I finished the throne of glass series- Kingdom Of Ash by Sarah J. Maas review (spoilers)
Dear Reader,
Can you believe I actually did it? Because honestly I can't, even if it did take me - wait for a second, let me just scroll and scroll and scroll- one year and seven months, thought it was going be even longer to be perfectly honest. But bloody hell, I did it. And in four days, may I add. Yeah, that's right it took me 4 days to read this 1000 paged book. I must just be as brilliant as I've always believed myself to be!
Before we get too far into this boys, girls and my wide audience of cats that type weird shit like 'ignorethetypos.blogspot.com/' into the computer in the dead of night, I have four thousand pages of notes for this book, and this is about to get messy. Also, I can't tell if these are tear stains or dandelion root tea stains on half of them, so please send your prayers for me trying to decipher and translate this utter trash.
So I read this on audiobook, I think most people did since this book is bigger than my head, and I'm sorry, why were some of our characters Scottish? And British! I never ever made any of the characters anything but middle eastern in my head, their accents in the audiobook baffled me completely. This book was hard to read, it was the first time we've had all of our characters in the same book and the time frames were ever so slightly different switching between point of views, which threw me most of the time, but I still loved that everyone was in this book.
It was so hard to read from Aedion and Lysandra's POV, as it constantly felt like they were fighting a losing battle. On top of that Aedion was SUCH a dick to Lysandra for absolutely nothing and that she did it for everyone's good and was just taking orders. Aedion, get over yourself you little shit. Did NOT like Aedion for the first half of this book. But he did redeem himself, in the end, we see that he and Lysandra are getting married which was so sweet and honestly what I'm expecting from a court of silver flames with Nesta and Cassian, as they are literally the same people paralleled in ACOTAR. I know, I only just realised that too don't worry.
At the start of the book, Maeve plays some freaky mind games with Aelin and it freaked me the F OUT. God, I thought Maeve had convinced Aelin that she was her aunt for real, I had to put the book down and go for a walk out of pure FEAR. Maeve's boy toy Caren was literally pure evil- I have never wished anyone else more dead in a book than that bastard. When Aelin gets out of the camp and she's screaming to get the manacles off, well that was probably the first time my heart broke for her in this. 'Show me fire heart.' oh Rowan, such a sweetheart. I think a reason this scene was really making me ball, was because we just see how worn down our queen is. Am I the only one who misses relatively carefree Celaena? Everyone's so heavy and weighed down in these last books, I miss the sassy easygoingness of it all when we didn't even know what the valg were. For that reason, this book wasn't my favourite in the series. Don't get me wrong I love how much we've all grown and our characters are still the best but they've lost that youthful spark they have when they're first introduced to us. That and there was so much war and politics, which is never my favourite to read about, even if it did give me extreme guns and ships; battle of Yorktown Hamilton vibes.
The witches played a much bigger role in this than I imagined. And oh my GOD did I love reading Manon's POVs and Dorians. We had so many witchy face off's in this book. First with Manon and the leaders which was forking brilliant. Manon is such a badass, it actually hurts how cool she is in every single scene. And then we had it off on the battlefield with Iskra (that mother forking asshole) and Petra (WAY! We love you Petra). I swear, if Iskra killed Abraxos, I would have had to write a fake chapter were we slowly kill Iskra and then miraculously bring Abraxos back. My constant anxiety of Abraxos dying every single time he was mentioned was very much unhealthy. And Dorian's story was very eventful bloody hell. He obviously spent too much time with CELAENA with all his SCHEMING and not TELLING ANYONE. When he was gonna marry Maeve- I did not know what the fork was going on, but he got me! I completely bought the whole thing that evil little princeling. Dorian had some funny moments in this book; when he learned to shapeshift and he turned into a woman that was jokes. Oh my lord, when he took Maeve's power to world walk and she was like 'well how am I supposed to go anywhere' and Dorian was like 'I suggest you buy some shoes' God I love him. He will always be one of my absolute favourite characters. Him and Manon DREAM TEAM, there couldn't be a better match like they are so badass. Insert picture here of badass Manorian:
It just confused me every time he brought up Sorscha, I swear she was only in it for about half of one book and now she's like this massive deal to Dorian again just as we see Manon finally opening up to him. Men.
Lorcan and Elide in this book, yes. Yes! I have been waiting on them two forever and their scenes in this book were perfection. To be honest, every romance scene in this book was elite, Sarah has perfected these characters chemistry now and we really see all the different dynamics between our luuuvveerrss broaden to love and trust or just hinted at potential (cough cough *Manon and Dorian*) 'We'll see'? Manon, babe, you're killing me.
Speaking of my death, now I knew this book would saw me in half, but I also knew Sarah loves a happy ending and was wondering if we'd make it out alive and well. But no. Possibly the worst thing about what happened was I had no inkling it would happen. My god how I sobbed and sobbed till I think about four in the morning when we lost the thirteen. 'Live Mannon' NOPE I was not okay, honestly, my eyes are leaking just thinking about Asterin and the twins. That was one of the saddest things I've ever read, that and the end of crooked kingdom. It was so beautiful and so so tragic.
We got a lot of blasts from the past in this book, we saw Kaitlain and Nox Owen and Aelin talked a lot about the Nehemia. We explored a lot of Dorians daddy issues as well as actually getting some closure for him there. You know, I almost forget about the stupid bit with the wyrdkeys. What the actual hell Aelin, she literally just fucked up a really simple way of stopping the war and saving loads of lives, to keep the soul of that stupid cow who caused all of this 1000 years ago. And it didn't even bloody work and she's gone and it was all for nothing! This whole damn scene just pissed me off immeasurably, I just didn't understand why Aelin even considered that exchange. Also, what was the point of killing all the gods? It just meant that they had even less support. Just- aghhhhh AELIN WHY BITCH WHY? The best thing that came out of the scene was an ACOWAR cross over and even THAT was a bit far fetched, come on now.
Moral of the story; thank fork for Yrene, we love Dorian and Manon is a Badass.
This review was hard to write because although I loved this book and it was brilliant, I was slightly underwhelmed by it. Not any particular part of a character plotline, the ending was beautiful and it was beautifully written, I just felt a little part of it was missing. I've bonded with so many people other this series and I've loved every second of reading the books, reading and watching content surrounding the book and I'm honestly just really sad it's over. It's always been that series I look at on my shelf that I thought I would never finish and now it's over I'll really miss the world, sappy as it is. I would only ever pick up a throne of glass book when I really needed it. A couple in the pandemic, I read one through mocks, one when my dad was ill, the first few when I was settling into GCSE work and going through a bit of an anxiety breakthrough. And now it's over and God I'm actually really sad.
Thank you, Sarah, for that journey. I think your books changed a little part of me and for that, I will always be grateful and carry the bravery of all those characters with me, through all the wyrdgates of life.
Until next time
Issy
x
