u/xBlack_Heartx

I really enjoyed this book immensely, it felt like a wonderful finale to this series, and I’m very sad to be leaving this world after 8 books.

SJM balances the multiple POV’s within this book very well, non of them were ever a dull read, and kept me invested the whole time I read them, the shrinking down of POV’s as characters met up all culminating in them all being in the same place (Orynth) by the end for the final fight against Erawan and Maeve was just awesome!.

If I could knock the book for anything, hell more like the entire ToG series, is the repetitive use of descriptors like: Ground out, Stalked, Loosed a breath, Breathed, Eyes Flared, Growled, Did x with Brutal Efficiency, Raised Brows, Arched a Brow, Drawled, Peeled Away, Nostrils Flared, Sketched a Bow, constant Blinking, constant Smirking, Clicking of the tongue, Stiffened, Quietly but not Weakly, Sliding hands into pockets(yes, even this one popped up), Describing someone/something, an action someone is performing as Lethal, Vulgar Gesture, Waves a Hand, etc….

These descriptors just got worse and worse as the series went on, and it started to really grate on my nerves just HOW much she uses them, I read ACOTAR first so I know just how much worse it gets, but to see the origins of these is an interesting experience to say the least.

The way Maeve and Erawan went out I thought were really great.

To cover Erawan’s demise:
Elide, Lysandra, Yrene, and Dorian’s handling of Erawan was so neat, Dorian baiting Erawan in by shifting himself to look like Yrene and firing off a bit of healing magic to draw him in, locking him in place with a Wyrdmark on the ground, then Dorian slugged him with his hands coated in healing magic, Lysandra pushed him to the floor in her Ghost Leopard form, and Elide came rushing in out of the woodwork with Demaris and stabbed Erawan in the chest with it, pinning him in place for Yrene to fly in clutched in a Rucks talons to finally heal Erawan to death!.

Dorian’s conversation with Erawan about his father’s name was so good!.

Now to cover Maeve’s demise:
The whole fight with Maeve was really good, I appreciate how Aelin, Lorcan, Fenrys, and Rowan came together to deal with her, Fenrys finally using his leaping ability to grab Aelin’s sword (I cannot remember its name) and then teleport behind Maeve to stab her before she could react was so satisfying!, and Maeve’s subsequent begging for Aelin to pull the sword out, man, she went out so well, what a great villain man.

I’d like to give a special mention to chapter 78 of this book, it was one of my FAVORITE chapters, Dorian faking mental instability in Maeve’s killing of the girl who resembled Kaltain, Dorian then using that to bait Maeve into trying to size his mind, then uno reversing it and burning her with his magic within her mind space was so good!, him then taking the final Wyrdkey and locking away Maeve’s ability to create portals and jump between places/realms was such a chefs kiss, that whole chapter was so freakin good!.

The final big battle as a whole once all of the characters got into Orynth was so good, it’s what I wanted from the final big battle in Wings and Ruin that I did not get (seriously, KoA’s big war blows WaR’s out of the water, it’s not even a contest.) AND we actually have some stakes in the battle too because she ACTUALLY kills off a main character in Gavriel!, and DOESN’T bring him back to life a few chapters later!.

All n all this book was a fantastic read all the way through, I know I didn’t cover everything, but this book is so large there’s just no way, we’d be here all day if I did that lol, but if you have any questions about things I didn’t cover, I’ll be happy to answer them and give my thoughts.

I’d like to show my personal rating of all 8 books in this series:

Throne of Glass: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Crown of Midnight: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Assassin’s Blade: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ and a half.

Heir of Fire: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Queen of Shadows: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Empire of Storms/Tower of Dawn:
⭐️⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Kingdom of Ash: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This series was wonderful, better than ACOTAR in some aspects (I felt the size of this series really let the characters and story breath more than the 5 ACOTAR books allowed that series) it was so much fun seeing these characters mature and grow as this series went on, I cannot wait to dive into Crescent City whenever I decide to get around to it, and of course ACOTAR 6/ACOTAR 7 coming in October/January!.

Anyone else notice this?, it’s a star, the North Star, on a spider, a Stygian Spider perhaps???.

Is the ToG universe actually about to come back into play here!?, my brain is about to explode!!!.

Worst achievements were:

•Rush Job: just because it was a bit time consuming, that and I wasted a lot of time because I didn’t understood what a Shield Bash even was and kept doing Shield Push.

•Chief Investigator: It was A LOT of running around in the Investigation Sector, I was missing a whole bunch of them.

•Astral Tactician: Just like Rush Job it was time consuming and a tad annoying because I had to rely on enemy spawns, ESPECIALLY the ones where you needed to kill specific enemies, and I still had a lot of them to do.

•Supportive Staff: The NPC Ranger took forever to kill the enemies, turning on invincibility did help immensely because I could just lead the enemies to the guy, lower their health enough to where he would has as much difficulty killing the Hiss, and just kinda waited for him to chip away at their health until he FINALLY killed 5 enemies. (Also doesn’t help that I’d accidentally killed some my first try, meaning he only killed 2 and I had to wait for the Hiss to spawn again to get the remaining 3 kills.)

•Subterranean Researcher: I got about 80% of the way done with the achievement and had to look up an slowly get the rest, a lot of boring running around and looking through my list to find out which ones I was missing, not fun lol.

•One of Us: Cats, Maneki-Nekos, I was missing all of them but the initial white one that kicks it all off and didn’t even know about it till I just randomly found the white cat chilling in the in front of the door, then I looked it up and said: “oh, there’s 8 of them, and I’m missing them ALL, greeeaaaat” and thus the marathon began, neat area at the end in the room the cats are guarding, a sweet pair of cat ears for Jesse though, and I now am One Of Them!

Really fun game, proud to say I’ve 100% it, and cannot wait for Resonant to see what whacky stuff they pull off with that game.

(I was also surprised to find I still had some quests and notes in the base game to do/get, one of those of course being tied to an achievement.)

Reading these two books together was a wonderful experience, I enjoyed the little moments where you could see how the two books take place at the same time just in different areas, the little moments where characters in EoS would think about the characters in ToD, and those neat moments where you, as a reader, knew about something that the characters didn’t know within both books, those moments were the most enjoyable as I was reading.

Tower of Dawn was on the slow side, and while it was my favorite of the two books, I do see how people would get bored with it, especially if you read Empire of Storms first and then jumped into Tower of Dawn. I appreciate the more personal story of Chaol and his healing journey alongside a returning character from The Assassins Blade Yrene and her journey through the book was a wonderful read all the way through to the end.

I enjoyed the political intrigue of Chaol navigating the children of the Khagan and the Khagan himself, I enjoyed the mystery aspect of of it with the mystery Valg who had infiltrated the Torre and was hunting Yrene and doing everything else it did within the book to stop her from finding out the truth about Healers and how their magic can effect the Valg, and the character growth of Chaol through this book was just awesome, it’s amazing to see just how much he grows from the way he is at the start to the very end of the book.

Yrene’s personal journey with Sartaq was also great, although her chapters did sometimes drag for me compared to Chaol’s, but the revelations we got throughout her chapters were great, especially knowing those things and continuing to read through Empire of Storms like for example: Maeve being the Valg Queen, and the existence of Valg Princesses, as well as Yrene being able to, with the use of her raw healing magic, completely eradicate the presence of a Valg infesting someone’s body, which is a HUGE revelation because it gives a way to fight against the Valg that was previously unknown of.

And the end when they have 1,000 Ruk Riders, Hasar’s many ships with her soldiers on them, the 300 Torre healers, and the many of the Khagan’s own ships with soldiers on them all going to help in the fight against Erawan, it’s so good, Chaol succeeded in his original goal and then some!.

Empire of Storms I’m not AS glowing about, it was an enjoyable, very fast paced book compared to Tower of Dawn, and it did get me through the more slower moments of Tower of Dawn when I had to switch to it every few chapters or so, BUT I did have a big issue with it.

The cause of said issues mainly being Aelin and how she constantly kept things to herself throught the book from people she’s supposed to be relying on, nearly getting Lysandra killed in Skull’s bay, undermining Dorian and him being a king by basically treating him as any other member of her group, completely underutilizing Adion, Rowan, etc…. She’s just not a good ruler hands down, not making use of people around her, not seeking council from people like ESPECIALLY Adion, someone who knows the people of the place she is supposed to one day rule, and knows battle, knows how to lead troops, etc….and her constant need to just not tell her group anything, it got frustrating after a while, it just feels like Aelin’s character development went backwards in this book which is perplexing.

Her not telling the crew about Ansil and her ships coming being the cause for Maeve and her armada appearing when they did, (because Lorcan panicked at seeing the ships, and in an attempt to protect Elide, used his power to call Maeve) causing everyone in her crew to almost damn near loose said battle, AND is the cause of her ultimate capture at the end, it’s pretty ironic, will Aelin learn her lesson from this happening and actually grow as a character because of it in KoA?, I highly doubt it at this point.

Speaking of Maeve, I LOVED her, she was great all the way through, and knowing what I did about her from reading ToD alongside EoS enhanced the chapters she was in and her interactions with Aelin even more.

I appreciate that Aelin had a plan all along that she set up in the background because she knew she was gonna end up being captured by Maeve, but man…that doesn’t negate all of the issue I had with her in those book, but I’ve got to question how she know the EXACT location she was gonna be at on a non-descript beach, especially when she literally got teleported by the mirror TO that spot she was in, it raised eyebrows and doesn’t make a lot of sense, the summoning of the people and their armies is one thing, I can extend my disbelief and say that she used perhaps her connections as an Assassin to send out those messages, but knowing exactly where to send those allies she summoned, to the EXACT spot on that beach was a bit much, it just didn’t take a lot of sense.

I appreciate what was set up at the end of Empire of Storms, Dorian and Manon going to find the Chrochan’s to raise an army, Lysandra (disguised as Aelin which I hated that whole plan Aelin had there, it was disgusting that she thought Adion would actually go along with that plan.) and Adion going to Terrison to get things going there, and Elide (for whatever reason), Lorcan, Rowan, Gavriel, and if I’m not mistaken Fenrys going to make an attempt at rescuing Aelin from Maeve, wonderful things set up for the final book that I’m so excited to read.

And I almost forgot, MANON!, her story within this book was so, so, SO, good! So was Elide’s story within Lorcan, honestly it got to the point where I wanted to get back to those two stories when I was reading about Aelin because I just found those a bit more interesting.

All n all though, Empire of storms was a great book brought down by Aelin and the many issues I had with her.

I thoroughly enjoyed both books, and cannot WAIT to get into Kingdom of Ash!

(I know I left out some things, and my thoughts are all over the place, it’s really hard to get my full thoughts out on these two books as SO much happens in them.)

This book was just awesome all the way though, such a wonderful read.

And that ending, MAN it’s setting up so much good stuff to come in Kingdom of Ash, I am SO excited to jump into it after I finish the 11 chapters I have left of Tower of Dawn. (The ending felt so bitter sweet with everything that happened, but man just having that little ray of hope near the end, especially after everything that happened before was so great, it really leaves you with the feeling that these characters will be able to make it through the conflict they are now facing, no matter how bleak it seems.)

The character moments between the multiple characters were great, a standout to me though were the moments between Manon and Dorian, this book has pretty much solidified Manon as my favorite character (like Queen of Shadows didn’t already do that lol.)(I also appreciate how SJM really took the time to flesh out the relationships between the multiple characters in this book.)

This book was a fast paced, action packed read all the way through with many emotional, high stakes moments that had me on the edge of my seat reading through them, and the multiple revelations we got within this book were so great and some almost made me cry, such a great read.

What an amazing journey this series has been thus far!, I’m not ready for it to end.

The most low effort, cash grab, piss poor collaboration event I’ve ever seen.

And the sad part is they’ll STILL make a lot of money off of it, and that will further enforce shit like this.

•EVANGELION Full Collection-5,000c

•Rei/Mari/Asuka collection(comes with weapon skin, chest attachment, name card, and a figurine for each individual skin)-1,500c

•Rei/Mari/Asuka Plugsuit Set(the individual skins without the other stuff included)-1,050c

•NERV Supply Bundle(back attachment, group emote, single emote, and a UI theme)-1,160c

I proceeded to fully build and kit out Viessa after this.

This book was a fantastic read all the way through, it’s amazing to see just how far all of these characters have come since the first book, and Manon especially was a standout, she’s honestly become my favorite character after reading this one, her character development was very well done, and it’s amazing to see just how much she’s progressed when looking back on when she was first introduced into the series.

I love how near the end of the book SJM had a more light hearted, almost warm approach to the various characters stories, it made for a good cool off period with how heavy the book was all throughout before the last few chapters, I really appreciated it.

Seeing all of the characters interact around the table just doing something as causal as eating food was so heartwarming, especially after everything they’ve been through, and it also sparked something into my mind that Chaol, Dorian, and Aelin haven’t all been in the same room together since Crown of Midnight, it was a wild thing to think about while reading.

It was amazing to see how each of these characters have grown and progressed since the first book in the series, and I cannot wait to see where else their stories go when I do the tandem read of EoS and ToD, and then dive head first into KoA.

I have so much more I could say but I don’t want this post to get too long so I’ll leave it here.

All n all a fantastic read, this series just keeps getting better and better and that amazes me to no end.

Ult Esiemo has all this clunk, and all these little issues with his new transcendent modules, (ESPECIALLY Explosive Maestro) and THAT is all we get?.

Rebalance/Improvements my ass.

This book was fantastic from start to finish, the comedy was great, the characters were fun, the dynamic and banter between Carl and Princess Donut was a joy to read, just all around a very, VERY good, fun read!.

Oh, and the announcer was hilarious, this book just had me audibly giggling to myself all the way through!.

For the first book in this series I am genuinely impressed at just how good it was, and cannot WAIT to start the second book!.

It was a very, VERY good book overall compared to the last 3 I read, and kept me hooked from start to finish.

I loved how much character development allot of the characters got throughout the book (ESPECIALLY Celaena and the journey she goes through in the story), I appreciate the different locations we got to visit through the 4 POV’s we follow.

I appreciate just how much of a threat the King of Adarlan was throughout the book without physically being present.

The multiple POV’s were balanced very well and none of them ever dragged or made me audibly groan when I had to read them, all were a joy, and some of the plot revelations kinda tied into others, it was a: “ah, so THATS why x thing is the way it is!” Kind of moments that I really appreciated.

You can tell just how much SJM’s writing improved from CoM/TaB into HoF.

Overall a very, very awesome book, cannot wait to get into Queen of Shadows!!!.

(Marked the post as a spoiler JUST in case.)

&gt;!Part 1 was a pretty great read all the way through, I appreciate the character development Celaena is getting, and getting to see more of the Fae has been a delight!. Also being able to see just how deeply the death of Nahemia affected her is heartbreaking, and it makes you really cheer for her to get her stuffs together and come out of her grief a better, stronger person than she was when she first arrived at Eylwe when she eventually leaves the area and goes back to the King and the rest of her troubles!<

&gt;!Getting a bit more information on how the King of Adarlan was able to wipe out magic on his continent through Chaol’s chapters was fun, and his interactions with the resistance group are pretty great, his character is being taken in a very interesting direction. Dorian’s chapters being linked with his is also a great choice, I love the little budding relationship he has with the healer girl who’s name escapes me, and I appreciate how she was just kinda always there in the background and is just being fleshed out as a character in this book!<

&gt;!The chapters with Manon are great as we get to see what the King has had going on in the Gap and get more information on the various Iron teeth witch clans and how they function, etc…
the relationship between her and her Wyvern Abraxos is such a joy to read, I wasn’t expecting to care about Manon as much as I did but man, oh man. Also, I love the subtle nods that something strange is going on in the gap, from the soldiers to the Wyverns themselves, it gives a good bit of mystery to the place that’s kinda just slowly getting revealed over time which is fun!<

&gt;!The balancing of the multiple PoV’s is very well done, each of them is always a joy to read, so far there hasn’t been a PoV where I groan and say: oh man, not THIS one!<

This book has blown the other 3 I’ve read out of the water so far.