Empire of Storms is the fifth and penultimate book in Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass in which a former assassin uses her skills and her magic to save her kingdom. Being the second to last book in the series, it focusses very much on getting our protagonists into the right place for the finale. What I liked The pacing. Despite the fact that Empire of Storms is primarily focussed on getting the team into place for the final confrontation, Maas managed to keep the pacing brisk and the tension high. There were several points where I feared for our characters’ lives. There are several confrontations adding to the tension, even if the end result is moving the pieces across the chessboard. The characters and their group dynamics. This is clearly one of Maas’s real strengths as a writer. I loved the relationships between the characters and their journeys. It was wonderful that each of our characters has a unique skill set, developed over the course of the series, which will be vital in the cause to defeat Erawan. If even one person fails to play his or her part, the world is doomed. I personally have not read the…
OK confession time; I couldn’t wait to start reading Queen of Shadows before writing my Heir of Fire review, so this is going to be a joint review of both books. For those of you unaware, Heir of Fire and Queen of Shadows are the third and fourth books respectively in Sarah J. Maas’ Throne of Glass series. It is YA fantasy series with a kickass heroine and great worldbuilding. If you’ve not yet started it, I highly recommend checking it out. I listened to both books within a fairly short space of time and loved both of them. Because Queen of Shadows builds upon and develops characters and plot points raised in Heir of Fire, they are excellent to read together. Many of the cliffhangers in Heir of Fire are also resolved, which is very satisfying. What I liked Character development. We see lots of wonderful character development in our main character, Celaena. When we rejoin Celaena at the beginning of Heir of Fire, she is in a pretty dark place emotionally, reeling from the events of previous book Crown of Midnight. Throughout Heir she along with new character Rowan works to get her mojo back. This is a…
Since we’re now into July – halfway through the year! – and I’m 50 books through my 100 book challenge for this year I thought it was time to stop and review my top picks from the first half of 2014. So without further ado, here they are. [book-info title=”The Empire Striketh Back” author=”ian-doescher”] My first pick for my top books of 2014 so far is Ian Doescher’s William Shakespeare’s Star Wars. This includes Star Wars: Verily a New Hope and The Empire Striketh Back. For those of you who have not read my reviews, Doescher has taken George Lucas’s epic space opera and rewritten it in the style of William Shakespeare, compete with iambic pentameter and nods to Shakespeare plays. It’s incredible how well the Lucas’s epic saga works in Shakespearean language. The audiobook by Random House Audio is a full cast radio play complete with John Williams music and sound effects and is a must-listen. It narrowly missed out on the Audie audiobook award. The Jedi Doth Return is released on July 1st and I’m fairly confident it will make my top audiobooks list, too. Check out Doescher’s Educator’s Guide for more background info. I wish these had been…
I actually found this review of Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass quite difficult to write. It tells the story of assassin turned prisoner Celaena and her participation in the competition to become the King’s Champion. I LOVED the book and got caught up in the story and characters. However this made it rather tricky to analyse why I liked it so much and what made it work. Nevertheless I’ll give it a go. What I liked The characters. I found our protagonist Celaena Sardothien very engaging and fun to follow. She is strong-willed, smart, resourceful – and very funny. It’s clear her experiences in the prison of Endovier have left their mark on her, both physically and emotionally. Maas did however add in a few quirks to keep her real. I liked that she wasn’t immediately up to full physical strength after her imprisonment and had to balance physical weakness with smarts. The fact that she was terrified to stand on the glass in the glass castle was interesting. The setting. Now, I am a person who has a stronger affinity with words than with pictures, but I loved the mental picture that Maas conjured of the glass castle…