adventurous dark emotional inspiring mysterious sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

the start of this series has been a bit slow, developing the norms to break them in this book. While the start was slow, and contained some sweet moments, the escalation from the 35ish chapter is intense and fast-paced. It was so worth every minute of world building to get to this ending, I’m fucking pumped to read Assassin’s Blade and learn her true back story now that we know more about our main character. 

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adventurous emotional mysterious slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

originally read in 2019

I'm going to be completely honest here, I enjoyed this much more than I expected. I can't really explain it, because I do still agree with my original review. Barely anything happened in this book. It was extremely slow moving, and the love triangle is the most uneccecary part in a book I've ever seen. However, I really like Chaol and Dorian (I still hate Celeana, sorry not sorry), and quite enjoyed that we got more from their perspective within this book. I also really like the friendships between the three of our main characters. Honestly, easily the best part of this book, especially when Sarah J Maas forgot she was writing a love triangle and they just got to be besties.
Like I said before there is barely any plot in this book, it's so incredibly slow moving, and makes for quite a boring read. The only reason I still enjoyed my time with this book, is because of the above mentioned character dynamics. The little plot that was there was extremely predictable, and so full of basic YA fantasy tropes, and not even done in an interesting way. I've read many books with common and predictable YA fantasy tropes, but they still make for an engaging and entertaining story by the way they're put together, that wasn't the case for this book. 
I do think this series is going in an interesting direction though. Magic gets introduced quite a bit more in this book, but it's all still one big question mark. On top of that we get a glimpse in what the bigger story of this series is going to be, and I'm extremely interested to see that all play out, I just hope it will get done in a more entertaining way, and Celeana will become more likeable. Let's hope for the best!

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

A good sequel that expands upon the characters and situations. It does have the common struggle with direction I feel many second books have where it has to turn an initial closed premise into a big expansive story line but it handles it well. The monsters are effectively creepy and the king successfully and compellingly evil, but the ending twist does feel slightly contradictory.

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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adventurous dark emotional fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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