Title: The Assassin’s Blade [Throne of Glass 0.5]
Author: Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy
Length: 448
Rating: 4 Star
Series Review: 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Description/Synopsis:
Celaena Sardothien is Adarlan’s most feared assassin. As part of the Assassin’s Guild, her allegiance is to her master, Arobynn Hamel, yet Celaena listens to no one and trusts only her fellow killer-for-hire, Sam. In these action-packed novellas – together in one edition for the first time – Celaena embarks on five daring missions. They take her from remote islands to hostile deserts, where she fights to liberate slaves and seeks to avenge the tyrannous. But she is acting against Arobynn’s orders and could suffer an unimaginable punishment for such treachery. Will Celaena ever be truly free? Explore the dark underworld of this kick-ass heroine to find out.
Review – MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
This was an amazing addition to the series.
I read this book after I read Throne of Glass and I think that is the correct place to be reading this book. I know Crown of Midnight came out before this one, but I think its best to read that after. You need to read ToG first to understand who all the people are and who their importance is to the main story, but then after that it gave me pretty much all the answers I wanted while reading the frost book. I don’t think you should read Com before this because it makes cast off comments about characters you meet in this book and you might miss their meaning or importance if you have no idea what those comments are referring too.
The writing style was all the things I loved in the first book. We still got all our funny moments and all our action packed serious moments. Exactly the kind of thing you expect to get from Maas if you have read the first book, but she seems to be more in her stride here because she has written other books before this one.
Plot wise I think of it as one long story rather than five short ones. The events go one after the other but between ‘stories’ we just skip a couple of pointless months here and there were obviously nothing important happened in the story. The stories where more like chapters to me and I liked it like that.
One downfall to the plot keeping you hooked to the end was that you already know where it is going because you have read ToG, but really at no point did that book give you any details as to how all those things came about and it just gives you the basics. So the interest was maintained for in in finding out those little details that were driving me crazy.
Character wise we didn’t have pointless ones in here. Because the book is about what lead Celaena to where she was in ToG, it only gives you what you need to know so everyone in the book serves a purpose. I totally loved Sam and Celaena together and I loved the fact that she didn’t always like him, it was something that grew. I wanted her to end up with Dorian in ToG but after reading this book I cannot imagine her with anyone but Sam and it breaks my heart that it cannot be.
I would have loved to get more of her training in these stories. You got some of it but it was just focussing on the main events that lead her to ToG. I wanted a bit of the years before hand when she was just starting how, her first kill, the first time she showed she was better than the other Assassin’s. Things like that. That’s not what we got though and I am ok with that because what we did get wasn’t pointless and added to the story for me. I hold out in hope though that maybe one day Maas writes some more short stories that go back into these kind of things. Or perhaps these kinds of stories pop up in the main books along the line. We still have a few books to go yet!
If you enjoyed ToG, I suggest you read this one. If you have yet to start, see the first paragraph. I think the knowing where it is going to end is just a small annoyance compared to what you get. But you can of course always read this book first, you might just be a bit confused about what is happening. If you love fantasy, strong female characters, and action and you have yet to start the series, I don’t know what you are waiting for. Go read!
Till Next Time…