Review: Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Release date: September 1, 2015
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 1408858614
Pages: 645
Goodreads || Book Depository

Queen of Shadows is the fourth book in the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas. This review will not contain spoilers for Queen of Shadows, but there may be spoilers for the preceding books. You can check out my reviews for the first three books: Throne of Glass, Crown of Midnight and Heir of Fire. Also, if you haven’t read the prequel novellas, The Assassin’s Blade, I would recommend reading them first. It will give you a much better background on some of the characters that appear in Queen of Shadows.

No masters.

No limits.

No regrets.

Celaena Sardothien is cloaked in her assassin’s hood once more. She is back in Rifthold, but this time she is no one’s slave. She must delve into her most painful memories and fight for her survival, while resisting a smouldering passion that might very well consume her heart. And she will face her former master, the King of Assassins, again – to wreak revenge for a decade of pain…

MY THOUGHTS

This fourth instalment was so good! It was just as good as, if not better than, Heir of Fire. After reading Heir of Fire, I thought I had a good idea of where the series was going to go next but this book showed me that nothing is predictable when it comes to Sarah J. Maas’s books. It was unexpected and unpredictable in the best way.

In Heir of Fire, we see three different story arcs, and these start to converge in Queen of Shadows. The book is mainly set in Rifthold and Morath, and our beloved characters who were separated during the third book are reunited for the most part. There are also some unexpected friendships that form and I thought these were particularly well-developed, and perhaps my favourite aspect of the book. I loved the addition of some of the new characters that hadn’t appeared in the first three books. It made me really excited about what they might bring to the story in the remaining two books. However, I was a little bit sad that some of the characters from previous books didn’t have very many appearances in Queen of Shadows…

I don’t feel like we get to see as much development in Celaena/Aelin as we did in the previous books, especially Heir of Fire. In this fourth book, she has pretty much already developed and grown into a woman and a queen. But while there wasn’t a lot of character development in this book, it was still interesting to think back to the previous books and compare who she was then to who she has become. She’s still independent and feisty (and she needs no man), but I love that she now has people supporting her and loving her despite all her flaws and everything she has done in the past.

“Whatever you had to do to survive, whatever you did from spite or rage or selfishness… I don’t give a damn. You’re here – and you’re perfect. You always were, and you always will be.”

In regards to the romance, it went in a completely different direction to what I had expected. I’m quite pleased with how it’s playing out though because I shipped them before ❤ . I’m glad that the romance wasn’t a huge part of the book, and that the story really focused on the world and the magic.

Queen of Shadows was definitely a page-turner. I read it so quickly! As always, Sarah J. Maas’s writing is easy to read and progresses at a nice, even pace. It was full of action and was so entertaining. At times, I thought things were resolved a bit too quickly, and everything was going as planned most of the time. But I didn’t really mind too much because there were so many heart-stopping moments. The climax of the book was so intense and epic that it just blew everything out of the water.

I have ZERO idea about what’s going to happen in the next book. I get the sense that some of the characters will only have small cameos in Book 5, and I really hope that isn’t the case. But I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. 2016 cannot come soon enough!

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