THE ASSASSIN’S BLADE (2014) / KINGDOM OF ASH (2018)

Elide to Lorcan: You’re my husband

Lorcan: That’s a terrible idea, I hate it

Another man: *breathes*

Lorcan:

Throne of Glass rainbow shelfie!

These books are all so gorgeous, and I’m glad that with Kingdom of Ash released, I can finally make this display!

@worldofsarahjmaas

I will never get over how much talent Sarah J. Maas has. I’m reading The Assassin’s Blade for the first time right now (but I’ve already read up to Empire of Storms) and I’m just shook at how many little hints she drops in her books. Even if it’s a tiny thing it hints at something in the future and I just think that’s amazing. It makes reading so much more fun because you’re trying to connect all the pieces at the same time. I swear every sentence has some foreshadowing. Imagine how much thought needs to be put into that and how much planning.

Ugh I love SJM❤️

Sam Cortland

Each time I read The Assassin’s Blade, I fall more deeply and irrevocably in love with Sam Cortland. I am already moved to tears as I finish The Assassin and the Pirate Lord. In my heart, I truly believe Sam and Celaena/Aelin were mates. SJM said early on that it is possible to have more than one mate. Regardless of Maeve’s glimpse into the would-be future of Aelin and Rowan, I think Aelin would have lived a truly happy, human-length life with her Sam. Had the war ended and the two faced Erawan and emerged victorious, then Sam would have made a great King. He would have ruled beside Aelin with compassion and kindness and mercy.

While we’ve been informed that Sam is well and truly dead, SJM didn’t specifically say we wouldn’t see him in the afterlife. I hope that Aelin dies (temporarily) in Kingdom of Ash, or somehow finds her way into the afterlife. She never truly had her chance to say goodbye to Sam. It would be so wonderful if her spirit and his were to meet in whatever life is next…if Aelin could see him one last time…if Sam gave her his blessing…if he had only a moment to tell her how much he loved her, and that he is so proud of all she has done. Aelin deserves to gaze into those brown eyes, burrow her fingers in that tousled hair and breath in the scent of safety and home, even as Sam leans down to bury his face against her neck and hold her as if he’d never let go. I need that closure. Letting Sam go only gets harder each time I visit his story.

You have my heart, Sam Cortland.

To the would-be King.​

One taught me love:

one taught me patience:

one taught me pain:

Oh. My. God.

Nameless is my price 😭😭😭😭😭😭

For better or for worse

For better or for worse, one of my most loved series that I’ve followed for years now is about to come to a close. It just now dawned on me that after months and months of waiting and delays, this is it.

Aelin and her friends will either save the world or die trying.

Either way, this is the year we find out. This is the year that the throne of glass series ends.

And I’m not sure I’m ready for that just yet.

“Chaol let her [Yrene] fall into step beside him, and balanced on his cane long enough to press a kiss to her temple. He didn’t care who saw. Who reported on it. They could all go to hell. But behind them, he could have sworn Shen and the other guards were grinning from ear to ear.”- 546, Tower of Dawn

That moment you realize that your entire fandom is Shen and the other guards.

Shelfie for ToG Collector’s Edition release! How is this book so gorgeous??

Sam smiled, his brown eyes turning golden in the dawn. It was such a Sam look, the twinkle of mischief, the hint of exasperation, the kindness that would always, always make him a better person than she was.

Sarah J Maas - The Assassin's Blade

I wonder how many times Sam said to himself, “My name is Sam Cortland, and I will not be afraid” when his body was being taken apart by Rourke Farran, and how many times he thought of Celaena before his soul left him.

My completed Heir of Fire (and one of my favorite stagings as well!!) has finally been photographed!  I have to say, this one might be my favorite defacing for TOG, at least so far.  I still need to finalize designs for the remaining books, but I really love how this one turned out.  I’ll be doing The Assassin’s Blade next, so stay tuned for that, as well as the timelapse for Heir of Fire (which should be up soon). 

Until next time...

This chapter gave me so many feels because first we have Celaena being a carefree girl who’s living in the moment and appreciating and enjoying her life for once:

And then we end with this heartbreaking scene with her and Ansel reliving their childhood traumas, both brought about by power hungry men.

It’s so heartbreaking. So many children’s lives destroyed not just by Adarlan and Erawan but by evil men all over Erilea. 😔

i finished the assassin’s blade and honestly,,,, i feel dead inside

Sam Cortland as a: ghost

/ɡəʊst/

noun

1. an apparition of a dead person which is believed to appear or become manifest to the living, typically as a nebulous image.

“He'd loved her so much that she still felt the echoes of it, even now.”

FRIENDLY REMINER THAT SAM CORTLAND

gifted a music sheet of the play she had seen once and loved to celaena — the love of his life — and she learned how to play it, only to never show it to anyone once sam died because it was the last piece of she had that belonged to him.

The cunning bird - ToG7 theory

So while i was rereading Tower of Dawn and on chapter 65, page 638, the conversation between Sartaq, Nesryn, Yrene and Chaol caught my little eye :

"The owl must be the Fae form of a healer. Some healer of hers that she keeps - as a bodyguard. Has let everyone believe to be some pet..."

Now, I'm not saying that this goddamn owl will play a HUGE role in Aelin's rescue mission, but that's exactly what I'm saying.

AND we have this foreshadowing in The assassin's blade ( The Assassin and the Underworld ), which may i quote is :

"The dancing was breathtaking, yes, and the story it told was certainly lovely - a legend of a prince seeking to rescue his bride, and the cunning bird he captured to help him do it - but the music."

The owls are birds that symbolize wisdom and in the ToG universe it's the symbol of the goddess Silba. And if that bird is Maeve's bodyguard, it would mean that she goes everywhere with her.

I even looked at some stuff and i found that the owl is the symbol of other things such as :

▪ Capacity to see beyond deceit and masks. - Mask. What is Maeve wearing? One big ass mask, she made everyone believe that she was a Fae queen, while she actually was a FREAKING DEMON.

▪ Intuition, ability to see what others do not see. - It would mean that if the Fae didn't know Maeve's true identity, at this point already he figured out.

▪ The owl is the announcer of death, most likely symbolic like a life transition, change. - I don't like that death thing but let's hope that it would be something really symbolic, not in a literal way.

I don't know if the owl will leave some signs to the squad and help them find our queen. Or Chaol and Yrene will meet them and tell Rowan that the bird isn't just a pet, and then our bby hawk will capture the Fae.

Either way that goddamn bird knows too much and will play a bigger role in this story.

I’ve always struggled with why I like Aelin so much. Not in that I feel as if I shouldn’t love her—I wholeheartedly adore Aelin. She’d my favorite character from, like, anything. She’s a total chaotic-good badass in the same vein as Matrim Cauthon (my SON) and Magnus Bane.

But like...why this character? Why have I chosen this one to devote an entire blog life to? I mean seriously, I’ve been reading fantasy books forever, and though I’ve read books I initially love as much as ToG (Kate Daniels, the Fever Series), ToG is what I’ve stuck with longest in terms of obsession. And it’s largely due to Aelin. 

While I was reading The Assassin’s Blade the other day, I was struck by just how angry Aelin is. She’s in Skull’s Bay and she’s just...fixing for a fight. She’s this hot ball of rage, of fury, of untamed, unfettered anger. 

And that’s when I realized how few female characters we get who are this angry, who are allowed to be so angry. I mean in real life, anger is a masculine coded emotion. We associate it with men, it is accepted within men, and while men are viewed as having anger, women are viewed as being emotional. (you can check out Stephanie Shields Speaking From the Heart: Gender and the Social Meaning of Emotions for more on this). In other words, women are viewed as being innately emotional. Women’s emotions are coded as being part of who they are, not due to some external force. So she’s being emotional, rather than reacting appropriately to something that has happened. And we view the only acceptable emotion in men as anger. 

This leaves very little space for female anger. Either you’re being “overly emotional” or “over reacting.” Or, you’re being too masculine. You’re angry, like a man. Your rage is not something people want to see. 

In fiction, we get so few angry female characters. And I mean truly angry characters. Not momentary anger. Not the anger of Inej telling Kaz she will have him without his armor. Not the anger of Hermione yelling at Harry for not speaking to Ron in book 4. Not the anger of Elizabeth turning down Darcy’s proposal. A raging, burning, angry female character. Where is she?

She’s Aelin. Aelin, for all of the Assassin’s Blade, for ToG, CoM, and most of HoF, is angry. She’s furious. At the King, at the empire, at Chaol, at Rowan, at Maeve, and finally, at herself. She has other moments of course. She’s happy, she’s sad, she cries, she laughs, she enjoys herself. But underneath it is the well of anger, anger that she rarely accesses, because as she explains to Rowan, “I’m afraid I’d burn the whole world down out of spite.” 

And we see that anger break free at times. When she kills Archer Flynn. When she yells at Emrys and Luca. When she screams at Rowan about the fae genocide. When she beats him up. She keeps her anger leashed, for the most part, and HoF is really where we see that anger crest and break the dam. It’s so deliciously good. 

Because why shouldn’t she be angry? She’s been dealt a shit hand. Her family murdered, her kingdom colonized, her best friends murdered, her childhood dominated by an abusive monster, her first love dead, her second love hates her and on and on. Why shouldn’t Aelin Galathynius be pissed?

I think why so many people see a change in her post HoF is that in part, she loses the anger. That’s okay. You can’t be angry forever, and part of her journey is allowing herself to release that anger, to acknowledge it, to stop pushing it down. Throne of Glass is, I think, at its core the story of a young woman learning to let herself be angry and then conquering that anger. In QoS and EoS she’s still the cocky, badass, chaotic-good, witty Aelin that we know and love. But she’s a lot less angry. Yes, she’s still pissed. At Darrow, at Maeve, at Elana, at the Gods damned gods. But...she’s learned to be okay with that anger. She’s realized that she won’t burn the whole world down. 

Anyways, I love Aelin because she’s angry. And I love SJM for giving us an angry female character. And I love her even more for doing it again with Nesta. 

Aelin Ashryver Galathynius as a: phoenix

/ˈfiːnɪks/

noun

1. (in classical mythology) a unique bird that lived for five or six centuries in the Arabian desert, after this time burning itself on a funeral pyre and rising from the ashes with renewed youth to live through another cycle.

a person or thing regarded as uniquely remarkable in some respect.

"It's Aelin now", she hissed as loud as she dared. "Celaena Sardothien doesn't exist anymore."