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Book Review: A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
So when I first read A Court of Mist and Fury, I actually really loved it. I sped through it in about a day, and just ate the story up. It was signifigantly better than its predecessor, A Court of Thorns and Roses – and despite its flaws, I had enjoyed that as a pretty fun read. ACOMAF just upped the ante. However, the more distance I get from it – the more times I revisited parts of it to refresh my memory as I worked through A Court of Wings and Ruin and A Court of Frost and Starlight… the more problems I started to have. And so ultimately,…
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Book Review: Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas
Empire of Storms is the fifth installment in the Throne of Glass series, and like its predecessors, it has its strengths and its weaknesses. However, in the end it was a quick, fun read overall. It is much more quickly plotted than Heir of Fire or even Queen of Shadows, and that movement is really one of its biggest redeeming traits. Empire of Storms really is a race to the end, rarely devoid of action or forward movement, and it kept me riveted even through the parts I still personally find distasteful. The Romantic Dynamics Are Still Mega-squicky Warning: Spoilers ahead. Skip to summary to avoid. I’ve written a few…
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Book Review: A Court of Thorns And Roses by Sarah J. Maas
A Court of Thorns and Roses is not a book I expected to like. Honestly, I had been avoiding the series almost purposefully after falling into the Throne of Glass series last year (reviews on the last two books there are still pending!). Now, why would I do that? I like the Throne of Glass series, and I generally have fun with Maas’ stories, so why would I be so skeptical about this? Well, because despite the constant feedback from everywhere telling me, “If you like Throne of Glass you’ll love this!” everything I had picked up about the series seemed to me like it just took the parts of…
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Book Review: Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas
So, Queen of Shadows, the fourth book in the Throne of Glass series, was quite a bit better than it’s predecessor, Heir of Fire. This was honestly kind of a relief for me, all considered, but in the end Queen of Shadows was still a little bit of a let-down. It just doesn’t live up to the bar set by the first two books in the series. Heir of Fire had some pretty big pacing problems, but character development still rang very true. For Queen of Shadows, it was like the problem flipped, and ultimately we’re denied the kind of well-rounded narrative that we got in Crown of Midnight. Before we…
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Book Review: Heir of Fire by Sarah J. Maas
So after how much I absolutely loved Crown of Midnight, and after what a cliffhanger it left off on, I was super excited to start Heir of Fire. Annnndddd…. It started off pretty disappointing. Where Crown of Fire seemed to hit the perfect balance between developing nuanced characters and weaving their growth in with a fast-paced, exciting, and steadily forward pushing plot, Heir of Fire, well, didn’t. It’s a Little Bit Wibbly-Wobbly. In terms of pacing, this book felt very unbalanced. It starts off slow. Very slow. And then somehow gets slower. Even as it introduces a new character who should be a thrilling addition (I mean an ancient, full-blooded,…
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Book Review: Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas
Crown of Midnight was an exceptional follow-up to Throne of Glass. The pacing problems of the first book were pretty much non-existant, and the combination of a more mature narrative with far more effective character development makes for a riveting read from start to finish. Celeana as Unlikeable Still Isn’t Actually Unlikeable. As I mentioned in my Throne of Glass review, many of the criticisms often hurled at the character of Celeana are criticisms that I found to be valid points, but are ultimately traits that make her character feel more real. To be honest it’s kind of fun for me to read a character who, while a decent…
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#ReadWomenMonth Reading Wrap-Up
Participating in StasiaLikesCakes’ Read Women Month was a really fun, fulfilling, and enlightening experience. I did both the Instagram challenge (see that wrap-up here), and the reading challenge, and in the process read 9 books, reacquainted myself with reading fiction regularly, and learned a lot about my reading preferences and habits. I realized how much I miss just reading for the sake of entertainment, and discovered some great series and authors. So what’d I read? Well, because I ended up going through so many books, I’m not going to review each and every one here. I will be doing full reviews on a few of them in the future (I’ve…
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Book Review: Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
I’ll be honest, I started out not really feeling this book. I picked it up on a whim after one too many times seeing it in the bookstore and reading one too many internet reviews just raving about how good it was, but I wasn’t super excited about it. The description on the back cover of the main character, Celaena, sounded just a bit too… ugh. As described in the blurb, she sounded just a bit too much like some of the cringy Mary Sues that had dominated my middle school attempts at writing fantasy. Always blonde, always perfect, always a super-duper badass warrior and super tough, but still absolutely…
