Summary: From the throne of glass rules a king with a fist of iron and a soul as black as pitch. Assassin Celaena Sardothien won a brutal contest to become his Champion. Yet Celaena is far from loyal to the crown. She hides her secret vigilantly; she knows that the man she serves is bent on evil. Keeping up the deadly charade becomes increasingly difficult when Celaena realizes she is not the only one seeking justice. As she tries to untangle the mysteries buried deep within the glass castle, her closest relationships suffer. It seems no one is above questioning her allegiances—not the Crown Prince Dorian; not Chaol, the Captain of the Guard; not even her best friend, Nehemia, a foreign princess with a rebel heart. Then one terrible night, the secrets they have all been keeping lead to an unspeakable tragedy. As Celaena's world shatters, she will be forced to give up the very thing most precious to her and decide once and for all where her true loyalties lie...and whom she is ultimately willing to fight for.
Overall: A fantastic read. If you’re on the edge of deciding whether or not to continue the series if Throne of Glass didn’t live up to the hype for you, I would 100% recommend this book. I love the series’s first book, don’t get me wrong, but Crown of Midnight is ten times better in just about every aspect ever.
Thoughts: The sequel to Throne of Glass takes the series to a whole new level. Not only is Celaena a hell of a lot more kick ass in this installment, but the dangers of living in Sarah J. Maas’ world are a lot more evident in Crown of Midnight as shown by the presence of a rebel group in Rifthold. I love the fact Celaena worked with the rebels so readily that she didn’t give it a second thought, and by the end of the book, we know why.
The entirety of Celaena and Chaol’s relationship in this was beautifully done and it was a refreshing romance as Maas didn’t shy away from having multiple sex…I don’t want to call them scenes because they’re not detailed, but she doesn’t do the whole “fade to black” thing a lot of YA authors tend to do when it comes to sex and romance. Maas did a great job in this area. The progress of the relationship was realistic and didn’t have that instal-love feeling so many YA romances do.
Wyrdmarks have a much bigger part in this and the three wyrdkeys are introduced as being the most powerful objects to exist. It’s revealed that the King of Adarlan is in possession of at least one and he’s using them for some kind of experiment that resulted in the library monster.
Oh, and Dorian has MAGIC when magic is supposed to be nonexistent.
Maas is also not afraid to kill off her characters in horrific ways. Nehemia’s assassination through dismemberment was detailed and as the reader, you feel every moment of shock, pain, horror and anger that Celaena does. Especially when Nehemia orchestrated the entire damn thing. To be honest, that kind of pissed me off. I get why she did it, but she’s also not the only one who died either. Her two guards get taken out with her.
And then there’s Chaol’s role in her death. A minor role, but the fact that he knew about the threat to Nehemia’s life and kept his mouth shut is horrible. I don’t care if the king ordered him to stay quiet, that’s the kind of thing you find ways to warn people about. Celaena’s desire to kill him was extreme, as she recognizes later on, but it was grounds to end their romantic relationship. And to be honest, I never really saw Celaena being with either Chaol or Dorian for very long. They were cute together, but I didn’t love-love either romance.
After Nehemia’s death, Celaena falls into a pit of depression and becomes a broken version of herself. And that broken-ness spurs her onto desperate actions. Like opening a portal to talk to her best friend one more time…fun times, especially when everyone almost dies. It’s during this portal opening fun where we find out that Celaena is fae and has FIRE MAGIC. That was really cool.
Earlier I mentioned that Celaena is a lot more kick ass in this book. Not only is she not killing her assigned targets, but when the rebel group she’s been helping abducts Chaol, she cuts through them as if they were untrained and unexperienced. She tortures and kills Graves, her former competition and Nehemia’s killer. And then there’s the portal/magic chapters. But I have to say, the best scene was when Celaena gutted Archer, in part because he hired Graves to take out her friend, but also because Archer calls her a good person. Celaena responds by gutting him, telling him Nehemia was the good person and throwing his body in the sewer after taking his head.
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