Book Review: Heir of Fire

Title: Heir of Fire
Author: Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Fiction, Romance, Romantasy

What It’s About:

Part 1

Celaena Sardothien had made her way to Wendlyn— the ship taking them through the barrier reef, the natural protection against Adarlan on the sea, waited for a moonless night and also sequestered all of the refugees in a part of the ship that does not have access to views, before entering the port city. From there Celaena had skirted the immigration officials, but waited to make sure that the women and children were safe before she made her way to Varese on foot. There, she has spent some time swiping Teggya—a type of flatbread made by the locals—and red wine when she ran out of money. She tries to figure out a way to fulfill her mission, having watched the guards at the castle and finding a weakness—they leave everything unprotected at 2pm. But then she watched as Galan Ashryver, her cousin who shares her same eyes, rode through the city to cheers and applause before heading out of the gate towards the north to be a blockade runner. She realized that he is so loved by his people that she could not go through with her mission, so she started to think about how she would get to Maeve. After laying around on the rooftop and cooking herself too long while being watched by a hawk, she shimmies down a pipe and walks past an opening, only to be hissed at by a homeless woman that she needs to stay away from her house. Celaena realizes that she also looks unkempt and even smells bad, so it’s no surprise that the lady had mistaken her for a vagrant. Suddenly, a male chuckles and Celaena realizes that he is a fae male. Before he can make any comment to her out loud about who she is, and potentially have Galan running back home, she saunters up to him with as much swagger as she can muster, and he tells her that they need to set off.

The two of them get on horses, and the only thing that he reveals of himself is his name, Rowan, but he doesn’t speak for the rest of the journey. Celaena is fine with that because everything feels heavy for her anyways and she doesn’t want to speak. They camp at night off the road, and Rowan tells her they cannot light a fire because some skinwalkers had been roaming nearby and light would draw the skinwalkers to them. The next day, they make it to an outpost, and Celaena feels the pressure of the ward as she goes through it. There, Rowan takes her to an office, where she meets Maeve for the first time in her life. It becomes quickly apparent that there was a reason that her mother kept her away from Maeve, as Maeve makes some passive aggressive comments about Aelin Ashryver Galathynius’s parents, including that she had been against the marriage, and that her mom, Evalin, had promised to visit with Aelin, but never did before she died. She ends her conversation, by going into Celaena’s mind and seeing her memories—Aelin has fire power. Maeve then tells Celaena that she has to prove herself to be even able to get into Doranelle, the Fae city that Maeve watches over, and Rowan Whitethorn, her nephew, will be the one training Aelin. Only when he tells her that Aelin is ready and fit, will Aelin be able to enter the city and she will get answers from Maeve about the Wyrdkeys. Celaena is unhappy with this, and realizes that she would rather be as far away from Maeve as possible, but she needs to do this in order to save her friends. Rowan takes her to her room, tells her that she has to be up at 5 am for breakfast duty as everyone pitches in and she washes as much as she can before going to bed. The next morning she wakes up, and finds Rowan in the hallway. They argue a bit, as he calls her Aelin, and she tells him that she is not Aelin; that she doesn’t want to be called that name. So he takes her to the kitchen, and introduces her to Luca and Emrys, leaving her to choose a name that she wants to introduce herself by—Celaena chooses to go by Elentiya, the name Nehemia had given her.

She helps out in the kitchen daily, and then trains with Rowan in a nearby area. Unfortunately, she is not able to shift, until he takes her to a barrow, where he dares her to go through the barrow to the other side. She walks through it but then encounters a creature there that covers her up in darkness and that causes her to see her horrible memories of her parents’ death, as well as shift between forms rapidly multiple times while she runs back to Rowan. She ends up throwing up and peeing herself, and he takes her back to Mistward, the outpost, to the baths and then they train again the next day. Rowan bites her on the neck another day, during their argument, and she shifts into her fae form, but doesn’t keep it for long before shifting back to her human form. Another day, Rowan yells at her that causes her to run and leave Mistward, having decided that she had enough of it. She makes herself camp, lights up a fire, and spends the night, only to be woken by the complete stillness of the night. It turns out that the skinwalkers are on the prowl, and she avoids them coming up to her hideout by leaving a little bit early. She keeps walking and then she runs into Rowan, who tells her that they have very precious minutes to save themselves, and that she needs to shift into her fae form to keep up and have a chance at getting away—her human one might be too slow. So Celaena reaches into the depths of herself, and pulls out her Fae form, and the two of them run towards the edge of the cliff with the Skinwalkers on their tail. Rowan manages to cut one with his sword and knives, and then as they jump off the cliff, Aelin tells Rowan to shift into his hawk form—something she has known from seeing the form sit listening on Emrys’s stories in the Kitchen and recognizing it from her time on the rooftop. She then turns around and lights up the area around the skinwalkers, setting them on fire. Rowan later helps her put out the fire, and they return to Mistward.

Since Celaena had begged Rowan to make use of her, he takes her around the area to different bodies—bodies that have been killed by something that makes them look like dried husked with blood coming out of their ears and eyes. After looking through the body and the position that it is in, Celaena tells Rowan her theories and observation. He responds that he thinks it is that creature from the barrow because Celaena had come back looking so pale and sickly, but does not elaborate further beyond telling her that other bodies were found around water like this one—but it’s not near the ocean, just near the rivers. They hike back that same day, which takes a while. Rowan also takes Celaena to a healing compound for a day, where she thinks of Torre Cesme , and she wanders around the building wishing that they could stay, but they go back to Mistward. On a different day, Rowan tells her to shift into her fae form because otherwise it will take them a very long time to get to a town nearby a different body that had been found, and at first Celaena hesitates because she doesn’t exactly know how to do it, but when he asks her how she did it the other time, he points out that she did it when she put aside her fear of her form and just became it. So Celaena reaches inside herself, and then turns into her fae form, after which they run through the forest and she finds it so exhilarating. They make it to the city and very quickly things began to get closed and they get turned away from different shops—even the innkeeper told her that there was no space for them to stay. But then Celaena smells the confectionary, and asks Rowan if he has money, which he tells her he does. So they go around buying things and as word spreads that they are buying goods, people come back to the town and try to sell their goods to them. Unfortunately no one knows anything about the body or about anyone going missing, which confirms that they had been truthful since the beginning. This is unusual as the creature seems to be hunting people who will not be missed.

They return to Mistward, and the next day Celaena listens to more stories from Emrys—he is the Story Keeper, the one who knows all the oral histories of both the Fae and the people of Wendlyn, including stories of Maeve and her sisters, which Celaena had requested one night. But on this particular night, Rowan’s friend comes running to Mistward—someone who is part of the 7 that serve Maeve as her guards—and Rowan tells him that he has heard the news, before taking the man with him to his room. A bit curious, Celaena takes a tray of food to his room, where Rowan is tattooing the man, who turns out to be named Gavriel. Celaena leaves after leaving the food, and Rowan comes stomping after her, getting into another argument between the two of them again in which Celaena tells him that he had left her, but he tells her that it’s none of her business what he does after training and he does not care. She walks off back into the kitchen with ringing in her ears. There, Emrys shows her a sword / knife that Malakai—his mate had gotten from him during the last shipment, and it turns out to be a knife from Ellywe, causing Celaena to snap at them all to leave her alone, that she just doesn’t care and that she doesn’t want to know, before she stalks off into the night not caring that Emrys’s and Luca’s feelings were hurt. Rowan comes by the kicthen later while Emrys is alone, and Emrys lays into him—that he knows who Celaena is because Evalin Ashryver was his friend twenty-five years ago; that she had come to Mistward to prove to her aunt that demi-Fae deserve to be in Doranelle just as much as any other Fae, before she left to get married and eventually get murdered. Emrys demands to know what Rowan is doing to Aelin that she is so lifeless, and why he keeps shoving her down when she clearly needs to be lifted up. When Rowan asks why does Emrys care so much, and he tells him that she is a sign of hope of a better world.

Celaena walks and walks for hours, finding herself by a lake where she hears her mom’s voice calling her fireheart, for the first time in years. She admits to her mother that she is so lost that she does not know the way back home. Rowan shows up, and asks her if she wants to talk about it, but she does not. He then tells her that he wants her to come with him, and takes her to a mountain that has a lake full of swords and spears. On that frozen lake is Luca, chained to the floor. Rowan challenges Celaena to make it across and save Luca from the cold, so she calls him a bastard but does it because she does not want to leave Luca behind. She makes it through to Luca, while Rowan keeps playing with the ice—cracking and reforming it under Celaena’s feet—and reminding her to hurry. She makes it to Luca and uses a bit—a trickle—of her fire magic to make a whole large enough in the ice for Luca to pull the chain up. But then she sees an eye in the depths of the water, and soon enough all of them see a monster coming in from the depths. So she sends Luca running forward, and she runs after him, even picking him up as they make their way towards the shore, while Rowan urges them to keep coming faster. The monster breaks the ice a couple of time, undulating beneath the surface, and they manage to get onto the shore before it comes onto the ice and crawls towards them. Rowan breaks the ice in that moment, and they head out of the cave, with Celaena telling Luca to run ahead towards Mistward, once they are close enough. She then whirls on Rowan and punches him several times—at first he avoids it, but ultimately he takes it, including her burning his skin with her fire magic—while telling him to never ever put anyone else in the middle of it because she can’t do it anymore. Celaena reveals that she failed Nehemia and that she had lied to all the time—something she had not wanted to voice or come to terms with. That night, they listen to another story from Emrys, this time about the creature in the mountain that they just saw, and Celaena apologizes to Emrys and Luca, who also both tell her that they don’t care what form she is in—her human one or her fae one—before also revealing that they know who she truly is. Before going to bed, Celaena takes the tin of salve to Rowan because she feels remorseful of the pain she caused him—the skin might be a blister now. He lets her into his room, where she drops off the salve, and before she is about to head out, Rowan tells her how he met his mate, Lyria, and how he had been at war for Maeve when she had been killed by some group trying to get through the border into Doranelle. He flew home and was too late, finding out that Lyria was pregnant unbeknownst to him—he then wandered the world lost and confused on his own, but at some point Maeve came to him and told him that he’s grieved enough, offering him to join her guards. So he gave a blood oath to Maeve, and has been doing her bidding ever since. He explains to her that he knows the depth of pain and suffering that comes from losing someone like that—and they make an agreement to find their way out of it together.

Manon Blackbeak hides in a cottage at a town as farmers ransack it to try to kill her. It has been the same thing the last few cities that she had been visiting in search of Crochan Witches—it would take a short while for the farmers to come trying to hunt her after word spread that she was giving potions out to the locals. They think her a Crochan witch, having killed the last one several centuries ago, which is why she wears the red cloak—the only one that is allowed in the Ironteeth Witches to do so. She hides as one of the farmer comes into the room, and then she kills him with her iron nails and iron teeth, doing the same thing for the other two that are in the house. She returns to her base and meets with her Thirteen at a location as the Matrons of the Ironteeth Witches speak to the Duke, whose soldiers are warily watching them. There is something off about the smell of the prisoners in the wagons to Manon, but she figures it’s none of her business. After the Matrons are done speaking with the Duke, her grandmother, the Matron of the Backbeak clan comes up to her and tells her that Baba Yellowlegs is dead, but no one knows who killed her. She tells Manon to send her thirteen in different directions to round up any witches of the Ironteeth groups—be it Blackbeak, Yellowlegs, or Bluebloods—and have them meet at the Ferian Gap. Manon agrees to carry out her command—her grandmother’s wish is her command; she had saved her upon seeing Manon’s golden eyes, which are prized in the Blackbeak clan, prying her from her mother’s dead body and made Manon her heir.

A while later, Manon finds herself in the Ferian Gap, at the Omega house, where they learn that the King of Adarlan has been working on Wyverns—he is granting them all Wyverns to be his arial soldiers, and so the women of all three Ironteeth clans go through trainings of different sort, including flying on more docile Wyverns to get comfortable to being on the animals. They also take a look at different Wyverns, and Manon sets her eyes on Titus, one of the larges and most violent Wyverns—she will have him, as she wants to be the Wingleader of the Ironteeth Witches, as is her grandmother’s plan and wish. A couple of fights break out between the clans, but the two clans take care of punishing their respective clan members, which means that Manon has to punish Asterin, her second in command, by giving her lashes and a broken nose. Eventually, the day arrives when they will be choosing their Wyverns, and when Titus is brought out into the pen against the bait Wyvern, Iskra—one of the heirs from one of the other clans—pushes Manon over the rail into the fighting pit. Manon tries to stand up to Titus, to get past him into the doors, but he bats her away with his tail, throwing her against the bait wyvern. She looks at the bait wyvern, who had growled at Titus at that moment, and realizes that he wants to go after Titus, so she uses her sword—bone cleaver—and breaks the chains on the bait wyvern. The animal goes after Titus, giving her a chance to run away from Titus, but as she hears the sounds that the bait wyvern makes, she turns around and watches as the bait wyvern stunningly kills Titus. She realizes that while the bait wyvern may have been much smaller than the Wyverns that they would have used as mounts, he was much more cunning and had wanted it more than Titus did so he is a warrior spirit. She decides then and there to make him hers, and names him Abraxos. This obviously pisses her grandmother who claims that this put a dent into her plans for wingleader, but Manon stands by her decision. Eventually, she is ordered by her grandmother to get the wyvern up and flying sooner rather than later, so she ends up working with Abraxos to get him saddled up for the first time, even going as far as threatening the overseers that if they so much as keep a whip near him again, she will whip them herself. Then she has iron teeth, and iron spikes added to Abraxos mouth and tail to make up what he has lost or had sawed off. She starts taking him out onto the field, and it turns out that Abraxos really likes flowers, and refuses to eat the meat that she gives him. She bites into it herself and realizes that it tastes foul, so then she goes and gets him a goat, which he quickly gobbles up.

Eventually, Manon gets told by her grandmother that she has to fly on her wyvern by the following night—everyone has been working together and flying together, but she hasn’t been with her thirteen and if she isn’t flying the following night, she better not come home. So Manon takes Abraxos out again, and gets onto him, which sends him into a panic, that has them falling over the edge of the canon for him to fly. She screams at him to open up his wings, and he only does it in the very last moment before flying out and catching a draft. Then, she has her thirteen start their maneuvers together at the same location every morning so that the Wyverns can fly together, but she knows that she will have to get up earlier to get Abraxos out because he is not able to do the crossing due to his broken wings.

Chaol keeps having dreams about Celaena and her kill of Archer Finn, and the dream keeps changing to different things as well, before he wakes up. He asks for an extension from his father to coming home to Anielle, because he wants to find a captain of the guard, but also he wants to look into some other things within the city about magic. Eventually, Aedion Ashryver shows up to town making up stories about how the Bane will be coming soon, and swaggering in. He realizes that Aedion has the black obsidian finger ring that the King also wears—the one that apparently is some sort of mind control—and realizes that he can’t be trusted. Dorian looks closely at Aedion as if trying to figure out where he had seen him, but Chaol keeps the conversation moving along. That night, Chaol finds two of his guards missing from their post, and the younger guards tell him that Aedion had told them that he had approved them leaving so the two senior guards had left with him to a party. Chaol hunts down the location of this party, and does not find Aedion there, with the people that Aedion had last been talking to sending him in different directions. This happens at multiple parties that Aedion throws—with him always disappearing—so Chaol makes a plan to arrive early at the next one. He ends up following Aedion to a location near Rebels hideout that Celaena had previously noted on a map. Aedion and his two associates catch Chaol, and Chaol tells them that Aedion is being controlled by the King. Aedion, realizing that Chaol knows about the obsidian rings, explains that he had received it as a gift when he won something along with the Blade of Orynth, but with his heightened senses he could tell that something was off with the ring, so he had a replica made and threw the other one into the water. The king doesn’t know that he’s not under his control. The two rebels with whom Aedion was meeting, named Ren and Murtagh, are in favor of killing Chaol, but Chaol decides to play one last hand: telling Aedion that Aelin is alive. After more threats, he refuses to tell anyone anything but Aedion, so they speak silently on the docks, and Chaol explains to him how Celaena had come into his life.

The next time they meet, they meet at Celaena’s apartment, where Chaol gives Aedion some time alone to come to terms with his cousin being alive. Aedion sees bits and pieces of Aelin—the colors of the tablecloth are the colors of Terrasen, the mantle pieces include a stag, and she still has a taste for luxurious items. There, Aedion explains what he had experienced when Magic went down—that birds that were native to the forests around Adarlan were flying towards Orynth, which was unusual. He adds that there were two or three pulses depending on who you ask before the magic went out—one lord in Xandria had told him he felt three coming from the north. Then Aedion tells Chaol that he should hear what Murtagh and Ren experienced—that they are Lords of Terrasen, who had escaped. Chaol also takes Aedion one night into Celaena’s rooms, including showing Aedion the tomb and the secret tunnels, giving him some insight into who she is as an assassin. Aedion is hopeful but also stricken with grief that this is what Aelin had become as he didn’t want her tainted by blood—something that he would have willingly done for her. While they are in the tombs, Dorian eavesdrops on them, shocked that Aedion and Chaol are talking and on such good terms. It is then that he realizes that they’ve been keeping a secret from him: Celaena is Aelin. Aedion finds him there, and realizes that he has magic, which explains Chaol’s desperation to help them—Chaol does not deny that he hopes that they will help Dorian if and when he needs that help, and explains to Dorian that he’s doing this to protect him. Dorian tells him to save it for himself; he doesn’t want to hear it.

Another time Chaol and Aedion are meant to meet with Murtagh and Ren to hear their side, but they find Ren coming to them after having been attacked. Ren tells them that Murtagh is safe, but they have to go because the guards are coming after him—those wearing black tunics with a wyvern on them, something that Chaol does not recognize as a uniform in the royal army. Ren gives them directions during his bouts of consciousness, leading them to an opium den, where a madam takes them in, dresses them up as one of the addicted and has them hold a pipe. When the soldiers come in looking for them, they think that these guys are high and drunk, as Aedion makes a comment about wine not being served. Once the soldiers are gone, the three make their way to the woman’s office, where they mend Ren, and Murtagh comes over. He tells them that there were three waves that day before magic went out—one that went from Adarlan to Orynth, then another that went from Orynth south towards the Red Desert, and from there back to Adarlan. They still don’t know how to undo it though, so that is the plan.

Dorian, on the other hand, had been training with his soldiers and using that as an excuse to go see the healer, Sorscha, who was from Fenharrow and had come to Rifthold as refugees, but her parents got killed by the king. They spend time together, and eventually, he loses control of his magic in front of her—exploding the glasses. She tells him that she will not tell anyone but that she needs his help to turn over the table and break everything. This results in Sorscha getting into trouble with the Head Healer, Amithy, for this, and tells her that she needs to keep her distance. Dorian offers to pay for everything that has been damaged, and eventually they work together to help him get control of his magic. Sorscha recalls that magic becomes dormant with Iron, which is strange since iron is in the blood, so they decide to experiment with adding more iron to Dorian’s blood to see if this would tamp down the magic. It does, so then they start experimenting with the levels of iron, and Sorscha decides to make it a contraceptive tonic to avoid any questions for Dorian about what it is that he is drinking/ taking. Dorian is also forced to entertain Aedion one day at his father’s command, though he dislikes Aedion, and his father tells him that Aedion is just useful for him and he enjoys his particular brand of disrespect for now, but that he may be cast aside in the future, when Dorian asks him why he keeps Aedion around.

Part 2

Celaena continues practicing with her magic under Rowan’s tutelage. Beltane comes and it is the first time that she will be able to celebrate Beltane because it’s been outlawed in Adarlan. Rowan has her practicing controlling her magic—using the three different pyres set up for the event, and telling her to keep two of them low enough so that people can jump over them and then the third one high. Celaena does it, including humming along with a song that they are playing, after which she loses control, and Rowan has to help her cut off her connection to the fires. He then carries her—even though she’s basically fire—to a cold tub and uses his ice magic to freeze up the bath water until she stops being hot. Once she’s fine, she leans forward to put her arms around her legs, when Rowan comes in and sees the scars on her back. He anger is lethal, but he restrains himself as Celaena tells him the bare minimum that she can—she is too tired to tell him more beyond the fact that she was a slave in the salt mines of Endovier. Rowan runs out and flies away from Mistward in anger, knowing that Maeve knew about her time as a slave but did not share it with him—no wonder the girl had reacted so badly to him telling her that he’d whip her, and he should know better that if there is a reaction from Celaena, it’s because the trauma and the scars run deep. He also realizes that she must not have felt safe enough or trusted him enough to share this with him herself, and he has done nothing to prove to her that she can trust him, as he had run out in anger as well. Celaena makes it to her bedroom, and falls into bed, when the window opens, and arms scoop her up, taking her to Rowan’s room. He tells her that she will spend the night with him in bed, not romantically of course, but so that she’s taken care of. He makes sure to take care of her for the next several days, growling even at Emrys and Luca when they come to check on her, and not letting her out of bed. They do talk, and she tells him a bit more about her life.

Eventually, she is strong enough to go out with him training—he teaches her how to use her magic; her fire as a shield and as weapons—having them turn into physical objects that she is familiar with. Celaena goes out practicing in the early morning for four days straight, which is causing her to quickly master her magic, something that she shouldn’t have been doing if she was training with Rowan normally. He finds her there one day and asks the guards about it. They answer him, but of course they are wary, and he does not like that one bit. Rowan does like Celaena’s approach to training—something that no one has done before and wonders if it could be replicated—she is using her own magic against herself, and pitting herself against it. Rowan and Celaena continue practicing, but one day they head out to take a look at the body of a Demi-fae that was killed the same way as the others. There, they realize that the Demi-fae had fought back against the creature that had harmed him, and Celaena states that Rowan has clearly considered the fact that there may be more than one creature like the one that they had encountered in the barrows. They figure out that there is some connection to the coast on Wendlyn, and head their way to the beach, where they find out that there is an army of 200 Adarlanian soldiers, and 3 of those creatures, as well as the commander—General Narrok. Rowan goes into the cave as a hawk, and then flies over Celaena, a clear command to follow. He then reveals that they do have a Demi-fae in possession, but there was nothing that he could do to help or save the woman, as these soldiers are using Wyrdmarks to mitigate magic. They realize that these people are trying to get their hands on Demi-fae as hosts for whatever horrible thing that the collars contain. They head their way back to Mistward, only for them to be intercepted by one of those things in the body of a human. Rowan and Celaena try to hide and attack him, but the person ends up putting Celaena in a Thrall, and only Rowan’s bite snaps her out of it—she realizes that the Demi-fae had been trying to hurt themselves to ground themselves on what is real. They run, with Celaena using her fire magic at the person, who flinches and backs away from it, but soon after, it gives chase. Knowing that they cannot and do not want to bring it towards Mistward, they run away from it, and Celaena comes up with a plan. While Rowan is busy making that thing run around and chase after him using the tunic that Celaena had, Celaena lights up some fires and gets skinwalkers on her tail. She runs until there is a curve in the road, and Rowan is coming towards her—both of them dive into the bushes as the thing and the skinwalkers run into each other and fight. It seems like the Skinwalkers do defeat the thing that had been running after them, but they are not able to find a body to confirm what is going on.

They realize that this army will be coming towards Mistward, so they prepare the inhabitants of Mistward to fight and protect what they can, and then those that cannot, they have to get them out of the city. They also send word to other towns nearby that may have Demi-fae living in them to get out to safety. Rowan and Celaena also reach out to Wendlyn forces to get help from them in protecting Mistward, but ultimately, they are unable to send help as their army gets engaged by Adarlan on the northern side. This leaves the group inside Mistward to fight off the attack, and Celaena asks him why Rowan hadn’t sent for his cadre. After some reluctance, he does in the end, but there is no saying if they will show up. He also tells her that there has been some news—there was an uprising of the slaves in Calaculla where they took over the whole camp, but then the King of Adarlan sent a host of soldiers to Calaculla and Endovier, killing all of the slaves. This deeply hurts her to the point she runs out, and uses her magic on the wards.

They go to sleep one night, only to be awoken by the enemy—turns out someone named Bas, had ultimately betrayed them, and let the soldiers in through the tunnel, while the three things along with General Narrok had come out to the outside of Mistward for the Wards. Celaena tells Rowan to go help them fight the soldiers—she will protect the wards. He orders her to not leave the wards but to keep the fire going so that it keeps the things away. Once Rowan is gone and out of sight, Celaena walks out of the wards and faces the four men—she manages to keep them off and away from the wards, using her fire to shield the wards and patch them, while fighting them. Some of them hiss about the sword—Goldryn—which was once owned by Anthril and Brannon—and she doesn’t say anything to them. She is close to the end, when six animals show up—two twin wolves, a mountain cat, an osprey and another couple of animal forms show up—and she recognizes them as Rowan’s cadre. So she makes them a bridge through the fire, and the only one that pauses to see if she needs help is the Mountain Cat—Gavriel. She tells him to go help Rowan, and goes onto fight the four men, who she had figured out were Valg Princes—they have a lot of power and could only be inserted into the body of the men with the collars. They continue to fight, until she uses the last of her powers, entering burnout, and then goes into darkness.

Rowan runs out, sees her succumb to the four things, but Gavriel and another one of his cadre take him down, and hold him down. Gavriel tells him that she’s done for, and Rowan is hurt.

Celaena falls through darkness, and watches as the Valg princes look through her memories specifically the ones full of agony. She relives the day that the King of Adarlan had come to Orynth, and how she met Dorian for the first time; how she had talked to him at the table, and how the King had stared at her twice before her father asked him what is so fascinating about his daughter that he would continue stare at her. It was during dinner time after she had been talking to Dorian, that she felt something attack and enter her mind, worm its way into her mind, feeling pain. Aelin goes to her mom, and keeps crying to get it out, when she feels her self light on fire, and her mom is forced to use her water magic on the girl to cut off the fire from her. Aelin then goes to tea with Dorian the next day, where she has Aedion threaten Dorian for dirtying her dress. Celaena realizes that the King had used his power on her then to separate the family and put the blame away from himself. Her parents and she leave to the spring house to get her away from the court—the healer had said it was stress—and that night she is not able to sleep. Her mom comes to her and gives her the Amulet of Orynth—which Celaena later realizes is the one that contains one of the wyrdkeys—to protect her. Aelin falls asleep and then wakes up and climbs into her parents’ bed that night, after shutting the window because it is raining. Only the next morning is she woken up by Lady Marion, her nursemaid, and the mother of Elide, screaming. The lady takes her out of bed, cleans her off, and then stays with her, as news comes in that the King of Orynth was also killed. She yells at the messenger to go get help, and as they wait alone, there are hooves going towards the house. Marion tells Aelin to get out through the door in the back, and run for the bridge, then hide somewhere past it until someone she knows and trusts comes to get her. Aelin runs out, but then turns around to watch as Marion stands head to head with the intruder, telling him that she will not let him get to Aelin, and then watches as he kills her. Aelin runs, and runs, trips over a root, and gets stuck while the assassin is bearing down on her on his horse. The Little Folk help her out of the root, and she continues running until she is almost onto the bridge, but just barely ahead of the assassin. Then she’s falling—the assassin has cut the bridge off—and she falls into the river and the ravine. She is found later by Arobynn, and he tells her that her amulet had fallen off in the river, but Celaena later realizes that the amulet protected her the whole time until she was found on the riverbank by Arobynn, so he has to have it. Celaena hits the end, while the Valg princes take sips of her and her agony. Aelin shows up and tells her to stand up, to get up—other voices of her parents, her friends, tell her the same. But when she doesn’t, her parents tell her that they are disappointed. Aelin continues smiling at Celaena and Celaena realizes that Marion’s and Nehemia’s deaths would be in vain—have been in vain and useless. She decides to live for those she’s loved and takes Aelin’s hand.

Rowan watches as there is sparks of fire in the darkness. And then there is a blast of magic—Celaena gets up, battering the Valg princes back. He realizes that she’s out of magic to continue fighting for much longer, and both Gavriel and Lorcan let go of him. Rowan runs to her, cutting his palm, and Celaena accepts the gift of the carranam—those whose powers are compatible enough to share their pools of magic within them. She uses his pool of magic to fight the Valg Princes, but mostly to burn them inside and out, killing then with the magic. The last one to go is General Narrok, and she sees an image that he sends her through their connection between the Valg and her, but mostly on his face, there is relief. The rest of the army is rounded up and made prisoners, but then they go ahead and kill themselves with a poison that they had before they could even be questioned.

After Celaena heals, and says goodbye to Emrys and Luca, Rowan takes her to Mistward. They spend a week traveling, during which she realizes that the King of Adarlan had used his magic on her to force her family to separate, and that the Amulet of Orynth is the Wyrdkey. Rowan wants to know what she found out, but she tells him that no—realizing that Maeve could command him to tell her what the truth is and she had learned enough about Maeve from Emrys’s stories to know that she would. Rowan also agrees that she shouldn’t tell him. Slowly as they make their way to Doranelle, both of them fall silent, and send their own prayers to Mala Fire-Bringer, the goddess. Eventually they make their way into the city, and Celaena doesn’t know how to deal with the fact that everyone is having a good time while others suffer—but she realizes that she has done the same. They go to the castle, which is made of stone, and meet with Maeve, who demands a demonstration. Celaena tells her that she wants to hear the answers first before Maeve gets a demonstration, so Maeve tells her that the Wyrdkeys cannot be destroyed—they can only be put back into the gate, something that Celaena had figured out. Maeve doesn’t really tell Celaena much that she doesn’t already know, beyond just telling her that she had seen the wyrdkeys once before they were stolen by Brannon and that Brannon was a bastard child of his line—hence the wyrdmark on his forehead for “nameless.” Every heir from Brannon’s line has had that same mark. Maeve demands to know what Celaena has figured out about the location of the Wyrdmark—Celaena tells her nothing—so Maeve has Rowan held down and whipped. She tells Celaena that she will continue to do this until she tells her the information she wants. Celaena uses her magic to heat up the stone—having figured out some things. She reveals that Maeve had held onto the wyrdkeys, but wanted to use them for something different, and only Anthril—Maeve’s lover—and Brannon had stolen them from her. It is why her city buildings are made out of stone—to protect her from Brannon’s heirs; it’s why she wanted to know how deep Celaena’s magic went, and why she kept asking about seeing her as a child—to see how much of a threat Aelin would be to her. She pulls out Goldryn and tells her that it was hidden in a mountain cave after Anthril had died by Brannon so that anyone else with his powers could come to use it, and she pulls out the ring that she had found in the scabbard. Maeve demands to get the sword back at first, but Celaena tells her that no, finders keepers—however, when she shows Maeve the ring, Maeve is furious and demands it back. Celaena tells her that she will bargain—the ring of her lover, in exchange for Rowan’s freedom from the Blood Oath. Everyone freezes in shock, but Maeve agrees to free him, telling them she’s bored of him. She frees Rowan, and Rowan immediately runs to Celaena, telling her that he will take a blood oath to her—Celaena doesn’t want to be that kind of ruler, keeping anyone bound to her, but she quickly realizes that the reason Rowan is doing it is because he realizes that she is in danger—she’s a relatively new Queen with no court at the moment, and Maeve has all the power. She accepts his Blood Oath, gives Maeve the ring, and Maeve tells her that she’s insulted by all that she’s done, before Maeve flies off as a Barn owl from the room. Rowan and Celaena leave the palace and Doranelle, finding an Inn for the night, where he spends the night tattooing the story of her loss of family and friends across her different scars. Eventually, Celaena makes the plan to return back to Adarlan.

Manon trains with her Thirteen, but she manages to get two days off from her grandmother for the group, and she uses that time to take Abraxos to the Ruhnn Mountains, where she faces three Stygian Spiders. She requests 10 yards of SpiderSilk from them, and they give it to her, but before they may be able to take something from her in exchange for the SpiderSilk, she pisses them off by telling them that there is an irregularity in the silk itself. This brings the spiders closer to her and Abraxos, who then uses his tail to swipe the spiders off the ledge, and she takes the SpiderSilk for herself. She has it grafted onto Abraxos’s wings, gives the overseer a small portion of it, and saves the rest of it in a hollowed out bottom of a trunk just in case. The Thirteen continue to practice alongside the rest of their coven, but Abraxos never has made the Crossing. Manon was going to make the Crossing with Astering and Sorrel on standby with their Wyverns in case Abraxos didn’t make it, but the first time they tried Abraxos had bucked and refused. Iskra—the Yellowlegs heir—had watched and come down from the ledge to tell Manon that she needs to control Abraxos and she grabs the whip from a nearby overseer, then whips Abraxos twice. This causes Manon to see red, and she goes on the offense against Iskra, basically taking her down. Asterin pulls her away and tells her to look at Abraxos—he’s fine—and Manon lets the overseers take Abraxos away to a pen as punishment for him not going through with wanting to fly the crossing. Iskra later gets punished for her actions—Manon does not want to do the whipping at all, feigning disinterest.

Finally, her grandmother calls her over and tells her that she has to find out everything after the fact—there is a Crochan witch in the cells, and that Manon has not yet made the Crossing with Abraxos. She tells her to make the Crossing that night, and Manon knows she will have to do it. That night, she is with Abraxos waiting at the landing, along with Asterin and Sorrel—whose plans have been discovered by Manon’s grandmother, and have been told to stand down, and let Manon sort it out or die—when there is a pounding belowgrounds. All the bait beasts below have started pounding the walls, and then Manon’s Thirteen do the same, eventually spreading to the remaining BlackBeak and Blueblood clans. Manon tells Abraxos that it is all for him, and they take off and make it through the crossing no problem.

War Games come, and the coven that both protects their own glass egg in a nest, and steals the remaining two eggs from the other covens will be the one that wins the War Games and gets to named wing leader. Of course, everyone goes for the Blackbeak coven’s eggs, but they manage to defend, while the thirteen fly and take the Blueblood egg. Then they go for the Yellowlegs’s egg, but Iskra and her wyvern head for the attack on Manon and Abraxos, only for her to be intercepted by Petrah, and her wyvern, Keelie. Iskra gives the command to her wyvern to kill the Blueblood heir, and Manon tries to stay out of it, asking Abraxos to let her grab the egg, but he doesn’t. Suddenly, Petrah’s mother cries out as Petrah and her wyvern start to fall. Keelie also makes a shriek that stops Manon, and has Abraxos and Manon going after Petrah. Manon watches Keelie struggle to stay afloat, upright, as they continue to plummet down—Abraxos is too small to grab Keelie, so Manon will have to save Petrah. She jumps off of Abraxos onto Keelie, while Keelie stabilizes herself, and then she cuts an unconscious Petrah out of the saddle, before jumping back to Abraxos while Keelie plummets to her death and never gets back up. Keelie’s desire to protect Petrah is something that Manon cannot get out of her mind. The Blackbeak clan wins the War Games, and she becomes the Wing Leader, leaving Petrah with her mother, who thanks her, but whom Manon ignores.

Manon is rewarded with a party, and when the Matrons call her over, she thanks them for having given her the opportunity. Her Grandmother wonders what she could give her as an achievement, and Manon tells her that the title is enough. But instead, her grandmother brings up the Crochan witch that they had been torturing, telling her that maybe she should replace her tattered red cape for a new one. The Crochan witch looks at Manon, telling her that she knows who she is—she is on the top of the Crochan’s list to kill as the White Demon—and tells her that she has had the power to undo the curse on the land for the last five hundred years. The woman eventually tells her that she should go kill her, and Manon does that while her grandmother smiles. She gets her new cloak, and when she can, she leaves the Omega lodging to spend some time outside with Abraxos.

Later, Manon is told by her grandmother that she and the thirteen are required to go to Morath; that she is not to question her command, but that her grandmother will come meet her in the spring. So Manon and her Thirteen head out to Morath.

Aedion and Chaol continue working together, but they keep their animosity towards one another in front of the king, while meeting at Celaena’s apartment. Murtagh and Ren provide them some more information—specifically that Murtagh believes that there are three obsidian towers that are at the heart of stopping all of the Magic. He also finds out some information from Skull’s Bay, where the Pirate King, Rolfe, tells him that his men had come across some creatures being bred on the Dead Islands, that look human but that are not. They only ever came across one but it was really odd and they are not willing to venture close to the Dead Islands again. Murtagh asks them if they know anything about General Narrok, and Aedion know something of him, but not a lot, while Chaol knows nothing about him at all.

They are at a meeting in front of the King, and Dorian is nearby, when the King announces that he has had all of the slaves of Calaculla and Endovier killed, and that they will need to start supplying more slaves to keep these labor camps going. Dorian and Chaol are horrified, while Aedion has to thank the king for taking care of the rebels from his region that were in the Camps. Aedion later sits in the hidden passage way from Celaena’s room in anger and sadness, where Chaol finds him. Chaol has to find his own replacement, and eventually makes the decision to tell the king that he is leaving for Anielle. This happens after Murtagh comes back with news that Aelin is alive—that she had just decimated General Narrok’s forces in Wendlyn—and they change their plans. Murtagh is to go to Terrasen and spread the news, while Ren is to continue working here in Rifthold.

Dorian, in the meantime, had spent time with Sorscha and used her methods to keep his magic under control. She writes letters occasionally to a friend, and she had been writing one when Dorian comes in one morning, so she throws it out after having made a mistake on it. Dorian and Chaol also speak, when Chaol asks him to help with an experiment. He sets up three crystals equidistant from each other, then puts sand in between each crystal, making a triangle. He tells Dorian to try to use his magic to connect the three, and when Dorian does make all three glow, Chaol realizes that his theory is correct—three obsidian towers, connected together somehow to make magic stop. He explains this to Dorian, and Dorian knocks over one of the towers, causing the connection to dissipate. Dorian then tells him that Chaol is struggling because he hasn’t picked a side to fight on, and that he seems to have accepted Dorian and his magic, but not Celaena’s or Aelin’s—and he cannot pick and choose what part to love. He likewise cannot choose to not do anything or choose a side; he won’t win. Chaol realizes that Dorian has spoken like a true king, and that is where his loyalties lie.

Chaol is called into his Majesty’s chamber, three days before he is to leave. He had been working on figuring out ways to get Dorian and Sorscha out of the castle for their safety. He enters the private chamber, where he sees Aedion surrounded by many soldiers. Aedion knows it’s a mistake that the soldiers hadn’t handcuffed him, because even though they did not allow him to take a weapon, he still is one. Yet, he notices that they allowed Chaol to bring his weapon into the chamber. Dorian hears that Chaol and Aedion had been called into the King’s private chambers, and he runs to Sorscha first, telling her that they have to leave right now for safety. Sorscha doesn’t understand what is going on, and when he pushes her to leave with him, they are stopped by Amithy, who tells them that the king wants to see them in the private chamber. So they join Chaol and Aedion, where the King reveals that Amithy had found Sorscha’s trashed letter to her “friend” and that Sorscha has been sharing information on the King’s movement, though he wonders if she had shared anything about Dorian. Dorian implores his father to stop, and his father asks him if he knows anything. Dorian tells him no-he doesn’t know anything, which is a lie, and the king calls it out. The King wants to know who is this Rebel leader that Sorscha has been writing to. Chaol is about to throw himself at his King’s feet to reveal that he is the one, when Aedion jumps in and tells him that he has always been the one leading the rebellion—throwing even the fake obsidian ring at the king. The King has Aedion shackled, while he has Sorscha beheaded. This causes Dorian to start screaming, but when Chaol is attacked with an arrow, Dorian freezes everything because he cannot lose the one person he has grown up with and loved like a brother. He tells Chaol to run, and then faces his father with his magic. Chaol runs through the castle, grabbing Fleetfoot from Dorian’s chambers, and then going through the hidden tunnels in Celaena’s rooms to grab Damaris, some gold, and some of the books of Magic that Dorian and Celaena had used. He then gets out of the castle, while the building shudders, and makes his way to Celaena’s apartment in the city.

Aedion gets pulled out of the chamber, and taken to the dungeons—he will be executed at some point, as the king had said. Dorian on the other hand fights against his father, and when his father uses the dark magic to hit at him, and Dorian cannot go any further, he crawls towards Sorscha, but then his father puts a black wyrdstone collar on him, despite Dorian fighting back. He continues to fight back as the thing inside him cut him off from his body—he is not able to do anything besides watch now.

My Thoughts:

I rather enjoyed this book, and loved how Aedion and Chaol come together around the revelation that Aelin is alive, and start working together along with some help from Dorian. Manon is not a character that I have loved the first time reading this series years ago, she was a bit too unfeeling for me, but during this re-read, I’m not exactly falling head over heels for her as a character, but I do like her progression—I see her viciousness, the thing that was taught to her, and then her need and desire to protect the weaker people and animals like Abraxos, or even saving Petrah. I think it goes to show that she has a heart and potentially could be swayed to help against Erawan—obviously, having read this series before, I am aware where she ends up on the side of line, but it’s really interesting to see how the plot turns her to that side. The little things that build up, that go against her instincts and her beliefs—her moral code as an Ironteeth witch—that make her decide the way that she did. I am starting to like Manon this time around I do kind of empathize with her a lot more than the first read around. Looking forward to see how they grow in the next book.