43.7k reviews for:

The Assassin's Blade

Sarah J. Maas

4.1 AVERAGE

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

I read this AFTER reading through all of the Throne of Glass series. By after, I mean like a year after. It just wasn't something I was interested in reading. Did I like it? Yes. Is it as awesome as all SJM's other books? Nope.

If you didn't know, like I didn't, this is all short stories. It's not just ONE story of Aelin's life before TOG. All of the stories do come into play in the larger series, so that is fun to have some background, but this isn't a book that I'm going to be like OMG READ THIS NOW!! This was fun, but not phenomenal, thus my 3 star rating.
emotional 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
adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
adventurous mysterious sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Loveable characters: Yes
adventurous dark 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: No
adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I struggled to read this one.  I wanted to definitely get Celaena's backstory, but it was hard to get into. I read this 3rd. So after Crown of Midnight. I honestly did the audiobook to finish most of this. 
adventurous medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I didn’t think I could rate any SJM below 5 stars, but here we are. It took me nearly 2 years to finish this book. To the point that I skipped it and read up to TOD. But I knew I needed to actually finish this book, so I forced myself. Now I enjoyed the desert story and the last story, but everything else I between…. Idk. Maybe it’s novellas I don’t like?
Nothing like Mitski, Phoebe Bridgers and Lord Heron playing while fucking Sam died. Now that was depressing.
I’m so sorry SJM for the fake fan I am.
dark emotional medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated