Hello everyone!
Equally, what do you say that could POSSIBLY even be said?
I mean, after all ... my last Throne of Glass book series post was back in 2017.
Then I went and fell off the wagon somehow.
I can remember most of my reasons why, but recently, a co-worker of mine really got into reading these fantasy novels, and she kept pestering me about A Court of Silver Flames, then moved along to the rest of the Throne of Glass books.
Because I stopped over halfway through and just never picked back up again. Who am I kidding either, I have yet to review any of the Crescent City series on here, too, despite the fact I HAVE read at least the first book.
But without further ado, let's just jump right in, shall we? Our characters have been eagerly waiting, and they're trying so hard to shine in Queen of Shadows.
VERY briefly, however: when you're eight years old and your kingdom falls to an invading ruler that put a block on all magic, then you get adopted by the self-styled King of Assassins, you don't have much of a choice but to roll with everything and anything. It literally takes Aelin over a decade before she accepts who she really is once more, when she starts digging deep into the Kingdom of Adarlan's roots of power and history, discovering age-old feuds, magic, and bitter rivalry.
Of course, she also has romantic entanglements along the way, but it isn't until Rowan Whitethorn walks onto the page that readers get the sense she's finally ready to start settling down in some form or fashion (it helps that Rowan just so happens to be the most powerful pure blood Fae warrior currently walking terra firma).
Which is where we begin Queen of Shadows, as Aelin returns to the city which birthed her as the fabled and feared assassin, and starts playing games with everyone and anyone who crosses her path.
She has a couple of things to accomplish.
One, she's definitely bringing down the King, because he's her Undesirable No. 1.
Two, she's either rescuing or killing Dorian, the crown prince, who currently has a Valg prince inhabiting his mortal body (jury's out on whether or not he has any power left over himself).
Three, she's paying all the debts she can think of, both to Arobynn, the King of Assassins, and anyone else who ever got in her way, and who were partially or fully responsible for the death of Sam Cortland, her first love.
Four, which gets added to the list after she runs into Chaol, former Captain of the Guard again, is rescuing her cousin, Aedion, the Wolf of the North, who the King has slated for execution.
Five, and the list is getting ridiculously long, but she's bringing down the towers the King constructed to cut off magic, because she's going to free it for use once more.
Now, naturally this can't all happen smoothly and all at once. In fact, the games Aelin plays and the strings she pulls don't immediately get shown to the reader right off the bat, you have to keep turning the pages for it all to bear fruit, but all I can say is she is a master in deception and in making moves to ensure the end result will be exactly what she wants it to be.
She's very willing to look like she's taking three steps back for that one massive leap forward that happens in the end.
Rescuing Aedion is the first item she crosses off her list with the help of Chaol and the rebels who've been fighting Valg in the sewers to try and save their people, and once she has the fabled general, things start falling into place.
Once Rowan joins her in the city, things are basically all on the up and up, you'd think.
Arobynn is trying to prove he still holds her leash, but that doesn't work out well for him at all because his favourite courtesan, Lysandra, teams up with Aelin to serve the assassin exactly what she needs to take down her abuser and the one responsible for both Sam's death and her stay at Endovier prison, which is to say, justice is DEFINITELY served, but Aelin lets Lysandra have the last laugh as the courtesan does the deed that ends it all.
Of course, this doesn't happen right off the bat, because first he and Aelin dance their little dance and he tries to pretend he'll behave, but really all he wants is to take one of the rings the King distributed over his soldiers that allowed Valg to inhabit them, so that he can have Aelin as his own personal pet.
Thankfully, Aelin can outsmart someone like Arobynn any day of the week with her eyes closed, so once he's dead that's basically two things off her list almost at once.
Her timetable keeps shifting because of several things, however, most notably being she doesn't share information with anyone and therefor others operate off what they can guess or they make plans of their own, aka Chaol often gets thrown into situations in this book that might have been avoided if Aelin could only get her head out of her own ass for long enough to actually talk to him.
Yes, here's one major reason why I dropped these books back in the day: Aelin never REALLY apologizes to Chaol for her abysmal treatment of him after Nehemia's death. At the time, she accused him of being guilty, but after finding out Nehemia orchestrated everything and actually set things up, Aelin didn't even THINK about apologizing. She doesn't do it in this book, either, and somehow or other Chaol is wrapped around her finger enough to once again believe HE has to do all the apologizing.
I digress.
But I don't like the way Aelin's way is the only way, even if she often times is proven correct. However, she can't do everything alone and unless she shares with her future court, then she'll be a very sorry ruler at some point in time.
Anyway, as she engages the King in one final battle, or shall we say once she learns that the King is trying to free a Valg King that her ancestors only sealed off, never actually destroyed, and Chaol engages the King to keep him occupied, Aelin and Dorian face off.
Luckily, one of her crazier bets about a piece of jewellery pays off, not to mention the King makes a crude assessment of Chaol's sorry state which wakes Dorian up but good. There's nothing like the love between best friends, I'm telling you!
In the end, it turns out the King's been a Valg host since FOREVER, and that, oh, that Valg King? He's already out and about, in the body of a Duke.
The same Duke, who just so happens to be master of the fortress that was built to keep watch over the Valg prison, and who's using witches to breed more Valg-witch demons.
This is discovered by Manon Blackbeak, who's appointed leader of the witch army that the King of Adarlan's going to be using at some point in time, but she's already having major doubts about not being told a single thing by both the Duke and her own grandmother (matron of the entire clan), and once one of her closest reveals the horror that happened to her at the grandmother's own hand, Manon is like, alright, bi*ches, we're doing things my way.
She eventually helps in the total annihilation of the experiment the duke was conducting with the whole breeding program, loosing a woman who'd been placed under the Valg ring, but she learned to bite back until SHE destroyed the demon within. Manon also helps and sends packing one Elide Lochan, another Terrasen survivor, ensuring she might make it to Aelin with one of the wyrdkeys in her possession.
As for Manon, well, she'll be playing the game alright, but she's going to be fighting for the witches under her command, as well, and possibly for Dorian, because Dorian and she meet during this book, and the Valg inhabiting Dorian is terrified of her and her pure gold eyes, the eyes the Valg kings had (why? well, Valg and Fae came together and out of their union the witches came to be ... I'll just leave that here).
In Adarlan, Dorian kills his father after getting that collar off himself, and as Rowan & Co managed to destroy the magic-blocking towers with caches of fire that's this fantasy level's equivalent of Greek (while also battling for their lives, might one add, right along with another ancient warrior that used to be Rowan's comrade until he swore his oath to Aelin, Lorcan, who comes to help because he recognizes Aedion as the son of ANOTHER one of these powerful Fae males), Aelin can stop his ice powers with her fire to create a huge wall that separates the castle from the city.
Then, leaving the kingdom in his hands, she and everyone she cares for, Lysandra included (who is a shifter, by the way), make for Terrassen, while Chaol is going to head south so that he can maybe heal, considering he's paralysed from the waist down.
And after far too many years, Aelin, last of her line and the rightful heir to the throne, finally crosses the border back into Terrasen, marking the end of book four and a segue into book five.
The end!
Sarah J. Maas' writing pretty much never disappoints, and you can clearly enjoy yourself even with her first epic series that launched her into the writing stratosphere when she was just a teenager herself. You can very clearly see the teenager peek through, but at the same time, each subsequent book in this series grows in scope and expands your view of the world so much that you can definitely see the author's growth as well.
I'm personally a much bigger fan of the ACOTAR series, but I can still see the appeal of Throne of Glass, because once I got back into Queen of Shadows I couldn't really put it down and read through it fairly quickly.
Aelin is still not my favourite heroine however, mostly because of the way things seem to be written to always ensure she comes up aces, even when she has people more experienced than her by far telling her it's not going to work. I'd have liked for her to have run into an obstacle in her careful planning at least once, to show that OTHERS know what they're on about, as well, particularly experienced warriors like Aedion and Rowan.
And Rowan, eh. I'm still not fully sold on him, and I don't really even know why.
No, wait, I'm lying, I know why. It's because I was really into the idea of the princess and the commoner that was introduced with Aelin and Chaol when she was still her assassin persona, and I was deeply rooting for them over Aelin and Dorian, until book three when Rowan suddenly showed up, and it became abundantly clear Aelin was going to end up with Gary Stu of the muscular, tattooed perfection.
Nothing against Rowan himself, who as a standalone character is actually one that should work for me on paper, but I still eyeroll rather hard at the conclusion that only the rarest and most pure will do for the fire-breathing queenie.
Anyway, to draw a line: I like these books just enough to continue and finish the series as a whole, because I want to see what Aelin's going to do with the world-threat she's just discovered, and it's an expansive, immersive world that I truly do enjoy, so I'm giving it a go just for that alone.
But, ACOTAR is still better. Lol.
xx
*image not mine
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