(Also, I feel like I need to say that this review does not reflect what I think of the author herself or of other readers who enjoyed this series. You are free to love what books you love! I'm just not able to jump on this bandwagon. D: Stay chill, my friends. :))
One sentence summary: Celaena Sardothien is now the King's Champion, and must keep up a daily charade of pretending to be his ally while simultaneously plotting to tear him apart; meanwhile she keeps discovering more secrets below the castle, secrets so deep that they could destroy the world.
I once mentioned that a book made me so frustrated that I actually threw my Kindle. Well, this is the book in question. And it was more of a toss. Onto my bed. But the fact remains that I was so flustered and even angered by the ending of this book that I was willing to make my beloved Kindle airborne.
I desperately wanted to love this book, just as I wanted to love the first in the series. Normally when a series becomes wildly popular, I either appreciate the hype or I can at least understand it, but with this series, I honestly just can't. I really do not understand why this series is so popular, and I really do not understand why people prefer this book to the first. I found this book to be worse.
Let me start with what I did like:
∙Celaena's breakdown: This actually happened in the fourth novella as well, which was why it turned out to be my favorite. Her breakdown provided a much-needed vulnerability to her character for the reader. It was very human of her, and for once she didn't seem so vomit-inducingly perfect. It also reminded us that she actually is an assassin and will always turn to bloodlust when confronted with such strong emotions.
∙The underground everything: I was glad to see that the underground passageways were still alive and well, considering they were my favorite part of the first book. The mysteries and discoveries and cool traps and doors and hallways, etc. I do have to admit that it's taking a bit of a weird turn, but I still like it.
∙Celaena actually killed people!: Yay. Because she is, you know, an assassin.
Perhaps the biggest issue is that I simply did not like any of the main characters or the overall plotline; considering these two aspects are what basically make a novel what it is, I may have been doomed to dislike this series from the beginning. Celaena is too perfect, Dorian is too boring and Chaol is too predictable. They all are so stuck in these personality traits that it's hard to see them as three dimensional characters. They are flat and, quite often, unlikeable. I honestly think that Mass has a lot of good ideas, but they're buried underneath her inability to create complex characters and her juvenile writing.
It's not that she's incapable of creating an interesting character, it's just that there's one aspect of them that's so heavily focused on that any other intended trait gets pushed to the side, making them seem like caricatures. Even Nehemia, perhaps the most interesting character, fell prey to this. Maas made her so noble that she seemed almost inhuman. And that's the issue with these characters - they don't feel real. If I'm constantly reminded of how two dimensional a character is, how am I supposed to get into the story?
I'm also extremely unimpressed with the reliance on the shock value, which this book had. I have been in Celaena's head, both as a first person narrator and as a third person narrator. There should be no reason for her hiding the fact that she's a Queen (which wasn't much of a shock) and that she's a faery (which was) from the reader. How could Celaena not once thought of those things? How, as a reader, am I expected to just passively accept this as valid instead of as a ploy to cover up a mediocre story? The thing is, had Maas no decided to pull this, I might have actually enjoyed the book. If she could have just revealed this earlier and relied on her writing to further explain it to the reader while hiding from the characters, she might have had the opportunity to create something fanastic. Instead, she went the cheap route which only served to highlight all of the other instances in the book that felt poorly written.
The ending felt so rushed and so disorganized that I felt like I needed to just buckle down and finish it in order to get it over with. After the original reveal, which is Celaena's faery power, I honestly started finding everything to be ridiculous. Maas seemed to have gone to such lengths to destroy the image of Celaena as a Mary Sue, and then she adds the superhero power onto her, putting the character right back where she started.
All in all, I am still a bit baffled as to why this series is as popular as it is, but I know that I'm very much in the minority on this. I cannot look past being emotionally manipulated by the author and I can't shake the "big reveals" as anything other than a cheap trick to cover up insecure writing.
