August 08, 2018

Review: Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas

Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass #2)
Author: Sarah J. Maas
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Publication Date: August 27, 2013
Pages: 418
Format: Paperback/Own

"A line that should never be crossed is about to be breached.

It puts this entire castle in jeopardy—and the life of your friend."

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.

Review: I genuinely enjoyed this more than I enjoyed Throne of Glass. While the first book was good and interesting, I felt like it was lacking a little. Crown of Midnight definitely picks up the pace and throws more twists and turns into the story. It had me much more engaged in the story. 

So, I'll admit this before going on. With this series being almost finished by the time I'm reading this (August 2018), I know about the whole Celaena being Aelin thing. So everything involving Aelin in this book was not surprising to me. With that being said, already knowing this, I've been more interested in finding out how its found out that Celaena is Aelin. And this book did not disappoint with the story regarding that! It had been rumored all through the book that the rebels were helping Aelin Galathynius, but Celaena is Aelin, so I knew there was something funny going on with this. It was also fascinating how no one put together Celaena's back story as being related to Aelin's story. It wasn't until Celaena went through the portal and her Fae features revealed that Chaol genuinely started questioning things and looking deeper. And it was only once Celaena gave him that vague date at the end of the book, that he looked at the genealogy records and started piecing everything together until he figured out Celaena is Aelin. I was actually surprised it was Chaol that figured it out. Sure he had the bit of seeing Celaena as Fae to push him to look, but Dorian had been looking through the records for quite a while after his event in this book, so I'm surprised he's yet to piece any of it together. Now I'm waiting to see how everyone else finds out in the next book. 

I was a lot happier with the story in this book. It had much better pacing, action, twists. I loved that we weren't focused on Dorian as a love interest. Thank god. Yes, we focus on Chaol as one, but I like him more than Dorian honestly. I liked there was a lot of focus on Celaena and her choices. How she chose to go against the king, buy helping her targets escape and bringing a close double in their place. Showing her consequences to leaving her current target, Archer, alive and believing his information. It showed her making her own choices when it came to Chaol. Both with their romantic relationship and after everything went down. I really enjoyed the relationship with Celaena and Chaol for how short long it was. They finally got a little bit of happiness with each other before everything went to hell again. It was a brief bit of happiness we only got to see with Celaena when she was with Sam. I liked seeing her happy. However, I was just as destroyed as Celaena by what happened to Nehemia. Celaena lost one of the only people she really considered a true friend after so many years. And all because Celaena was deceived by Archer. I felt so bad for Celaena. She just constantly loses people she loves and cares about. This girl deserves a break from the pain. 

I was really interested in all the other developments. We see Dorian surprisingly end up with something that could get him killed if others found out about it. I'm really interested in finding out more about how Dorian got this and what it will mean going forward. We also finally find out how the King has the power he does and how he was able to conquer so many lands when in normal circumstances, it wouldn't have happened. We're only scratching the surface with the power the king has, but its a very dangerous road he's going down and it needs to be stopped before it gets too far. I'm also incredibly curious what role Kaltain and Roland are going to be playing in this since they both seem to be being used for something. We also found out just how deep the rebellion is and how it got Nehemia killed. I don't think Nehemia is bad like Archer was claiming after she left the rebellion. I just think they were going to deep and too far than Nehemia wanted and she wanted out and no part of it, and it got her killed because she knew too many of their secrets. 

I also really enjoyed the fact we got to see more of Chaol outside of being the Captain of the Guard. We got to see him as a lover, a friend, a tossed aside son. We even see him going against the King himself by keeping secrets. I really can't wait to get more of Chaol. He seems like a genuinely interesting character.