Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas

Warning! Spoilers ahead!

Genre: YA fantasy, Assassin

The synopsis

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. 

The review

Ok, let’s calm down and try to express my thoughts without being too much of the fan I am…

I will start with the fear the first book had left me with: the romance. Because if there is ONE trope I hate above all it is the love triangle (did I already express my hatred for this trope on this blog?). Even worse, I was afraid that the romance will take up too much space compared to the main plot and that will also see Celeana becoming the namby-pamby girl I am used to seeing in a lot of romance and YAs. Let me reassure you, the book solves these issues in the first few chapters!

And the rest of the book was just a wonderful reading experience. I really liked that the main plot, which is quite simple with the girl going against the evil emperor, is renewed by subplots in each book. It keeps your interest by adding a layer of complexity to the overall plot.

In Crown of Midnight, we are losing a character that I liked a lot but this event allows the plot to move forward while adding more spice to the action. Celeana is again the cold, remorseless assassin we met in Throne of Glass and will let nothing in her way to get revenge. I was impressed by how all the small details disseminated in the book are linked and make sense by the end of it. And Maas succeeded in surprising me with the identity of the murderer: I indeed felt that the first one was too easy but totally forgot to think about it afterwards, so much I was immersed in my reading!

In brief: Once again, Sarah J. Maas did not disappoint me! And as usual, I am amazed by her skills in depicting emotions and grief especially. We are suffering along with the characters, and happy to be in this emotional state 😀

My rating: 5/5