Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas Review

“One of them has to break…Only then can it begin.”

– Crown of Midnight

My Synopsis: Caleana has become the king’s assassin, but she is doing her best to balance her obligations to the king (under threat to the lives of those she cares for) and her true loyalties. More mysteries unfold that once again fall to Caleana to solve. Honestly, it becomes a bit of a scavenger hun, a very dangerous and exciting scavenger hunt. Still while this careful balancing act causes many ups and down and she still has many secrets, Caleana manages to find happiness at least for a little while. Then everything falls apart, but then again maybe everything is actually finally coming together. At the end, a great number of secrets are revealed that leave everyone, characters and readers alike, questioning everything and everyone.

            Once again, I LOVE CALEANA! I loved this book and gave it 5 out of 5 stars. Since the majority of the review will be a rave, I’ll start with the one thing that bothered me. The love interests in this book are great. I love them both and would be happy no matter which Caleana ends up with. However, I thought the beginning of the book just focused a little too much on the romance too fast. In Throne of Glass there is the love triangle, but a lot of the feelings are really more hinted at and barely recognized by the characters themselves. Now I am never one to complain about to complain about a book having some romance, I just thought in the beginning of the epic fantasy about an assassin the romance was all that was going on. I wanted a little more of the rest of the story mixed in the beginning.

            Comparing Crown of Midnight to Throne of Glass, Throne of Glass is basically the book the introduces the world and the character with its own story, but Crown of Midnight is where you are introduced the actual story that the whole series is about. Now, a lot of people have said that they really preferred Crown of Midnight over Throne of Glass. However, I would give the slight edge to Throne of Glass, but let me explain. To me, Throne of Glass was 5 stars from the first page to the last. Crown of Midnight was 4 to 4.5 stars until about half way through then it was all caps FIVE STARS until the end. Seriously. I hit a certain point in Crown of Midnight and could NOT put it down. I had a very long, tired day of classes because of this. I think the issue is that I had just finished Throne of Glass and was so excited and heard that Crown of Midnight was ever better, so I had to be let down a little by the beginning. I didn’t want to be eased back into the story because I hadn’t left. Also for me, literally no time had passed between the events in Throne of Glass and the beginning of Crown of Midnight, but in the books months had passed.

            The rest of this review is going to be an absolute RAVE! I loved this book. It was exciting. There was tons of mystery. And for all the complaining I did about the placement and pace of the romance, OH THE ROMANCE! *Swoons* Now this book is really hard to talk about without giving spoilers, so I can’t really say a lot, but I'm going to try. I talked a lot about the unanswered questions in Throne of Glass. Well first, after reading Crown of Midnight, I know why there were so many unanswered questions because they are all SO important in this book that Maas just couldn’t give. Also, in Throne of Glass these unanswered questions were hinted at, but they were never really posed. They were background we wanted, but nothing that was really necessary for the story at that point. In Crown of Midnight, it was more like Maas would lead you to the edge of the cliff, give you a gentle push until you are teetering, and then move on to lead you to another cliff without letting you know if you were going to fall off the first one or not. So many times I found myself growling in frustration “I HATE THIS…I LOVE THIS… OH MY GOD THIS BOOK!!!!” Now Maas did wrap up the story. You know by the end of the book which cliffs you fell off of and which you didn’t (mostly), but it was that whole “we will get the results after the commercial break” phenomenon. In the long run, I loved that about this book. At the time, my sleep deprivation had me pulling my hair out because I couldn’t go to bed until I knew.

            Basically, amazing book. Go read it now. I am now read The Assassin’s Blade because I just must have more Caleana. However, I’m going to be honest. After reading Crown of Midnight, you will be like I was I’m sure. Pacing back and forth muttering “I need the next book. I need it NOW!” over and over again. J Hang in there. We only have until September 2 until Heir of Fire. Only… I really do need the third book NOW!

Video Review found here.