Book Review: Queen of Shadows

Title: Queen of Shadows
Author: Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Fiction, magic, romance

What It’s About: There is something ancient inside him, something dark, and he does not remember his last name.

Aelin Ashryver Galathynius is in the Vaults looking for Chaol Westfall, who is currently speaking with Arobynn Hamel, the King of the Assassins and her former master. Tern, one of the assassins, finds her, and tells her which boot Arobynn Hamel is sitting on. Aelin makes her way to the booth, but then Chaol steps out of it, and she sits down to hide from him, while his guard, a woman, takes note of her. Aelin talks to Arobynn once they are gone, and he offers to help get Aedion out of custody in exchange for her getting a Valg Commander for him. She says that she will think about it, and he tells her that she should look for her friend in the south east tunnels. Once Arobynn leaves, Aelin is ready for a fight, as the royal guards enter the space, and she manages to thrash it so thoroughly that it becomes useless to Arobynn, who is an investor in this business. She manages to escape into the sewers, and finds the woman guard waiting for her. The woman takes her to a meeting spot, where Chaol and a few others show up, carrying people between them—those who have magic. Chaol calls the woman Nesryn, and Aelin talks with Chaol, but it really leads to an argument about what has happened these past few weeks.

Aelin returns home to her apartment, and Lysandra visits her one of the days, with a young girl with her called Evangeline. Lysandra gives Aelin a letter from Wesley, telling her that she needs to read it and that she had fallen in love with Wesley, who had been later brutally murdered by Arobynn’s men for having killed Rourke Farran. Aelin tells Lysandra to leave after a disagreement, but then the girl, Evangeline, tells Aelin that Lysandra has done the scars to her face intentionally to disfigure her because she did not want to be a courtesan. It was Lysandra who had told her that running will be useless, and found a way to protect the girl, and though she should have been out already—paying off Clarisse—she was forced to stay because of what she did to Evangeline, and the money that it could have brought Clarisse in the long run. Aelin tells her to wait, and another day Lysandra comes by and they begin scheming after having shared some bits of their stories—Lysandra has no love for Arobynn because of what he did to Wesley, whom she loved, and she would like to see Arobynn dead. So they plan things together on how to get Aedion off the executioner’s block. Aelin goes to visit the Shadow Market, where she stops at Brullo and Ress’s table, the two Royal Guards who are disguised as weapons sellers. Chaol is there and he is angry, though Aelin asks the two guards if they have any information on the castle and whether they want to be a part of the plan for saving Aedion. When they ask her how they can help, She then tells them to tell their men to wear red flowers. In anger Chaol tells her off, only later realizing that she had told them that so that their men could be spared. She continues to meet with Chaol and Nesryn throughout to make the plan happen to save Aedion but she also helps them save people who have been rounded up for execution. Aelin also agrees to Arobynn’s help in getting Aedion out of the execution.

Aedion doesn’t tell the soldiers anything in the dungeons—he had gotten a cut in his side—during the scuffle out of the hall where the King had cut off Sorscha’s head, and he hopes that the infection will kill him first before his execution so that Aelin does not have to come save him. So that his queen does not have to come into the trap that has been set for her. Alas, Dorian shows up, but there is nothing of Dorian in the face of the prince, and whatever it is that is controlling the prince takes a look at Aedion, and then tells him that he will call the guards and healers to come take care of him, because he cannot die. The Prince then goes to the King and reports to him, telling him that Aedion had gotten infected and was going to die, which would have ruined the execution.

The day comes of the celebration for Dorian’s birthday, and the execution, which is meant to be the main show of the day. Aedion is brought up onto a platform, chained, and the Sword of Orynth is placed behind him. He spends several hours like this. Aelin in the interim, joins the Ballet company owned by Florine, a famous dancer in Adarlan, and gets into the castle with them. She does pretend to get hysterical at one point, because of the Wyrdmarks that are meant to keep her and Aedion in, but she asks for water and then washes them away. The only thing that she notices is that Nesryn is inside as well—delivering desserts from her father’s dessert business, which Arobynn had told Aelin but she didn’t realize that she would be here. Once the group of dancers start dancing and start throwing the powder around for their piece, Aelin slips into the crowd, giving the appearance of an understudy who is trying to get a better view. Then she disappears behind a column, and she swaggers out like a man. Aedion notices as this man makes his way towards him and even says hello to another person. Then the dance finishes, causing an explosion of gas to hide everything that happens next—Aelin kills all the guards around Aedion, unchains him from the floor and grabs the weapon behind him for him to hold. They make their way out onto the balcony, and she calls out that there is fire, which causes buckets of water to be brought in, and the water washes away the wyrdmarks. They escape and are in the garden when Dorian finds them, only it is the Valg prince in control. Aelin is about to kill him, after fighting him, when Nesryn arrives with her bow, revealing that Arobynn had told Chaol that she would kill Dorian. They run away, and get into a carriage with Lysandra, hiding Aedion in a hidden compartment, while Aelin changes into different clothes. When they are stopped by a group of the guards, Lysandra talks to them, and asks what is going on—they let the two women go. Then, another carriage comes, opening the door up, and she gets Aedion out into the other carriage, with Chaol’s help, and then Aelin herself crosses over into the carriage. When they get back to her apartment, they put Aedion in bed, and try to take care of his cut—Lysandra shows up and starts taking care of him herself, while Chaol and Aelin get into an argument over Dorian. Aelin tells Chaol that Dorian is gone—nothing more than a Valg Prince, and it would be a mercy to kill him—though Chaol doesn’t believe it at all, as he is determined to save him. Lysandra learns that Aelin is the Queen of Terrasen, though she has known Aelin’s name for some time.

Aedion recovers, and Aelin and him talk about everything that they had been through, and he is in awe that Aelin had met Rowan. He does make mention of the Blood Oath, but Aelin gets uncomfortable with telling him the truth—that what was once promised to him as the one and only Blood Oath in Terrasen, has now been taken from him by none other than Rowan. They end up going out one night with Nesryn, and upon their return from the bar, Aedion smells something. Aelin picks up the scent and realizes that it is Rowan, so she runs towards him and gives him a hug, telling him that she’s missed him. She introduces the two men, and Rowan reveals that Aedion is Gabriel’s child—his scent is what gives him away—which shocks both of them, but also makes it very clear that Aelin’s parents knew about his parentage, which is why Rhoe was much harder on him than he was on others. They go into the apartment, and Rowan takes a bath, after which he reveals that the reason why he had come to Adarlan as a stowaway in a ship is because Lorcan had crossed the seas on Maeve’s orders to come find Aelin and get the wyrdkeys. Shortly after, Rowan reveals that he is blood sworn to Aelin during a conversation about her safety and what she is doing. This in turn results in an argument between Aedion and Aelin, for which they both apologize the following morning and Aelin tells him that things have changes, and so this court will also be different—no longer sticking to the traditions of the old Terrasen court. She offers him the Blood Oath if he wants it, and to take it now. He chooses to wait until after the coronation. Lysandra comes around dropping off some clothes for Rowan. During another mission, Aelin takes Chaol with her as a body guard to meet with Arobynn at the Pits, a new version of the Vaults where Arobynn had been an investor. Arobynn asks her to fight one of the Valg grunts to show the owners of the Pits why he would be a good investor in them, and Aelin chooses the Valg commander to fight, toying with him until she kills him with just her bare arms, and then uses the knives her boots to slice off his head. Chaol finally confides in Aelin that the way to restore magic is to destroy the clock tower, and she thanks him for that.

Aelin explores the underground sewer network on her own, even long after Rowan had fallen asleep, and she comes across a rock-like being in one of the deeper, more ancient sewer waters, where a Valg commander meets with this thing, which she calls a Wyrdhound—they look like the gargoyles from the clock tower. On a different day, she uses this knowledge to trick Lorcan into facing the Wyrdhounds in hopes that it kills him, only for it to turn out that he’s able to kill it. He catches up to her when she’s near her home, getting a blade at her throat, only for Rowan to counter him with a blade of his own. He reveals that he hadn’t left at Maeve’s request—that Maeve didn’t really let them leave without purpose, and that he wants to get the wyrdkeys to destroy them because Maeve would be too powerful. Neither Aelin nor Rowan believe him and tell him off. Aelin later reveals to Rowan that she purposefully set the trap for Lorcan, because the king is behind the Wyrdhounds, so he would have seen Lorcan through the eye of the Wyrdhound and as he is not a fan of fae, the remaining Wyrdhounds will chase Lorcan around Rifthold.

Aelin goes to the Assassin’s Keep with Aedion, and Rowan, bringing a Valg Commander in tow. She says hello to Lysandra, and passes her a note. They take him to the dungeons, where Sam had died, and she touches Rowan as a way to keep herself steady because of what had happened with Sam. Then Arobynn tells Aedion and Rowan to get out, while he tortures the Valg Commander with Aelin, though Aelin refuses to be involved in killing him because she doesn’t want to get blood on her dress. He takes off the black ring that the Valg commander had, intending to study it. They return to the dining table, and Aedion answers some questions for Arobynn, while Rowan and Aelin communicate silently across the table. At some point, Aelin notices that the table has grown silent, and she asks Arobynn what he asked, to which he asks when she will stop destroying his investments—Aelin had been careful to do enough to annoy Arobynn without pissing him off, by destroying his investments at the Vault, using the disguise of one of his own clients, and then also using coaches from a company that he invested in, while at the same time getting the owners of the Pits to approach Arobynn for an investment, as a way to make it up to him. She has a plan and she wanted to make sure that he do what she wanted him to do. She tells him that it will take a few things, and so they go into his office, while Rowan and Aedion sneak up quieter than even the assassins onto the doors of Arobynn’s study to hear the conversation. Aelin asks for the Amulet of Orynth back, and Arobynn pulls it out from underneath his shirt. It’s exactly as she remembered it, and she quickly sense the wyrdkey in it—wondering if Arobynn’s success as a King of Assassins was due to the Amulet. As Aelin stands up to go away from him, after some conversation, Arobynn puts the wyrdstone ring on her and tells her that he wants her obedient. She drops the dagger that she had pulled out, and then he has her repeat certain things after him, answering questions. He lets her leave after that, and Aedion and Rowan are pissed. They get into the carriage and Aelin continues to be distant, but once they get into the apartment, she takes off the ring and reveals that she had suspected but that she did not think that Arobynn would do this—they had caught a Valg commander who took over a human body that seemed to fight back for a while, and they had made an agreement with him—they would let him be killed so that he wouldn’t have to face whatever horrors he had done under the command of the Valg inhibiting body, but that he would be dying as himself, free of the Valg, as long as he lied for them. Sure enough the man had done as requested, and Arobynn went for the gloved hand with the fake ring, not realizing that the man was missing another digit already. Aelin puts the real amulet away into a hidden floorboard in her closet, and then pulls out the fake one that she had Lysandra’s jeweler make and leaves it on the table. She then hangs outside, and almost has a moment with Rowan, who tells her that she shouldn’t touch him the way that she has been touching him.

In the interim, Lysandra was sharing the bed with Arobynn, and she kills him while he is sleeping. She had gotten the note from Aelin that evening when they saw each other. The next morning, information is delivered to Aelin that she is needed at Assassin’s Keep as Arobynn had been killed. When she arrives, she wears the Celaena Sardothien persona, kicking in the door, and getting into an argument with Tern, one of the assassins who has been Arobynn’s second in command and who has had it out for her for a long time. She is flanked by Rowan and Aedion, though both of them are equally shocked by how she acts, the skin she wears as Celaena. Tern and the other two assassins that are with him, accuse Aelin of murdering Arobynn, but they also know that she had been on the rooftop and went to bed late last night, so it couldn’t be her. They check out where Arobynn had been killed, and upon seeing the blood, Aelin wonders just what the hell Lysandra had done to Arobynn to leave behind so much blood. When they return back to the living room, they find Clarisse there, and Aelin only lets her stay because the Master of the Bank shows up with Arobynn’s will. In the will, he reveals that Aelin inherited everything except for the small sum of money that was left to Clarisse, who is now indignant about the funds. But Aelin has Clarisse and Lysandra scurrying out soon after, and then she kicks out all of the assassins out of the Keep. Tern, and the two others that were with him offer to buy the Keep and the Guild from her, and she tells them that they can have it once the Master of the Bank shows up with the contract, and they show up with the money. She still kicks them out of the Keep, and together with Rowan and Aedion, they sit inside the keep, looking around, checking for things, and she even goes to hack off Arobynn’s head to make sure that he is dead and stays dead. Rowan is the one who quickly realizes that all of the evenings that Aelin had snuck out, she had also gone to the Bank, where she changed the will, while all of the visits to the Bank during daylight hours were to figure out the layout of everything in the bank. Once Aelin gets paid for the Keep, the Guild and the Contracts, they leave the building to the Assassins.

In Morath, Manon and her thirteen are annoyed to be kept in their aeries, at being grounded, except for the night time. She speaks to the Duke who refuses to tell her much, and tries to order her around. She and the Thirteen take a ride on their wyverns out of the aerie in order to get fresh food as the food that they have been given smells bad and tastes even worse. Manon comes back to her room after a day out, and runs into a human girl named Elide Lochan, who looks meek and seems to be very demure. Manon can tell that she is faking it, and later is proven correct that the girl had been touching things around her room; however, she swiped the girl’s blood and was surprised to taste that she has some witch blood in her. Elide Lochan had been living with her uncle, Vernon, the Lord of Perranth, after her father was executed for his connection in the Rebellion. She has been locked up in a tower in Perranth, and has had chains placed around her legs, but she has always been taught to observe and to pay attention to what is going around her, by her nursemaid. Not too long ago, Vernon had brought her over to Morath, but she does not know why.

Manon goes to more meetings with the Duke, and in one, he asks her to hand over a coven of Blackbeaks so that they may be impregnated, using a stone sewn just underneath their belly buttons. Manon doesn’t know what to do, and Asterin has been getting on her nerves lately—acting up and saying things, being disobedient, so she had Asterin punished and demoted to Third from Second, making Sorrel her second. This of course, brings some issues with the wyvern when they fly because Abraxos is used to Asterin’s blue wyvern. Ultimately, a choice is made for her, when a coven of Yellowlegs volunteers to be the chosen ones for the Duke’s own project. She gives the name to the Duke, and while he is not happy because he asked for Blackbeaks, he takes them to the subterranean level to do his project. Manon then is not able to see or visit them. Asterin, in the meantime, visits Elide at the kitchen and talks to her about her blood. It becomes clear that Elide did not know about it, and Elide makes her way up to Manon’s room, where she starts grabbing cash from Manon’s stashes all over the place. Asterin shows up and foils her, so does Manon—though she tells Elide to keep the money and realizes that she is trying to get out through the wagons out of Morath. At some point, she does drag Elide down to her room, only to find Vernon in front of Elide’s room. Vernon makes some snarky comments, and Manon responds in kind. Once he is gone and away, she pushes Elide into the room, and asks her to pick whether her blood runs Blue or Red. Elide chooses Blue, which means that Manon now has jurisdiction over her.

During one of her meetings with the Duke, who still refuses to let anyone see the Yellowlegs coven, she finds him with Kaltain, and learns that Kaltain has shadowfire—it looks like fire, and makes the recipient of the magic feel like they are on fire, and dying. When the demonstration is over, Kaltain lays down. Manon asks a bunch of questions, and then pretends to understand what is going on with the Duke and Kaltain, though she is annoyed that she is not able to find out what is going on with the Yellowlegs coven, and isn’t given access to them. So she decides to orchestrate a situation—Elide senses that someone is in her room, so she heads up to the aerie and falls asleep there underneath Abraxos, but is later awoken by Manon speaking to two of her sentinels. Manon catches her leaving, tells her that she can sleep in Manon’s own room, but that she needs to get into the subterranean levels and find out what is going on with the coven. Through her own cunning and knowledge, as well as a little help from the Thirteen via a poison, Elide makes it to the subterranean level and finds the yellowlegs coven. She also runs into a younger man there, who terrifies her a bit. When she returns to the Thirteen, she is vomiting and is extremely ill, but manages to tell them all that she witnessed, which doesn’t make Manon happy.

Then two things happen—in one instance, Manon and her Thirteen are ambushed by the young man that Elide had seen. In the ambush, Manon and a few other witches are not impacted by the darkness brought in by the boy, and in fact the demon inside him recoils when Manon is near, giving him a chance to tell her his real name—Roland. Once she snaps his neck and kills him, she looks around and realizes that the witches that were impacted by the magic and darkness are those that did not have any gold in their eyes, while those that had gold in their eyes were less impacted by the darkness. Then, the Duke has the Thirteen fly him and Kaltain to the Wild Men of the Ferian gap, where Kaltain basically burns down a village using her shadowfire, and then passes out. Manon is left to clean up the mess with her thirteen by kill the rest of the village. These things, along with the fact that she had killed the Crochan witch, has the witches’s words echoing in her mind. Finally, the Duke asks Manon for a Blackbeak coven and tells her that if she doesn’t choose one, he will choose one for her—and it has to be the strongest of the covens possible. But then a message comes in from Manon’s grandmother—the first one since all of the messages that she had sent to her grandmother asking about the covens being used to produce demonic offspring as Manon had been convinced that her grandmother would not be okay with this. In the message, she is given coordinates, and is told that she and the Thirteen should show up there to meet with the Matrons and the King. So the Thirteen fly off to scout the area ahead of time but Manon tells Elide to lie low.

Now that Aelin has taken care of Arobynn and Assassin’s Keep, she has to find Hellfire in order to bring down the tower in the courtyard of the castle—Chaol had told her that this was the way to bring magic down, as it is one of the towers built by the king to stop all magic. Aedion, Rowan, Aelin, Nesryn and Chaol make their way to the Shadow Market, which has been burnt by the King as he had learnt that the rebels had been coming there before saving Aedion. She had already found out with Lysandra’s help that the opium dealer that Aelin had been looking for had access to the sewers underneath the Shadow Market. So they find the entrance to the sewers, and find themselves in an area full of human bones—the remains of what used to be a Temple to the God of Truth, but it leaves them all feeling creeped out. They split up and search for the hellfire, and Rowan quickly clears his area before joining Aelin. Together, they discover an older part of the temple, including Wyrdmarks. Aedion and Chaol join them, and Aelin reads the wyrdmarks for them—Gavin’s confession that they did not kill Erawan, but merely entombed him underneath Morath. It suddenly makes sense to them why the King is amassing his army in Morath, and that he hopes to get Erawan out. They realize that they have to move faster, and take out the tower soon. They hide the Hellfire in a different location, and return home to the warehouse.

The next morning, Rowan tells Aelin that someone had made their way into the house, and when they open the door to the warehouse, Aelin finds Evangeline, who tells her that the King’s men had taken Lysandra—a gift from Arobynn revealing that she is a shifter. She begs Chaol to help them save her, so they make a plan—there is to be a meeting at the Temple of Temis. The day of the event, Aedion, Rowan, Aelin, Nesryn and Chaol made their way to the area and had observed as much as they could—finding the Wyverns and the meeting spot. They hide in their spots, and watch as the first set of witches arrive and as the second set of witches arrive, and then as the King and Dorian arrive. They watch as the Matron mistreats Manon, telling her to keep her mouth shut in front of the king. Manon does not speak when the King speaks to her, only giving a snarky answer to him about being told to shut up. Then the King and the Matron leave Manon and Dorian alone while they go into the cart that the Matron brought with them. Manon talks to Dorian, and for the first time, the Demon recedes in his body, and he is able to speak to Manon as himself. Aelin and Chaol are surprised but it seemed like a momentary thing as the same hardness to Dorian returns. They signal to their friends, and Aedion and Rowan scare off the wyvern, creating a commotion, which allows Aelin to grab Lysandra from the prisoner cart and Rowan to kill the three guards and shove them into the cart before locking it up again.

They leave the meeting with Lysandra, heading far away from it but before they did, they had watched the King leave with Dorian. Once the King was gone, the Matron turned to Manon and hit her hard across the face twice—drawing blood both times—and told her that she has been purposefully ignoring Manon’s messages, to which Manon should have received the message that she should follow all of the orders she is given. She then lets Manon see inside the cart to show her the new weapon that the Matrons had been working on, before the Matron and her own contingent leave the area, leaving Manon and the Thirteen alone. Manon realizes that all of the pregnancies are sanctioned by the Matron and she is even expected to do something without being able to ask. Suddenly she turns around and she finds a human—Chaol—who had left Lysandra behind to go after Dorian and kill Dorian, except he had made a mistake in the direction, and ended up in the witches’ camp.

Aelin, Rowan and Aedion realize that Chaol is gone, and they leave Lysandra with Nesryn, while they chase him down, following him back to the Witches. They find Chaol being held by the throat by Manon, and at first it seems like Manon would be happy to turn them in to the King. Aelin even makes her way towards Manon and then she continues to move around, seeming to not be able to stay still. But Manon throws Chaol back at Aelin, and decides to move forward, not caring about the rebel group because she has a lot to think about after what she had learnt from her grandmother. But then Aelin calls out to her and yanks down her shirt, showing the marks that Baba Yellowlegs left her when she had killed her. This causes Manon to run towards her to kill her, only to slam into an invisible barrier that holds her. Aelin and her group—Rowan, Aedion, and Chaol—make their way to the temple. They cross the first bridge without much problem, except that Rowan takes an arrow meant for Aelin. She manages to push him through the second bridge to Chaol and Aedion, and puts herself into the path of the witch. Manon and Aelin fight, and with Manon’s iron fingers, she takes out the temple, causing the roof to collapse and the island to sway. Aelin manages to get out and starts making her way across the bridge, but she hears the golden haired witch scream Manon’s name—the way that Aelin had screamed Rowan’s name when he got shot. As a result, she turns around and goes back to get Manon, telling her that she thinks it’s a waste of a good fighter. She saves Manon, but leaves her at the entrance to the bridge that no longer exists after the island has collapsed, while she heads out with Aedion, Rowan, and Chaol to meet with Nesryn and Lysandra. Manon gets picked up later when she comes to by Asterin and her wyvern, and then she gets in front of the king on the road, telling him that the prisoner is gone and that it seems like the fact that three guards are dead does not bother him. But she keeps her mouth shut about who the rebels are, specifically that it’s the Queen of Terrasen that aided them.

In the interim, Elide has been hiding in Manon’s room, until Vernon comes to the room and tells her that he has been waiting for her to reveal who she really is—she is a half witch, half magic wielder, which hasn’t previously existed. And he now wants to test her out to see what happens, so since Manon isn’t around he claims that she can’t protect Elide. He then takes her and throws her in the dungeons, where Elide sits for the next few days freezing and getting little food. She later learns that Vernon wants her to be impregnated by one of the Valg, via a magic user, and when the time comes, she is washed against her wishes, and then she is dragged out of the prison by soldiers, who laugh at her nakedness.

When Manon and the Thirteen return to Morath, Asterin asks Manon to come with her and the two fly off to an overhang. Asterin reveals to Manon that over eighty years ago, she had fallen in love with a hunter after trying to fly through a storm that left her bloodied and broken. She spent some time recovering while also working on a new broom, and when it was time to return, she returned to the keep, pregnant. She waited a couple of months, to ensure that she would not lose the baby, and once she was certain that the pregnancy was viable, she told the Blackbeak Matron, who basically hid Asterin away from Manon, taking her off duty. Every time Manon had visited, Asterin was in the keep, but the Matron lied to Manon that Asterin is out. The only one who knew was Sorrell, and another of the thirteen. Asterin tells Manon that when the baby was born, it was a stillborn, and Manon’s grandmother—the Matron—stamped her with “UNCLEAN” on her stomach to ensure that no man would ever want to be with her when they saw that. Asterin had wanted to take the witchling to her father upon birth so that the girl may grow up better than they did, but never had a chance to even hold her as the Matron had thrown the child into the fire. She then threw Asterin out of the keep, leaving to fend for herself, only for her to be collected and cared for by Sorrell and Vesta, and then return back stronger than ever. Asterin tells Manon that she flew over the cabin from time to time to check on the hunter, and he never married, always looking out for something or someone who would not come home to him, and then ultimately died alone in the forest. She begs Manon to please reconsider giving the coven to the Duke as the witchlings are such a tender spot for her and she believes the women deserve better. Manon reinstates Asterin as her second immediately, and they spend a couple of days recovering and hunting. When they’re ready to return to Morath, Manon wakes up with a task that she knows that she needs to do before they return.

After saving Manon, Aelin and her group head over to Nesryn’s father’s estate, where they get help from the wife of the groundskeeper, to patch up Rowan. Once Rowan is okay, Aelin cleans up and Chaol comes to speak to her, telling her that he knows what she means now, and that Dorian shouldn’t be saved because he’s not there. He apologizes to her for trying to kill Dorian and getting them into a scuffle with the witches. When the sun begins to rise, the group departs before anyone is awake and heads back to Rifthold.

There, they put their plan into effect on infiltrating the castle on Summer Solstice to kill both the King and the Prince, while bringing down the clock tower to bring back magic. Aelin pays off Lysandra’s debt, and frees both her and Evangeline from Clarisse’s clutches, but tells them to get out of the city the morning of the Solstice. The morning of the summer solstice, Aelin goes to the market to purchase some things, and finds a message from Manon indicating that Dorian is still inside the body along with the demon. She shares this information with Chaol and it changes their plan but marginally. They then go to the castle with him as a prisoner, but when the arrive at the gates, they learn that the reason Chaol hadn’t been able to get through to his guards and friends at the castle was because they were being tortured and eventually killed. Chaol demands to change the plan, and so they walk in all the way to the glass portion of the castle, where they face the King. The King calls Aelin out on being the Queen of Terrassen, and they have a bit of a back and forth before she has Dorian chase her through the glass castle, while leaving Chaol with the King to buy them time. Chaol fights valiantly, but the King ultimately knocks him out, though what Chaol doesn’t realize is that Aelin had dropped the Eye of Elena into one of his pockets to at least give him some protection. Dorian chases Aelin all the way through to the glass bridge between two spires, where there is sunlight. Alas, the clock tower doesn’t go down so she doesn’t have magic at first, but she pulls Dorian to her and puts the ring that she got from Lorcan on him. The ring is supposed to protect the wearer from the Valg, which neither Aelin nor Rowan believed, but it begins pushing the demon inside Dorian back, until he comes through himself, just as a ripple goes across on the wind.

Lysandra had headed out of the city with Evangeline, saying good bye to the place as they head out. Aedion and Rowan in the interim make their way through the sewers towards the Clock tower, and they place the hellfire there, while their noses bleeds from the stone. As they make their way back out of the clock tower, they realize that Lorcan did not kill the Wyrdhounds at all, but instead fed them the cape for Rowan. The wyrdhounds come out of the woodwork basically and start attacking Rowan and Aedion, and they manage to whittle them down to a few, but they begin flagging. Rowan gets mauled by one of them, when Lorcan shows up and starts killing them, after having realized that Aedion is Gavin’s son and that he could not leave them to suffer. They manage to light the fuses and the clock tower explodes, bringing a ripple effect out onto them, which is when Rowan feels Aelin get stabbed by Dorian. The three try to fight their way but there are so many Valg soldiers that it becomes hopeless, and exits are blocked. Suddenly a massive ghost leopard shows up and rips through the Valg soldiers, clearing them out for the bunch. Rowan recognizes Lysandra, and tells her to get to Aelin. He himself finds a hole in one of the destroyed entrances, changes into a hawk and flies out looking for Aelin.

Aelin and Dorin are faced with the King, who tells them that he had killed Chaol, which pisses off Dorian enough that he breaks the necklace on him. Aelin and Dorian combine their magic and they fight off the king, specifically burning the demon out from him. In the end, they are left with Dorian’s father who reveals that he had done this all for Dorian to have a chance—he found the eye of Elena and showed it to Perrington, who took him to the crypt and they freed Erawan. Erawan immediately had put the ring around the King, and that is who had started killing all of the magic users. The king went to Terrasen because he heard about Aelin and had hoped that she would be able to burn out the demon from him, but before she even could do it, her mother knocked her out cold, and that put the Valg demon inside him on a path of trying to destroy her family as well as his own line, for which the demon had a hatred. The king also reveals that in a moment of clarity, he managed to build the clock towers to stifle magic and give them a chance, but it took all of his remaining energy to keep that information from the demon inhabiting his body, so the demon thought that magic disappeared because it was the will of the gods. In anger, Dorian destroys the glass tower, and both him and Aelin fall. She feels the wind magic slow them down, and she uses her own fire magic to put a ring of fire around the castle and to stop the glass from destroying any bit of the city, causing the castle to have a wall of melted glass around it. Once she lands, she gets knocked out. When she comes to, she goes out of the wall by punching through it, and tells the population that she had killed the King, that Dorian is alive, and threatens them that if they step one toe out of line, she will come after them with her fire. She then returns and collapses in the castle.

Manon returns to Morath, and very quickly realizes that Elide hasn’t been in their shared room for some time. She begins to have her thirteen search for the girl, and she is the one that finds Elide being dragged out of the prison by soldiers who are laughing at her nakedness. She kills all of the soldiers and starts dragging Elide out when Kaltain shows up and tells them that they’ll see what they want to see. Manon asks her how long she had burnt the demon inside her, to which Kaltain tells her that it’s been some time, but reveals that she will not be able to sustain her magic after what has been done to her. After she switches Elide’s outfit with hers, Kaltain pulls out the item from her arm, and asks Elide to find a patch of cloth in one of her pockets. She puts the piece into the patch of cloth, and tells Elide that she needs to find Celaena Sardothien in order to give her this item that is in that patch of cloth, and to tell her that she is thankful for her kindness of giving her a cloak when Kaltain had been freezing in the prison. She then tells them to get out, and Manon rushes with Elide up to the aerie, while Kaltain gets taken by guards to the subterranean levels, and gets placed on an altar. It’s too late when the guards, and the demon in a human body realize that they have the wrong person, and Kaltain releases her Shadowfire across all of it, which causes Morath to explode and collapse upon itself. By this time, Manon has Elide up on Abraxos, and together with the thirteen they fly away to Oakwald forest, where Manon leaves Elide. She tells Elide that the Queen of Terrasen is alive, and that they will be most likely heading north, so she should head that way as well. She leaves Elide with food, clothing and some coin for her to survive her trip north, as well as takes off the iron shackles that Elide has had around her legs for so long.

Aelin recovers enough from her injuries—she had healed too fast on the battlefield with her magic, leaving some glass embedded in her, but the healers were able to take it out of her. She ends up checking on Dorian, who is dealing with guilt of what he had done under the demon, and together they also end up visiting Chaol. It turns out that Chaol is paralyzed from the hips down, and he could have been paralyzed from the head down if it wasn’t for Rowan’s healing ability. Unfortunately Rowan does not want to touch the injury in Chaol’s hips as it is too complex, but it turns out the the Eye of Elena had been the one that protected Chaol, which makes Aelin happy. Dorin tells him that Chaol is going to be the Hand of the King and is sending him as an ambassador off to the Southern Continent, with Nesryn at his side. Nesryn will be the Captain of the Guard, but that her first duty is to go there with Chaol to help him get healed, and also help him get help for the kingdom as per Aelin’s request. Lysandra ends up loving the Ghost Leopard form, and often scares Aedion, but Aelin also offers her some land in Terrasen, if she would like it with Evangeline as her sole beneficiary. Lysandra takes her up on it and is happy to feel like she is going to be a part of something.

It soon becomes time, and Aelin, Aedion, Rowan, and Lysandra head out to Terrasen. It takes them several weeks to get there, but they do and Aelin is so happy to return home for the first time in 10 years. Dorin in the meantime battles with nightmares, and one night he opens up his balcony to see a wyvern on the wall Aelin created, with a white haired witch on top of her. Manon had come out to Rifthold to check in on Dorian, and she can’t explain why she found her way there or was called to visit, but she’s can tell that he is human again.

My Thoughts: I really love these points of views although there are quite a few of them. Sometimes it does get confusing because the author changes the perspectives with only a symbol in the middle of the page and you have to remember who had which perspective and piece the elements together to figure out whose point of view you’re looking from. But at the same time, every single character has something to offer and seeing these points of views makes me fall in love with each character just a bit more as I learn about them and learn their personality. On this re-read, I do have to say that I am learning to love Lysandra a bit more, and I find Manon to be a lost soul stuck between what she had learnt her whole life, but also what she feels is off and not right. The part about Asterin is just extremely heartbreaking and I think that’s the part where I start sensing the change in Manon that puts her on the trajectory to meet with Aelin in a different footing in the next book. But both Manon and Aelin are equally strong female characters in this series for me, and to an extent I do feel like they’re even each other out in their temperaments, which I love. I do wish though that we could see a bit more of Asterin’s perspective in the series, because I do feel like she would be a very interesting character to explore further, but I realize that there is only so much that the author can write about.

Absolutely enjoyed this book and am loving this series.