests to the Assassin King, buying her and Sam's freedom, and leaving the Assassin's Guild altogether.

Of course, by the fifth novella, The Assassin and the Empire, we learn that being free of the Guild isn't as easy as it sounds, as no one will take her or Sam on because of Arobynn's influence, but they persevere and get one last job, before they'll leave the country altogether and travel somewhere south. On baited breath, this all seems to go flawlessly, until we learn that Sam has been betrayed, tortured, and murdered, leaving Celaena on a rampage for revenge which ends with her in the Empire's dungeons, delivered to the tyrannical King like a package. As she swears to always remember Sam and we watch her be driven off, we also see Arobynn watching this and learn HE had been the one to betray the couple, chillingly saying he 'does not share his possessions'.

And that's how we start Throne of Glass later on!

I was sitting on the edge of my seat throughout these novellas, each one better than the last, and I couldn't put the book down. Neither could I do it with the first one of the series proper, but that's one for another blog. Celaena is everything you want in a female lead, beautiful, sardonic, but also young and naive and definitely getting into too much trouble ALL the time.

I'm looking forward to reading more of the series; I was recently asked by Goodreads to supply some questions for an interview with Sarah J. Maas herself, so fingers crossed some get picked! That was super exciting as well since I've come to really, really admire the author from reading just two of her books.

And I can promise you, if you haven't read any of her work yet - do it! You won't regret the choice.

xx

*image not mine