A review by allonsythornraxx
The Assassin's Blade by Sarah J. Maas

adventurous challenging medium-paced
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.25

The Assassin's Blade | ✨ Throne of Glass | ✨ Crown of Midnight | ✨ Heir of Fire | ✨ Queen of Shadows | ✨ Empire of Shadows | ✨ Tower of Dawn | ✨ Kingdom of Ash

06/03/2024
3.25 ⭐
Super interesting move to publish these novellas as prequels and not include this info in the main series... Oh, well I had a super interesting day learning all about Celeana and Sam!

series ranking so far:
1. Crown of Midnight ⭐⭐⭐
2. The Assassin's Blade ⭐⭐⭐.25
3. Throne of Glass ⭐⭐⭐

25/01/2021
2 ⭐
“If you can learn to endure pain, you can survive anything. Some people learn to embrace it—to love it. Some endure it through drowning it in sorrow, or by making themselves forget. Others turn it into anger."

I really think it says a lot when you can be listening to a book on 3.30x speed and still the book isn't ending fast enough. I feel like I never grew to love or even like Celeana in any of these stories and rather than reading her as a confident and badass assassin, she came across as impatient, arrogant and attention-seeking. She almost died so many times throughout this book and was only saved at the very last minute, by someone who "just happened to be in the right place at the right time", but everyone has to start somewhere I guess... I'm going to continue this series as I'm buddy reading it with a group of friends but I really think that 1) if I wasn't actively and purposefully doing other things while listening to this and 2) if I wasn't participating in a series-long buddy read I would've DNF'd this a few pages in.

01 The Assassin and The Pirate Lord ↠ Read 11/01/2021 ↞ ⭐⭐
I genuinely don't know if this has anything to do with the series as a whole or if it just served more as a "Here's Celeana" introduction kind of thing. I will say though, I think it was mean to show her as a badass but I read Celeana more as a kid who gets mad when she doesn't get her way and who doesn't think/plan very far ahead & can't see the bigger picture.

02 The Assassin and The Healer ↠ Read 11/01/2021 ↞ ⭐⭐
b o r i n g. I think this was mostly just a filler story.

03 The Assassin and The Desert ↠ Read 25/01/2021 ↞ ⭐⭐⭐
The best story so far but I think that's because the other characters are more interesting in this one.

04 The Assassin and The Underworld ↠ Read 25/01/2021 ↞⭐⭐.5
Finally an interesting story. I really wish it wasn't all so boring though, I think I just don't love Celeana.

05 The Assassin and The Empire ↠ Read 25/01/2021 ↞⭐⭐.75
I enjoyed this one the most plot-wise because I feel like the most happened but I think by this point, I was just over the book, as a whole.