I finished reading Queen of Shadows, a 656 page book by Sarah J Maas. This is the fourth book in my favorite series in the whole, wide world, Throne of Glass. The Throne of Glass series is a mix of multiple genres, mystery, fiction, a little bit of realistic fiction, sci-fi, action and mostly, a series of fantasy novels (or if you’re like me you can say magic is real and call it far fetched realistic fiction). There are currently seven books in this series, including the first  to it all. The Assassin’s Blade, Throne of Glass, Crown of Midnight, Heir of Fire, Queen of Shadows, Empire of Storms, and Tower of Dawn. I started reading this series because I was bored and had nothing to read one day during ELT so I asked my friend Devin for a book. She gave me Throne of Glass, and I was totally obsessed with it. I had reread that book 20 times while waiting for Crown of Midnight to be checked into the library again.

 

Aelin comes back to Rifthold and meets up with Chaol and Nesryn. Aelin want to free Aedion and Chaol wants to make sure that Aelin doesn’t hurt Dorian in the rescue so he sends Nesryn to spy on them while they free Aedion. Dorian is in the hall when Aelin and Aedion are escaping and the demon inside him wants to kill Aelin but Aelin traps him and asks for a sign that he is still in there. He gives her no sign and she raises her sword to kill him but it is intercepted by an arrow from Nesryn since she has been spying on them to make sure that Aelin wasn’t going to kill Dorian. Aelin and Aedion flee into a carriage with Lysandra and no one gets hurt. Chaol later finds out about what happens and they fight which ends up in Lysandra finding out the Aelin is queen of Terrasen.

 

Aedion has been cooped up for a while and wants to go outside so Aelin takes him to a bar for some fresh air and they find Rowan there, looking for Aelin. It turns out he’s also here because he’s tracking Lorcan who was rushing out of Wendlyn and it seemed suspicious but they could use an extra hand with their plan to free magic and take down the king so Rowan comes and stays with them and they catch up. Aedion figures out Rowan has taken the blood oath and “stolen” it from Aedion which results in a fight and Aedion storming off them coming back the next morning and making up. They meet up with Chaol and he seems a tad jealous of how “gorgeous” Aelin’s faerie prince is.

 

Aelin sneaks out of her apartment at night. Lorcan is following her. She lures him into a nest of Valg demons and leaves him for dead. But he escapes and catches up with her. Rowan shows up and they fight about who really won. Lysandra arrives, and Rowan identifies her as a shape shifter.

Aelin, Rowan, and Aedion head to The Keep, and they have their meeting with Arobynn and hand him the Valg demon for “investigating”. They get the Amulet of Orynth (actually the third Wyrdkey) and Arobynn tries to slide the ring onto Aelin’s finger and control her. She plays the part of Arobynn’s “perfect broken doll” until they get away from Arobynn’s men and she can take off the ring since it was a fake and they planted it on the demon. Lysandra, later that night, kills Arobynn after thinking about all the ways he has courted and abused her, and the other people he has been responsible for the death of, including Sam, Aelin’s first lover, and Wesley, her first lover and Arobynn’s bodyguard before Arobynn killed him.

Aelin and Lysandra do some investigating and find out that an opium dealer in the shadow market actually had a stash of hellfire and they go and collect it because they’re going to use it to explode the clock tower and free magic so that Aelin can kill the king and free Dorian using her magic.

The rest is a spoiler and instead of doing that dear reader I’m just going to say READ THE SERIES IT’S AMAZING!! Drama, action, quite a bit of killing people if that’s what you’re into.

I was very surprised that Chaol wasn’t happy to see Aelin and that he blamed everything on her. He even called her a monster!! I think that the author is getting ready for some conflict. The book before Queen of Shadows, Heir of Fire, didn’t focus on Chaol at all and centered everything around Aelin. This is because she is of course the main character and that is what the book is all about but we don’t really get a sense of what is happening or how Chaol is dealing with the fact that he just figured out at the end of the last book that Celaena and Aelin were the same person and Aelin is in fact the true Queen of Terrasen. I think that this is hard for Chaol to comprehend considering he went and picked her up out of Endovier in the first book and he has been with her ever since she was seventeen and he took her from that death camp. He had witnessed her fall in love with his best friend and then fall in love with him while being the King’s Champion. Chaol still has no right to blame all the stuff that happened while she was away on her. He lost his job, he joined the rebels, his men were were up like pieces of steak for information on his location day after day by Dorian of all people, and he blamed it on her, the girl who was gone, unaware of what was happening to her friends while she was battling her own demons (pun not intended) out in Mistward.

I liked the way that the author included many “Contrast and Contradiction” moments were a character was acting very, well, out of character. This happened many times with Aelin, Rowan, Lysandra, Aedion, and Chaol. For example when they see Rowan again and Aelin is ecstatic. Usually Aelin is moody and doesn’t show much love or raw emotion to anyone, but when she sees Rowan, she is crying with joy and making jokes. This never happens to Aelin, but something unusual has happened and it’s causing a change in her personality. I think that she was just shocked to see him, because literally the next minute (in the story) she is already back to sass and sarcasm.

One of my favorite parts of the book is when Aelin is yelling at Aedion to run. Aedion is Aelin’s cousin, and was her only friend as a child because all of the other kids were afraid of her for her magic. Aedion is 4 years older than her and Aelin has just gotten him out of the castle and they are running across the courtyard. They have not seen each other in about 12 years and Aelin is screaming at him to run faster and it is hilarious because Aedion is just caught up on the fact that it is Aelin helping him.

““Four blocks,” she panted. “Just four blocks” That didn’t seem nearly far enough away to be safe, but he had no breath to tell her. Keeping upright was a task enough. The stitches in his side had split but—-holy gods, they’d cleared the castle grounds. A miracle, a miracle, a mir—

“Hurry, you hulking ass!” she barked. Aedion forced himself to focus and willed strength to his legs, to his spine. They’d reached a street corner bedecked in streamers and flowers, and Aelin glanced in either direction before rushing through the intersection. The clash of steel on steel and the screams of wounded men shattered through the city, setting throngs of merry faced revelers around them to murmuring. The swaying made his head spin. If he fainted…….

“Just one more block,” she promised” pgs. 154-155

This is one of my favorite passages because it is a chase and it has Aedion and Aelin in it. They work so well together, demonstrated more throughout the book and in Empire of Storms but you can see Aedion’s thoughts here and I like to see how much he’s trying to make it easier for Aelin and how she’s trying to help him.

I give this book a 10 out of 10, and I’ve read enough books that I don’t do that often. This entire series for me is a 10 out of 10. Some books are better than others but the mix of emotion, drama, fighting, killing, more drama, more killing makes the best book ever. I look forward to possibly fangirling over another book in this series in another letter essay.

 

Sincerely,

Allie Schuldt 📖