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A review by lucybbookstuff
The Assassin's Blade by Sarah J. Maas
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
All righty then.
I'm diving into the ToG series and decided to start with this one. My reasoning being that I was honestly not excited to start a series that I've heard doesn't get good until book 3 or 4 (out of EIGHT). So I thought I'd start here so maybe I could get excited about the story and the main character before jumping into unfortunate teen Maas writing.
And I think I made the right decision! Despite some small scruples, I definitely enjoyed these stories and am now a lot more stoked to begin the series for real. I can go into ToG already knowing and liking (to an extent) the main character. That will help a lot, I'm sure.
There were some things that felt really silly. It seems entirely unlikely that a 16-year-old has gotten enough training AND had enough jobs to be the land's most feared assassin. But that's just one place I had to suspend my disbelief. In many other ways, she definitely *was* 16/17. And it also was made very clear how much she's been manipulated to believe certain things and trust/distrust certain people. Sometimes I was internally screaming at her about things that so obvious to me as the reader. But it makes perfect sense that she wouldn't question them.
So yeah. Even if I have to push through a couple books of bad writing, I'm excited to learn more about Celaena and see where she goes from here!
I'm diving into the ToG series and decided to start with this one. My reasoning being that I was honestly not excited to start a series that I've heard doesn't get good until book 3 or 4 (out of EIGHT). So I thought I'd start here so maybe I could get excited about the story and the main character before jumping into unfortunate teen Maas writing.
And I think I made the right decision! Despite some small scruples, I definitely enjoyed these stories and am now a lot more stoked to begin the series for real. I can go into ToG already knowing and liking (to an extent) the main character. That will help a lot, I'm sure.
There were some things that felt really silly. It seems entirely unlikely that a 16-year-old has gotten enough training AND had enough jobs to be the land's most feared assassin. But that's just one place I had to suspend my disbelief. In many other ways, she definitely *was* 16/17. And it also was made very clear how much she's been manipulated to believe certain things and trust/distrust certain people. Sometimes I was internally screaming at her about things that so obvious to me as the reader. But it makes perfect sense that she wouldn't question them.
So yeah. Even if I have to push through a couple books of bad writing, I'm excited to learn more about Celaena and see where she goes from here!