#rest assured i already know arobynn gets his shit fucked

[lili-of-the-wildfire]

sjm is a sick bitch for what she did to sam and i WILL be reaping my revenge for that one, my fucking god

#WHAT DID SAM EVER DO BUT DREAM SARAH #DREAM OF LOVE WITH CELAENA #DREAM OF A NEW LIFE WITH HER ON A NEW CONTINENT #DREAM OF FREEING HER FROM HER GOLDEN CAGE #EVERYONE EXCEPT SAM CAN BE A DREAMER APPARENTLY #oh i’m so fucking sick she didn’t need to describe his body like that #celaena is stronger than me bc i would’ve killed myself im being so serious #throne of glass #sam courtland #the way i am legitimately nauseous imaging the way he died and he’s NOT EVEN REAL #rest assured i already know arobynn gets his shit fucked #ToG spoilers

[signofwolf]

Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas – book review

Series: Throne of Glass #7 Genre: YA, Fantasy Theme: Fae, magic users, war Warnings: mentions of torture, imprisonment Star rating: 0,5/10

Why did I pick this up?: I wanted to end this horrible series once and for all.

[Heavy spoilers ahead]

To make myself clear, before this book I quite liked this series. It wouldn’t place in my top 100 books, not even close, but it was a pleasant pageturner to listen to in audiobooks when working.

Language

Let’s start slow. I lack the words to express how much I hate the words ‘male’, ‘female’ and ‘mate’ after this series. Not even gonna try to express my trauma. But these 3 gems aside, Sarah J. Maas needs a dictionary. Or compress her work to a manageable size. Everything sang, Everyone melted, Every man roared, Every woman trembled, Everyone was unleashing themselves at least once a chapter (number of chapters: 122) ). And now I know definitely too much about Yrene’s ‘womb’. I know so much…

Dynamism

I thought that was a book about a war with heavy action content. Oh boy, I was wrong. This 984-pages monstrosity has maybe 5 pages of action. If you squint.

Every sequence, where by design action should take place was followed by one of two scripts:

Few sentences of action and then a few pages long internal monologue. Often repeated with the same character after the next few sentences of action, or with the next character and then the next (sometimes the first character made a second appearance and then everything would go all over again). And the word ‘character’ used in these sentences is not because I’m rambling. This book is written that way!

Few sentences of action and then action stops, and we are graced by a few pages long conversation. In the middle of a battle. Or spying. Or in Erawan’s chambers, when his castle is going down, and he is running up the stairs...

Time

Leaving alone the fact that apparently all series took less than a year (till this book I estimated the plot for about 3 years, Wiki told me it was 2, but Maas knows best), because that is a can of worms in itself. Time in this one? I honestly have no idea. There were many ‘few weeks of travel’ parts with two main groups of POVs. Personally my only time indicator was ‘Orynth won’t fall till Aelin gets here’. But nothing just fit. And I saw Lost Song when in the last episode we as the audience realized that our two POVs parallel storylines are in reality millennia apart. Lost Song made sense.

Emotional loading

… there wasn’t any. Really, it was like reading a milk label. Every time the scene was potentially emotionally impactful, Maas went ahead to overexplaining EVERY. GOD. DAMMED. THING. And it was abso-fucking-lutely everything. ‘Emotional dilemma? Let’s current POV explain it! 2 pages should be enough… Damn maybe it wasn’t enough. I know! I’ll switch POVs and explain it through the other character!’ <= My impression of Maas’ thought process. I’m fairly sure that the record was 7 POVs explaining the same thing in the row, but I was blacking out a little, so I cannot be sure.

And if that wasn’t enough, this book had a second way to defuse tension: random-plastic-repetitive-badly_written-smut. Really badly written and really repetitive. How could you not feel the spicy bits, when Manon (cruel, self assured 100+years old witch-queen) reacts the same in bed as Elide (20years old, virgin, ex-slave). And the rest of them were the same, there weren’t ANY distinctions.Just copy-paste.

The next point in current case: Someone died, it was impactful, I really liked the character, so I got sad. But then 2 of our characters came out of the room with a body, and after a paragraph of grieving they started making out, and then I was regaled with 2-pages-long description of melting cores. That was the place then this book stopped being badly written, and started being distasteful.

Characters

Remember when I was writing about switching POVs (which is 15(!!!) In the whole book. Oh and an omniscient narrator in places when our current POV was grieving too much to overthink something, but Maas still wanted to inform us about something)? They were all savagely murdered in the worst way: character mutilation. Somewhere between books our maybe-not-that-original but colorful and interesting characters became carbon copies of each other. I have no idea how many times I didn’t realise there was a POV switch. The only indicator was a change of pronoun, or when Maas was telling us the name of a current narrator. These were the only ways. And if you can't distinguish if you are in Dorian’s head or in Manon’s, that is the sign of a really BAD writing.

Romance

…there wasn't any. In all this book there wasn't any naturally progressing romantic scene. There were Maas’ endgame pairings which were sexing or pinning. As the author Maas loves to write about soulmates. And it’s not a bad thing itself. When I want some fluffy story I often tag ‘soulmates’ in AO3 and voila, +10 to good mood. But God above, it is not cute when every pair you write about are ‘true mates’ just BECAUSE. It is the only way Maas sees a relationship, as a fated pairing, written in the wake of the universe by the God himself. There is no choice, nor the work to put in it. They are the author's OTP and that means that they are perfect and they should have children right now. Point in case:

Guy was treating a girl like a shit on his sole, including throwing her naked out of tent, on a snow, with their friends present, all the while abusing her verbally in a worst way. But it’s okay, because when she almost died he realised his mistakes and apologised. Two scenes later, he was forgiven, because... fated mates?

The pathos

I know that many people don't like this type of scenes, but it's not my case. I’m reading by picturing images and not repeating words. I like sequences that I can imagine to be grand and glorious, even if they are a little corny. That said, the pathos scenes were the most disappointing ones for me. Maas likes to write parts that are more picturesquely exalted than logically possible [point in case: meeting of 5 armies/forces in the random patch of sand in Empire of Storms, and it being painted as ‘an Aelin’s great plan’. I laughed myself silly at that. But not taking logic and all the plot holes into consideration that was a nicely looking scene. In Kingdom of Ash that wasn’t the case. I would say that the author wanted to paint us a renaissance painting every 20 pages or so. In my opinion, every time she failed miserably. Each and every of those scenes was or to farfetched to be even remotely realistic, and evidently written only for a sake of the picture, or just plainly stupid.

Example, and it’s so priceless a scene, that I just need to share it: Battle of Orynth, 25th day or so (time in this book doesn’t exist), the 13. sacrificed themselves (like thousands before them but hush). And then, time stops: grieving Manon is going through the city, they open the gates for her (yes, the siege is still on), she goes to the place where they died, after her come out all of our main heroes, and half the city itself with ‘flowers, rocks and precious possessions’ and they lay it there in a tribute to these brave (evil till 2 months ago) witches. I honestly can’t remember when was the last time I saw such an abstract scene. It’s a material for an essay in itself. No, I could not take it seriously.

Additionally, it's hard to make an impact as every damn sentence is grand and lofty. In the end it became truly pathetic, Aelin vs Maeve was unreadable.

Character deaths:

Let's make a quick count: main characters in a series at the start of KoA: 12 secondary characters in a series at the start of KoA: 20ish minor and total background: a lot more

Death count: main: 0 secondary: 3 minor: 2 (11 if we try very hard)

Resurrections: 1 (possibly 3, but not gonna analyze it)

Did you feel emotions of this impossible war against this all-encompassing, all-powerful, invincible, immortal, cunning Evil with armies from 3 continents and 2 worlds? No? Me neither.

Oh well, but there were a lot of deaths of ordinary soldiers. I’m quite certain that all of Terrasen’s army was at least twice brought back to life for them to die in these numbers.

Logic or lack thereof

Oh, and let’s not forget about the Deus ex machina army of unbeatable, magical elves on wolves, from legends, living for the past thousands of years in the unreachable lands of the north, because they managed to run from the surprise attack 10 years earlier. Did I mention that they came from portals, which the whole book was telling us were impossible to make in this scenario? After the previous saviour army was already fighting there for a day? And that Aelin didn’t know they would come for sure (how did she contact them again?)? Even though they were waiting in the full armours for these portals? Ah, and also: that army didn’t do anything. They just came and fought for maybe 4 minutes. And there were just so many things like that!

And if we’re on the topic of armies I present you: ‘My favourite absurd-list in the series: allied armies’.

(As a comparison, in A Song of Ice and Fire by J.R.R Martin, in 7 kingdoms of Westeros, at the peak of war there were 7 forces present, but not all were even engaged in a war.)

First the ones that made sense:

Armies of Terrasen’s Lords (counted as one, not gonna nitpick)

The Khaganate army (also counted as one)

Galan Ashryver’s armada

Whitethorn fraction

Rebel Ironteeth witches

…should Dorian be counted as an ‘army’?

And there were some that did not:

Ansel of Briarcliff’s army

The Silent Assassins

Mycenians

Wild Men of the Fangs

Army of magical elves on wolves

And the ‘I don’t even know’ category:

Crochan witches

Overpowering and overreaching

Section title tells it all. The stakes were too high. I was honestly waiting for Aelin to become Super Saiyan and start to throw planets at Maeve and Erawan. I won’t spoil if this happened.

In my opinion it could be a really great series, if our list of villains ended with Arobynn and King of Adarlan, and the list of Aelin titles with an assassin and a princess. We could have had two main fight plots: one emotional with Arobynn, when Aelin would have to face a damage he had done to her, and overcome it. And the second one, with freeing Terrasen from Adarlan’s rule. That’s it. There was an asshole, power hungry king, who feared magic and wanted to rule the East part of a continent. A lot of plot, but not so much that we stopped to care, or didn’t have time to cover everything. We could really get to know what Terrasen and his people were like and not JUST GET TOLD that it was ‘the greatest place in the world’ every damn 20 pages.

Plus…should Dorian be counted as an ‘army’? It's a REALLY valid question.

Climaxes

IIf I have to write a list of things that disappointed me in this book, this review would be thrice its current size, but one of the worst grievances I have is the complete lack of acknowledging the plotlines that had been started. This book series has overall 4 372 pages (not counting novellas) and 12 main characters (still not gonna address this). All of them had their storylines and arcs but if they weren't tied up in the previous instalments they wouldn’t be in this one. I get it, Maeve and Erawan got beaten (in an extremely unsatisfactory way) but they were only a background in this series' plots.

Aelin Well, Aelin was one of 3 people (+2 paragraf-long insertion from Nesryn and Chaol) who got their own POV’s after the battle (second was technically Rowan, who was ‘Aelin’s POV outside of Aelin’.The third Dorian, who got almost a full two pages). And from this we got that: she got crowned, Aedion got his bond and that Maas have no idea how the city looks after weeks of siege. In her case what angered me the most was ‘Terrasen is my home’ subplot. Only in this tome we read at least 3 times that Aelin will be okay with dying, if only she gets to see Terrasen one last time, or if she get to die on Terrassen soil. But you know what? Maas forgot to write the scene where Aelin actually ‘comes in’.

Mannon Didn't get her own POV after the battle, but here’s what we’ve got: She is going to the Wastes with Croachans and Ironteeth. Whait. What? Yes, that was the ending of this 500+ years of feud. They fought together and they decided to unite their two species, completely forgetting more than half a millenia of slaughter. I can only hope that there were at least some talks behind the scenes… NO! F*** NO! This isn’t how it works!

Rowan, Dorian, Chaol, Yrene, Lysandra, Aedion, Lorcan, Elide, Nesryn, Sartaq Lived happily ever after

Secondary minor and total background characters Survived (I acknowledge that they would be ignored in most books’ epilogues, but this abomination is almost 1000 pages of nothing!!).

Good Scenes

That saying, this book actually had 4 good scenes:

Crochan witches go to war - gathering-forces-to-fight trope, which is my *love-always trope* so I’m not even sure if it was relatively good, or if I’m just a slut for this trope. It was still only a paragraph long though.

[recurring] The children’s tale Aelin repeated to herself to remember who she is.

‘Lorcan Lochan’ - the only marginally funny scene in the whole book

I actually found Darrel making Evangeline his heir charming. Even if circumstances were far-fetched at least.

But the words crime of this book? It was agonisingly, mind-numbingly boring. If the overexplaining and repetitions were to be taken out I highly doubt that there would be 300 pages left.

For these 33 hours of audiobook I suffered through I give it half a star. Because Abraxos exist.

Please see my garishly accurate cover on my instagram! You can also like it there :D

instagram | goodreads

#book #book review #bookworm #review #signofwolf-book_review #opinion #throne of glass #throne of glass series #throne of glass spoilers #sarah j maas #kingdom of ash #aelin galythinius #mary sunderland #tog #fantasy #fandom

[scribomaniac]

One Step Ahead: Chapter 4, All Monsters Have Mothers

It took Rowan almost no time at all to find the Faliq and Daughter's Bakery within the Warehouse district, though he did raise a brow at the sight of it. The building was in shambles—rickety roof tiles, cracks in the facade, clouded windows, grimy with dust. It looked like it was on its last legs and any moment now a foreclosure sign would sprout from the ground and the entire establishment would collapse. Regardless of how it looked, the smells wafting out of it were enough to make Rowan's mouth salivate and his stomach rumble. A steady stream of people, obviously apathetic to the place's aesthetics, entered and exited the building with smiles on their faces and baked goods in their possession. Knowing better than to judge a book by it's cover—especially if the subject of that book was Celaena—Rowan kept his wits sharp and his ears perked for anything and everything as he walked into the bakery.

The interior matched the exterior perfectly, but at least the small, circular tabletops looked clean. Green eyes scanning the few patrons eating in, Rowan's jaw ticked when he saw that Celaena was no where in sight. Walking up to the counter, a young woman with short black hair, brown skin, and copious amounts of eye liner looked at him with dark, bored eyes, and asked, “What can I get you?”

Ignoring his baser needs and the clench of his stomach, Rowan leaned in across the counter and tilted his head, “I'm looking for Celaena—you wouldn't have one in stock, would you?”

Quirking a brow, the girl snorted, “No, what shit are you on?”

Eye flitting down to her name tag, then back up to her eyes, Rowan cleared his throat, “Nesryn, I assure you I am not on any sort of shit, though you yourself seem to have recently taken a hit of the bull variety.” Nesryn's jaw jutted out and she glared at him. “I know she visits this place—that she may even be here right now. Now, Nesryn,” he narrowed his eyes on her, “we can do this the easy way or the hard way. The easy way—you telling me where Celaena is—ends with me buying a slice of that decadent looking apple pie, and the hard way—you not telling me—ends with your family losing their business license by the end of the day. Now,” he paused, straightening his posture to intimidate her with his full height, “which is it going to be?”

Nesryn's upper lip twitched, the first sign of a snarl about to appear, and her shoulders tensed. Nostrils flaring, the dark haired girl growled, “Fuck off. I don't know who you think you are, but you better listen to me when I say I don't know this Celaena chick you're after, and if you even breath at my family the wrong way you will have a target on your back for the rest of your life—and trust me when I say I don't miss.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Rowan smirked, “You're gonna regret this—”

“Oh, enough with the pissing contest!” A voice called out from Rowan's right. Smirk sliding off his face, Rowan's head snapped to watch Celaena stride out from the kitchen.

“Celae—” Nesryn objected, glaring arrows at the blonde, but the assassin merely waved her off.

“It's okay, Faliq,” she said, her eyes honing in on Rowan's. “He's an old friend,” she purred. Motioning to a corner of the bakery with her chin, Celaena silently led Rowan over to one of the small, circular tables and sat down, looking to all the world like a young woman without a single solitary care. They sat down across from each other and stared at one another in silence. No words were spoken, no hands were gestured, no sounds were made, and yet a conversation was had.

Celaena quirked a golden brow, Looking for me, buzzard?

You have something of mine, he responded with a mere tilt of his head and the narrowing of his eyes, I'm here to get it back.

And how are you going to do that?

By force, if necessary.

Leaning across the table top, she bit her bottom lip in an attempt to suppress a grin, Is that a promise?

Scoffing, Rowan had to turn hid head to the side to a hide a secret smile of his own. Quickly schooling his features, he looked back at the assassin and said, “I need the ring, Aelin. It belongs to Maeve.” He also needed some necklace for Arobynn's information, but he figured that particular piece of jewelry could wait for later.

Celaena sneered, “Oh, yeah? Did she tell you that?” She leaned back in her seat and smoothed out her facial features. Rowan felt a chill run down her spine at the iciness in her gaze, “Then again, the Queen of Darkness believes everything belongs to her, doesn't she? Places, things . . . people, even.”

There was a challenge in Celaena's words, and an image of Rowan's friends Fenrys and Connall flashed through his mind, but he forced it away. “This isn't a game, Celaena. If you don't return the ring, Maeve will declare war the Assassin's Guild. Your master won't be too happy about that.”

“My master?” Celaena snorted out a laugh, “What? Arobynn?” She tapped her fingers against the table top and tisked, “Your information's outdated, Rowan. I left the Guild months ago. Maeve can declare war on him all she'd like.”

Rowan blinked. Adarlan's Assassin left the Guild? And he didn't know about it? That was slightly worrying to the white haired male, but he'd have to update his sources later. “All that means is she'll attack you, and you'll have no one to protect your from her wrath.”

Rolling her eyes, the assassin puckered her lips and pretended to consider his warning, “So you're saying little ol' me against Maeve and all her minions?” Her eyes blazed, burning into his, and he gulped. No one had ever looked at him like that before. It made him feel like she was setting him ablaze, and, if he was being honest with himself, he kind of liked it. “I'll take my chances.”

Patience dwindling, Rowan bared his teeth, “Don't be stupid. You really want to pick a fight with the Queen of Darkness? Over some ring? The thing won't even get you a hundred dollars on the streets.”

“You're right, it won't,” she agreed. “But it's not about the money. It's about the memories.”

Brows furrowing, nostrils flaring, green eyes glinting, Rowan knew he had lost all his composure and looked like a mythic bird of prey before its victim. The girl sitting before him disappeared and all Rowan could see was Maeve, wistfully looking at a photo of her long dead brother; of the news clipping pictures of the Galathynius family; of the crime scene photos and Orlon's slit throat; of the new headline that kept popping up, again and again: Adarlan's Assassin Strikes Again!

“You're a real piece of work, you know that? Barely twenty and already a monster,” Rowan sneered. Celaena's brows rose in surprise, not understanding his sudden anger. “How old were you, huh?” He scooted to the edge of his seat and leaned across the small table, invading her personal space, “How old were you when you slaughtered Maeve's family in cold blood? Eight, nine? You must have broken a record—youngest assassin there ever was.”

“Maeve's family,” Celaena repeated slowly, her tongue forming around each word specially. Her brows had furrowed so much they looked almost fused together. “And what do you know about Maeve's family?”

“I know you have their blood on your hands, and that you still revel in it—why else would you keep the ring?”

Chuckling, Caelaena shook her head, as if this whole conversation amused her. And as far as Rowan knew, it did. “Ah yes, the Galathynius's.” Tilting her head, she pointed her index finger at him, “Let me guess, Maeve gave you some sob story about how I killed her brother? Slit poor old Orlon's throat while he slept? Did the same to his son and smothered his daughter in law? Kidnapped his granddaughter and chopped her up into tiny pieces to sate my monstrous appetite? And what, took the ring as a memento—”

“Granddaughter?” Rowan interrupted, her words breaking through his rage. “What granddaughter?” Maeve hadn't mentioned one, and there was no mention of one in the obituaries he'd researched. Why did he feel—again—that he was missing something? That he didn't have all the information?

Just as before, Celaena's face smoothed out and just like that, she shut down. Frost radiated from her, and Rowan likened her to an impregnable, icy fortress. Something inside him screamed at him to break past that barrier, to bring the fire—that beautiful, consuming fire—back into her gaze. But he didn't know how. He didn't have the tools. He didn't have the information. So, although he knew it wouldn't do him any good, he asked again, “What granddaughter?”

The assassin shrugged, “What does it matter? She's dead, anyway, same as the rest.”

“No,” he peered at her owlishly, trying to find a weakness in her facade—a chink in her icy persona. “This matters,” he murmured. He was pushing against a solid wall, and it wasn't budging, not even an inch. Deciding to switch tactics, he asked, “Why antagonize Maeve? Why keep the ring from her?”

“You said it yourself, buzzard,” she responded sharply, “I'm a monster, reveling in my past kills.”

“I don't,” he started, then exhaled sharply through his nostrils. “I was . . . angry. I shouldn't have said that. I know you couldn't have killed the Galathynius's. You were just—god, how old were you?”

“Too young,” Celaena said vaguely. “I hadn't begun my apprenticeship with Arobynn until after the Galathynius massacre—if you must know.”

“I shouldn't have . . . I apologize,” he bit out, “for calling you a monster.”

Celaena scoffed, some of her icy chill melting off her as he rolled her eyes at him. “I am a monster, bird for brains, same as you and same as Maeve.” She stood up and placed her hand on the back of Rowan's seat before leaning down until he could feel the warm puffs of her breath on his face, “You sure have been asking a lot of questions, Rowan.” Something warm tingled down the length of his spine when she uttered his name. “And since I'm so wonderfully generous, I've thought of your next one for you: if I'm a monster, then who turned me into one?” Patting his shoulder lightly, Celaena walked out of the bakery without a second look back.

#throne of glass #tog #rowaelin #rowan whitethorn #aelin galathynius #celaena sardothien #modern au #tog fanfic #one step ahead