Throne of Glass Series #1-5

Throne of Glass
Crown of Midnight
Heir of Fire
Queen of Shadows
Empire of Storms

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I have been taking my time getting around to this one.  After reading A Court of Wings and Ruin last year, I had to set Sarah J Maas aside for a bit because I was so angry that the book was SO BAD. With the recent announcement that the seventh and last installment of the Throne of Glass series, Kingdom of Ash, will be released in October of 2018, it was time for me to catch up with Chaol and Nesryn, the new Hand of the King and Captain of the Guard. Chaol was injured in the battle at the glass castle in Adarlan, and was sent by Dorian Havilliard (the new king) and Aelin Galathynius (the queen of Terrasen) to the southern lands to convince them to fight the Valg and get healing for Chaol’s spinal injury.

They arrive to find that the youngest princess has (supposedly) committed suicide and everyone is in mourning. The healer assigned to Chaol (Yrene) has prejudices against Adarlan because they killed her mother, and so we get the predictable cold shoulders and banter you would expect from that. Nesryn becomes wrapped up in one of the princes (Sartaq), and flies with him to inspect the lands and the ruk soldiers (ruk = giant, golden, flying eagle-esque bird you ride like the witches ride wyverns) and seek out any possible Valg invasion into this continent.

Man oh man I was not expecting all this shit to go down in this book. The solution Yrene finds for Chaol’s injury is SUPER CORNY but works so that healers might become warriors. I do not want to spoil ANYTHING about what Nesryn and Sartaq find in the forests to the south – I outright gasped and I want you to have that same experience. Just know that there are a LOT of stygian spiders running around and they are big as horses and fucking disgusting. Also their love story is super sweet and I hope you like it too. Both couples find love and all I could think was “oh, was this where the good romance writing went?”

How is Maas capable of writing books like this while also giving us the trash that was the conclusion to the ACOTAR series? And the extra court novella? GARBAGE. DUMPSTER FIRE. What the hell is going on? She’s supposedly coming out with an adult fantasy series sometime next year (?) and I’m like “lady, you’re way too hot and cold for me to pre-order this shit, I’m gonna wait and see what people say” but then I’m like “shit, I’M the one that people want to hear from about how things are” and so I’ll probably have to bite the bullet to give you all a heads up.

The seventh and final book of this series had better be the best fucking book I’ve ever read. You can’t build all this up and give me a dud. I will legit go off if Kingdom of Ash is literally a burning tire pile and I will @ Mass on social media with my review idc idc idc.

But I have hope that Aelin et al. won’t let me down. It should be a battle for the ages. See you in October for the thrilling conclusion!

Oh yeah, and go get this book if you’ve been reading the series. You need what’s inside.