Book Review: Tower of Dawn

Title: Tower of Dawn
Author: Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Romantasy

What It’s About:

Part one

Chaol Westfall decidedly does not like the sounds of the wheels of the chair that he sits in, having come to the Southern Continent to seek assistance from the famed Torre Cesme, but also to get help from the Khagan, the ruler of the whole continent. Nesryn Faliq, the new Captain of the Guard, and his friend/ lover, is taking in the palace with all the details it has, while pushing him through. They meet with the Khagan, and talk, giving him four chests of jewels and good that Aelin had in her chambers when they were in the Rifthold. It’s been three weeks since they’d left. The Khagan doesn’t say much at first, with five of his six children watching on. He tells Chaol and Nesryn that even he knows who Celaena Sardothien is, and that she’s the same as Aelin. He declines their gifts, pointing out that they are in mourning—Nesryn realizes that it’s the youngest child that has died—and that they hadn’t sent a gift for his daughter, Duva, for her pregnancy. Nesryn cringes. He also reveals that their three weeks at sea must explain that they don’t know what has happened and so the gold will be more useful for them—Rifthold has fallen to the control of the witches, and Dorian is nowhere to be found. This puts Nesryn in a panic, thinking of her family, while Chaol doesn’t give himself a moment to think about Dorian, hoping that he will see him. One of the sons, Kashin, reminds his father to be hospitable and let the newcomers be treated as such, despite their loss. The Khagan agrees, telling Chaol that he will send message to Torre Cesme so that they send their best healer to help with healing him, but that it will be up to the Torre for them whether they will heal him, as he can’t deny anyone access to the Torre because of his dear wife, whose cause it is.

Chaol and Nesryn are taken to their rooms, and while his assistant is preparing a bath for him, Kashin comes to him and tells him that he needs his help. He claims that his oldest brother, Arghun, who deals in knowledge and spying, has said that agents of Morath are not in the Khaganate; however, he and a couple of his siblings disagree. He does not believe that Tumelun, his sister only 17 years old, would have jumped even though she was prone to mood swings. He wants Chaol to help him figure out if there are any agents of Morath in their circle, and that is why he had orchestrated the dinner with the Khagan and his heirs so that Chaol can observe. Chaol agrees. He leaves, and then Chaol’s servant comes in offering herself to him, but he tells her that he’s not interested, he just wants help with washing. So she wheels him into the palace, and she starts undressing him, but once she gets to his underpants, he tells her that he will do the rest of it himself, and gets off the chair slowly, and into the water of the pool, before taking his underpants off. She washes him.

Yrene Towers meets with Hafiza, the Healer on High of the Torre Cesme, in her room. Hafiza asks her about a solution to a potion that takes too long, so Yrene tells her to put it in a cooler location and use mirrors to reflect light into it for a much more concentrated light, which might make it go faster. Then they talk about Yrene’s plans—she had already passed her exams as a healer, and wants to head back to Adarlan to help her people, now that war has broken out. Hafiza offers her to stay, but Yrene isn’t sure about the offer, though Hafiza reveals that she wants her to be the Healer on High because of how good Yrene is and how much magic Yrene has. Yrene is still embarrassed by how she came up to the Torre and Hafiza two years ago, all dirty from her trip over to Antica, and plunked down a bag of gold—courtesy of a young girl in Innish who had given her the money, a broach, and a note that said the world needs more healers, a note that Yrene has kept it with her in every pocket of her outfits—and begged to be helped, only for Hafiza to tell her that they will not take money for teaching what Silba (the goddess of the healers) had given for free. And so Yrene has been at the top of her class since. As Yrene hesitates on the offer, thinking about that scrap of paper, Hafiza tells her that she has one last healing for her—a healing of Chaol Westfall, the Hand of the King of the current King of Adarlan and the former Captain of the Guard. Yrene balks at it, telling Hafiza that she won’t do it—Hafiza tells her that she took an oath, and when Yrene asks her if she hadn’t wanted to harm some one so much, Hafiza tells her that only once she had wanted to use her magic to kill someone—a man who had done some truly heinous crimes—and she had thought to herself that no one would notice that she worsened his injuries, but then she remembered her oath and healed him just so that he could stand trial and be executed in order to give his victims justice. Hafiza tells her that this is a personal test from her to Yrene to help her heal the wounds of the soul—that feeling that she gets every time she learns it’s an Adarlanian soldier because of how brutally her mother and grandmother were killed is a soul wound—and that she should at least learn about Chaol Westfall before she makes a decision to damn him. If Yrene takes this on and heals him, Hafiza tells her that she will know that Yrene will be fine wherever she goes while revealing that she had wanted her to be her heir as the Healer on High. Yrene considers it all and realizes that she would always wonder what if, if she didn’t do it. So she tells Hafiza that she will go and take a look at him first, before making a final decision on whether or not she will or will not heal him. It is also revealed that Yrene is good friends with one of the Khagan’s sons and daughters, having gone to dinner several times with them at the palace, and having met them during various healings that she’d done at the palace.

Chaol and Nesryn wait for the healer to come at 10 am the next day, and Chaol immediately picks up on Yrene’s wariness. She had arrived a few minutes late, unbeknownst to them, it was because she took some time to calm down in an alcove inside the palace as she still feels strongly about Adarlanian soldiers. She talks to Chaol and Nesryn with barely restrained dislike, and Nesryn asks a lot of questions, until Chaol tells her that he can ask them himself. He is definitely embarrassed and annoyed when Yrene asks him about his manhood and getting it up. After doing her checks on his body, Yrene tells him that she will have to speak to her mentor before she can go any further, and he realizes that she is using this time to make a decision—to decide if she will help him. Nesryn walks over to the desk where Yrene had written and underlined things on a piece of paper, and it’s a list of four names—Yrene’s mother, grandmother and great grandmothers—that she had written down as a way to remember why she is doing this.

Yrene does report the information to Hafiza, but ultimately decides to help out with Chaol. That night, she returns to the palace for dinner, spending time with Hasar and Reina. Chaol is at the same dinner and realizes that Kashin has an interest in Yrene, as he keeps dropping and singing her praises, making Yrene uncomfortable, but that she had declined him. It doesn’t really take long for him to understand why she might not want to tie herself to the Royals here—the child that becomes the Khagan after the current one dies usually has his siblings sterilized and any children that are not his own killed, in order to consolidate power. Chaol realizes that Yrene had decided, and notices her watching him then shaking her head to not say anything about Nesryn. Nesryn had left earlier in the day to go speak with her aunt and uncle, and she had not yet returned to the palace, which had left him worried. Nesryn does return later that night—close to 3 am— and tells him that she had just lost track of time at her family’s house. He tells her that she should have sent him a messenger; that he was worried about her in a different country, different city and an unsafe one. She tells him that it’s her home country.

The next day, Yrene comes to visit Chaol and Nesryn leaves them alone to go visit family and take care of some invitations. Yrene starts with Chaol telling him that healing usually will require emotional healing as well, something that Chaol waves away telling her he just needs her to heal his body. She tries to touch the spot on his spine that looks a bit different than the rest of him, with her magic, and it is immediately repulsed and pushed back. She doesn’t know what it is, and asks Chaol about it, but he looks around pointedly at the area—they had told each other that the palace has eyes and ears—so she takes a eucalyptus oil and comes up to him, massaging his shoulders, neck and back while he uses her closeness to tell her about the Valg and the fight that is happening on their continent. He doesn’t tell her who gave her the killing blow, knowing that as a healer from Fenharrow, she most likely had her family killed on the orders of the previous king and it might be too much for her to handle. Yrene tells him that she will have to research it because she hadn’t come across this kind of magic before or this kind of magical malady before, and he tells her that he understands. She then leaves him in his room and heads back to the Torre, where she takes a shower and then relaxes in the Womb—a cavernous area full of natural hot baths. There, she relaxes and she sees the darkness again looking at her, with some memories of the army that is gathering at Morath. In it, something speaks to her that she should walk where she fears to have walked, and through the time that she spends there meditating, she realizes what she has to do. As she heads to leave the Womb, she hears another healer crying, and goes up to her, holds her hand while the healer cries and reveals that she could not save a three year old child, before telling Yrene that she wishes that she didn’t have this gift. This is something that Yrene never felt even when magic was gone, as it had helped her all these years from her home to Innish before she left for Antica.

Later that day, Chaol and Nesryn attend a dinner party with the court, and they find out that Sartaq—the prince who is in charge of the ruk, a giant eagle-like creature that carries them—usually goes to fly with his ruk, Kadara, at dawn. Nesryn has been wanting to speak to him to find out about his thoughts on supporting their friends in Adarlan and Terrasen. Chaol and she agree that she needs to be in that aerie the following dawn. Yrene, on the other hand, is in the library of the Torre, having asked the Head Librarian for information on a variety of maladies involving dark magic. The Librarian gets her several books, including a book in Eyllwe that depicts information about Valg Kings and the process in which they inhabit a human body, as well as a scroll full of Runes. She feels something strange in the library, and when she hears the scraping for the second time, she packs up the books with information on the Valg into her bag, before making her way towards the front of the library. She even pretends to be calling out to someone ahead, while being aware of the footsteps in the row over. Yrene then trips over the desiccated body of the healer that she spoke to in the Womb, and sees a couple of her own students, whom she ushers towards the door, telling them to walk faster. They make it to the librarian’s desk, where there is a Baast Cat, who gets up and starts hissing at whatever is in the darkness of the library. Yrene tells the librarian to sound the bell three times, and get everyone out, because there is something in the library and someone is already dead. The three rings go off, and healers get out of the library in surprise—it is rare to hear three rings of the bell as the Torre is generally safe but it had been installed over the years of conquest in order to give healers a chance to escape into the subterranean passages to safety, though those are now boarded up. Guards come up and sweep the library, finding the body, but they are not able to find anything else beyond the fact that whichever books Yrene had been reading are now gone.

The next morning, Nesryn is in the aerie at dawn, and talks to Sartaq. Sartaq tells her that there was an attack at the Torre in which a body was desiccated. Nesryn doesn’t tell him much at all, and they take off together on Kadara across the skies. She is awed by the view of the city and the land, and then is surprised at the monstrous slimy fish that Kadara catches in the lake. Sartaq tells her that the land is beautiful but monsters still lurk beneath the surface.

Chaol waits for Yrene to show up, but she is late, so he had done a bunch of exercises himself to keep up his strength. When she does finally show up, he notices that she does not look well. Yrene reveals to him that a healer had been killed and desiccated, which Chaol recalls is what the Valg had done to some Demi-fae in Wendlyn based on Aelin’s description. Yrene asks him for a favor—to come with her to the Tower the next day to teach a class about self-defense. She tells him that she is having a special saddle made for him that would allow him to ride even without the use of his legs, and he gets choked up, telling her that she better not be joking. She works on his back, and in the dark vision that whatever that remnant of magic had left in him, Chaol sees his memories of different things, but then he sees a light. When he comes out of that, both he and Yrene notice that he has started wiggling his toes, which she says is successful and good. She reveals, when asked, that she was prodding the darkness with her light magic, and then she heard him screaming, so she followed him into that darkness, and cleared it away. But she is completely bleeding through her nostrils over that, and so they take some time to sit on the bed that she was healing him on for the blood to stop. She ends up going home, stays for the vigil of her friend, and she is late to return to the palace the next day to help Chaol. She watches him struggle to get up onto the horse, getting some help from one of the soldiers, but tightly smiling or not smiling at him at all. Once he is in, Yrene goes up to him and helps him strap in the remainder of the saddle, before she is also given her own horse to ride back to the Torre.

After Nesryn’s and Sartaq’s return to the Palace, and after dinner, at the behest of Chaol, Nesryn goes out trying to figure out where the Valg is. She is close to the Torre when she encounters Sartaq behind her, and tells him enough about the Valg without revealing everything about the Wyrdkeys and the Wyrdgate. He starts helping her search the city for these, and says that it might be beneficial for him to head back to the Ruk tribes to find out if they have any knowledge about these Valgs. He also tells her that he will have his spies look for the Faliq family in Adarlan, Terrasen or any of the other countries and get them to safety—her family had gotten out of Rifthold safely, but Nesryn does not know where they are.

Chaol is happy to be on the horse, and enjoys the views of the city as they ride, even though Yrene is so jumpy atop her own horse. Once they arrive at the Torre, they come across a huge group of women in the courtyard who are there to learn how to fight back from him and Hafiza jokes that she was almost trampled this morning by the horde that wanted to see the handsome man. Without any warning, Yrene starts talking and teaching the young students about his injury, and gets them to help get him off the horse. As Chaol is coming down off the horse and finds himself on the ground with his feet under him, he seethes. They put him on the chair, and haphazardly put his feet onto the foot rests. As one of the students reaches to straighten his leg, he knows he is about to blow up, before Hafiza interrupts them and sends them scurrying away. She tells him that Yrene is teaching them because it’s not very often that such an injury comes to the Torre, and they may not see it for many, many months. He sees the understanding in Hafiza’s face, and then goes into teaching—giving the girls and even Hafiza true smiles. Yrene, however, gets nothing. On their way back to the palace, he also acts cold towards her, so once they get to the palace, Yrene asks him about it, and he blows up on her telling her that he had never once felt so vulnerable and naked as he did in that moment when the students were taking him down, and that she didn’t ask how he’d feel about it. Yrene goes storming off and runs into Kashin, with whom she talks but who she pushes away once again. Chaol does catch up with her, sarcastically telling her that she made good time, and added that he saw the face that Kashin made. She does confirm that she doesn’t want to be with him because of the cruelty of the Khaganate’s heirs, and that she also wants to return to Fenharrow and the coming war on their land.

They do another set of healing through her, and Chaol keeps facing the darkness—seeing the memory of when his father threw him out of his home in Anielle, when Chaol had told him he wants to be the Captain of the Guard. Then he sees a memory of a home in Fenharrow, and a woman asking a young girl what each herb is, what they do with gooseberry, and he realizes that there is so much love there. When he finally wakes from the healing, he can move his ankle on his feet. Yrene tells him that it’s been a long time since she remembered her mom or her mom’s voice, and then says that she knows who did this to him—the former King of Adarlan. He tells her that the King did try to stop the Valg though by cutting off access to magic and killing magic users because the Valg want magic users for their breeding. As they are coming back into the room, he notices the scroll and the books. Yrene tells him that these are runes and this is where she found the information on the Valg. He tells her that these are not runes, they’re wyrdmarks, and that he knows someone who can read them, but then tells her to hide every book around his room. She hides all the books, but struggles with the scroll because it is at least 800 years old and she doesn’t want to harm it. He loudly tells her to find his second pair of boots, and she goes into his closet, stuffs the scroll into his boots, and hides them further in the closet, loudly coming back telling him that she couldn’t find it. Yrene has also been sending Kadja, Chaol’s servant, out of the chambers telling her to find this or that type of ingredient for things that Chaol doesn’t really need.After her healing work with Chaol is finished along with his exercises, Yrene goes to Hasar’s room, where Hasar insinuates that she knows that Yrene wants to leave for Adarlan, and reminds her that she is the one that controls the ships on this continent. Yrene, realizing this, agrees to help her get information from Chaol at the dinner party in honor of the Sea goddess, Yrene tells her that she will wear the same dress she had the other day, but Hasar tells her that she already has it handled.

At some point, Yrene does enough healing that she is asleep for a day and a half, and Chaol, worrying about her, goes to the Torre only to be told by Hafiza that she is sleeping to regenerate her magic, and that it is totally normal. He escorts Hafiza and her two healers to a nearby house and then goes back to the palace by himself.

The day of the festival for the Sea Goddess, Chaol shows up at the Torre on his horse and a horse for Yrene, and together, they make their way through the city, visiting from client to client including seeing a woman with a baby, and a man sick with a rash that would not go away but slowly take him. Chaol wants to be on the horse, and Yrene helps him do some exercises, including having to rotate his hips and legs on the horse to bring back the feeling. They reach the palace, and Yrene goes to Hasar’s suite for a bath and to be dressed up. That night, they have dinner, but the Khagan and his wife are not present, preferring to be in mourning for Tulumun, their youngest daughter. So the party gets a bit rowdy—first Hasar kicks out Nesryn from the seat next to Chaol, and Sartaq offers Nesryn to sit next to him, while Hasar puts Yrene next to Chaol. Kashin is not happy about it. Then the servants bring in some smoking thing which Yrene tells Chaol contains opium. He offers Yrene to sit with him in a quiet alcove when he sees Kashin try to make a move for Yrene, and when Yrene accepts, Kashin shoots dagger eyes at him. Together, they sit in the alcove, and both get a bit high on the opium in the smoke. As a result, Yrene tells Chaol that she wants to make it to Fenharrow to the war, and that she had been sent by Hasar who controls the ships to ask him about where Aelin is. Of course, they use coded words, but she tells him to just give her a name of a location. Chaol, figuring that Aelin would never make it there because of her prior history with Captain Rolfe, tells her that Aelin is in Skull’s Bay. Yrene reports that to Hasar and then leaves. Chaol, Nesryn, and Sartaq walk to their room together, and Nesryn and Chaol spend the night in his bed talking—with her telling him about the time she spent with her family in Antica. Chaol doesn’t tell her about his toes and his ability to move them. They fall asleep like this, and the next morning Yrene barges in, ignoring Kadja and giving her an order to find some more ingredients. She finds the two of them sleeping, and thinks that they had something going on during the night. Nesryn leaves the room to her own, and Chaol comes up to Yrene telling her that he didn’t expect her to be over that early. He tells her that nothing had happened, and then they do some exercises with his feet.

Later that day, Yrene and Chaol spend time in the Torre Library, having asked the Head Librarian where she had found the scrolls and the information on Eyllwe. They look through the information in the library, and then they get fed by the Cook in the kitchen. Both Yrene and Hafiza implore him to stay the night, and he agrees to do so after sending a message to Nesryn, telling her that he will not be back that night. He stays the night at the compound near the tower, usually meant for family members of the sick. He tells Yrene that he has it under control.

In the meantime, Nesryn had left after waking up to go to the aerie—she had agreed to think through things with Chaol before making any decisions about going with Sartaq to his ruk army. But at the aerie, she finds Sartaq already packing to leave. He tells her that he’s leaving in an hour, and on a whim she decides to go with him, after realizing that Chaol feels guilty for the distance he’s put between them, leaving a note for Chaol that she left with Sartaq and will be gone for three weeks, and that she’s not holding him or herself to any promises that had been made. Then she gets onto the Ruk with Sartaq, and they fly out across the continent towards the mountains. They spend the night camping on a high ledge on the mountains, and they talk about legends or stories that they hear about themselves. Nesryn tells him that she doesn’t think she has one, but he tells her that she does— she is known as Neith’s Arrow for her ability with archery and not missing a shot.

Chaol returns to the palace the next day, and is in a foul mood when he realizes that the reason his letter was not read by Nesryn because she had left, and that while she does not hold him to any promises—he does hold himself to those promises. Yrene shows up and they get into an argument about his foul mood when he tells her to get out. She later finds out that Nesryn had left with Sartaq, which explains his mood. After healing some of the people in the slums, she returns to the Palace with the intention to yell at Chaol—something he has been waiting to happen all day—when she senses that someone is following her, with her mother’s voice telling her to run. She rounds the corner, gets into Chaol’s rooms, locks the door with the two locks, while telling Chaol to get into his bedroom, and then the two of them go into his room. There he coaches her on how to barricade them inside the room, as well as how to hold onto the dagger. He tells her that he will hold off whatever it is that is coming for her to give her time to run. The thing bursts into the sitting area of the rooms Chaol shares with Nesryn, and comes towards the door of his bedroom, calling her name. They talk, specifically Chaol talks Yrene through the fear of killing, and reveals that he hadn’t killed until Yulemas. Things go silent, and suddenly soldiers burst into the rooms, though Chaol tells them that he wants to speak with Kashin. Kashin comes over and Yrene tells him what has happened, describing her feelings as well as the sound of the creature—which Chaol is certain is Valg—and when Kashin offers to escort her to the Torre armed, she tells him that she feels safer staying with Chaol. This makes Chaol feel pride, and when Kashin leaves, ordering his men to be in the room for protection while he hunts, Chaol tells Yrene that she can sleep on the bed—the sheets having been changed recently—and that he will sleep or stay awake in the chair. He dozes off, but then at sunrise, he wakes up and makes his way to the barracks in the chair, where he meets with the second in command of the Guard, and the man—Hashim—works with him to sharpen his fighting skills. And Chaol keeps showing up day after day for more.

Part Two

Nesryn and Sartaq make their way to the Eridun aerie, where they are welcomed by his Rukhin clan, including Sartaq’s hearth-sister, Borte. They find out that his hearth-mother, Houlun, is not there, having flown off to wherever the wind takes her, but there is a man from Adarlan who has come to them, and Borte does not know why. They spend a couple of days there where Nesryn shows them how she is able to shoot nine arrows perfectly into the same spots on the dummies, despite the different winds, and she teaches them how to shoot, while the Rukhin teach her how to fight. Sartaq also takes her around, showing her the aeries not only in their side of the peeks but the other two in the sister peaks. They talk also about the fourth peak in the mountains, which is where the sulde—the spears that they carry and make themselves—stand after a person has died, including Borte’s mother, who had died and that is why she is being raised by her grandmother. When Houlun finally returns, she speaks with the trader—the merchant, who tells them that he had purchased spidersilk from the Stygian spiders in the Northern Continent and had lost his years as a result, but that he had come here now to try to find out more about them and to see how he could kill them. Houlun tells them that hatchlings of the ruks had disappeared and it seems like they may be related to the Kharankui—the local word for the Stygian Spiders. She tells Sartaq that they will be heading out after these spiders to figure out what they’re doing with these hatchlings and to protect them. When they send the man away, Falkan Ennar is his name, Houlun, Nesryn and Sartaq talk about the Valg, and Houlun tells them that she will have to go into the library as she is their Story Keeper, but tells them to tell everyone that there is a storm coming. They go ahead and do that, and later that evening, they spend some time listening to Houlun’s story while the storm rages. It doesn’t give Nesryn much more information beyond what she had already known, but it does seem strange to her that these Stygian spiders had been found here and that the fae had likewise seemed to have made their way here. Sartaq asks Houlun how they could defeat them, and Houlun tells him to ask Nesryn about defeating the Valg. Nesryn isn’t willing to share about the Wyrdkeys or the Wyrdgates, but tells them a bit of her experience in killing them; that they would have to be beheaded because the chances of saving the human is low. Houlun suggests that they check out the nearby fae tower, about half a day’s flight from them.

So Sartaq and Nesryn head over to the tower—a set of ruins, and they carefully go through the traps in the staircase leading down, triggering them. They find their way to a cavern at the bottom of the tower, which has clearly seen better days and appears to be a torture chamber of some sort. Nesryn and Sartaq pick up some of the fae blades that they find there, and then go looking closer at the words writing in old fae, which neither of them know what it means. A different voice answers that it means to look up, and then they realize that the Stygian spider is above them—something that the spider tells them that the fae had forgot. They run through the stairs all the way up to the outside, trying to get away, when a large wolf comes to their aid, taking on the spider along with Kadara, Sartaq’s ruk. They learn that Falkan is a shifter, and Sartaq is upset about it at first, thinking him an assassin, but Nesryn does everything she can to save him, before he passes out. They fly back to the aerie, where they are met by their clan, and Houlun quickly has Falkan tended to, while she argues with Sartaq in a corner. Borte on the other hand takes on Nesryn, demanding to know what is going on. Nesryn tells her the truth, and Sartaq is none to happy about it when he finds out. He tells Nesryn that they will wait until Falkan is better before they head out to see the remaining towers, and that he will be flying with Falkan, while she flies with Borte. It takes ten days for Falkan to heal, and so Nesryn decides to extend her time with the Rukhin to continue learning and searching, but also because she had found peace here.

Chaol in the interim continues to be healed by Yrene, working with her. He continues training his body with the men in the courtyard, and they can tell that he is getting better. At a dinner, Hasar makes a pointed jab at Chaol, telling him that Nesryn is coming back soon, but he replies that she had asked for an additional three weeks at the Rukhin camps. News comes out during the same dinner that Aelin Galathynius had been in Skulls Bay—a location that Chaol had lied about—and that she had actually sent a message to everyone, her fire taking out the whole of the Valg fleet that had been located nearby. It is a targeted attack between Hasar and Arghun, the princess and the prince, and Chaol is left frustrated that he doesn’t have this news or knowledge of where they are, except that he is relieved to learn that Dorian Havillard is alive and well. Later that night, Kashin comes by his room, sneaking in, and tells Chaol that there is a piece of information that his siblings had kept from Chaol—Rolfe had ordered firelances from the Khaganate before Aelin’s fight, and put in a larger order after the battle. This has Chaol’s wheels turning, and he comes up with a plan, which takes him to a meeting with the Khagan and some of his Viziers, specifically the foreign trade one. He asks the Vizier of Foreign Trade, telling the Khagan that he’s here to meet with the Vizier not with him, to tell him what is the price of the fire lances. Then he asks to double the order, and tells them that he’s has four chests of gold and jewelry that are being weighted right now in order to pay for it. The Khagan tells his viziers to get out, and faces Chaol, where Chaol tries to get off the chair to beg him to join the battle, only to be forced to be wheeled out by Shen and for the Khagan to tell his soldiers to never let Chaol back into any of his meetings.

In anger, Chaol lashes out at Yrene when she comes to visit him, and both of them say hateful words to one another. He feels so guilty about it, because he has lost his friends already, and wanting to get to Yrene to beg forgiveness, he ends up taking several steps towards her. It is only a little later that he realizes that she had baited him in the end. Yrene has felt hurt at some of the words, but also she knew that Chaol had been spoiling for a fight and that it might help him stand up, as she had been healing his legs for a while now. Chaol starts walking with a cane, and they spend time together around the city, including at the Torre, and she also takes him out to a dinner place that she enjoys. There, she tells him that after that dinner where Hasar and Arghun had cornered him, she had figured out a way to get them to the Oasis that they wanted to check out—something that the Librarian at the Torre had told them contained the scrolls with the wyrdmarks when they had asked about it. They hadn’t figured out how to get an invite there until then, because it’s a royal location, and to do so, they need to go with the royal invitation. She tells him that it’s her birthday coming up and she had manipulated Hasar into hosting a birthday party for Yrene at the location. When the time arrives for them to head over there, Chaol is given a Muniqi horse—similar to an Asterion horse—called Farasha, meaning butterfly. But the horse is not an easy one to handle, which isn’t great for his back, but at the same time he wasn’t going to start complaining about it. They ride through the dunes, and when there is nothing but flat sand between the last dune and the oasis where they are supposed to get to, Yrene and Chaol race on their horses, with the prize being a kiss whenever the winner chooses. Yrene laughs in pure joy when she makes her way across the dunes, which Chaol loves the sound of.

At the Oasis, she takes some time to heal him, and then they wander around, finding the ruins of the temple or building that had once stood there. As they tear away the vines that had taken over the area—which Hasar had claimed is a city of dead—they realize that these are fae; that the fae had come to this land and lived here, being the source of the healers magic. Chaol explains that this is what he had seen with some fae lines where they were bred in order to contain the magic, and that Doranelle is known for their healers, who are also known for fighting. They decide to race back to the palace the next morning to speak with Hafiza about her knowledge of the origins of the healer. But that night, they choose to spend it with the Royals and their court. At some point, Hasar makes enough jabs at Chaol’s friends in the Northern Continent, that Chaol and Yrene choose to leave, until Hasar makes a comment about a chair, that has Yrene pushing her off her chair and into the water. Yrene knows that she’s a dead woman, until Reina and Kashin start laughing at Hasar, who gets out of the water and tells Yrene that she’s finally grown a backbone. Chaol and Yrene spend the night at her tent, after he gives her a locket big enough to hold the thing that Yrene has been moving from clothing to clothing. She reveals what it says to him and that it was written by a girl, perhaps a god, who had come to her in Innish, fended off men, and taught her how to fight, before leaving her the bag of gold and a brooch that Yrene had never sold. She puts the paper into the locket.

The next morning, Chaol and Yrene race all the way to the palace, where they find their room destroyed—all of the books that they had hidden in the room had disappeared, but luckily one book and the scroll in Wyrdmarks have been saved. After Yrene heals him from the pain of riding, she goes looking for Hafiza in the tower. When she finds her, she tells her what they had discovered and shows her the scroll. Hafiza in turn tells her a story that the Healer on High had once told her about fae being the source of the tower and the legacy here—but it was something she had dismissed. Hafiza shows her the books in the Iron cabinet in her workroom, telling her that her previous mentor had told Hafiza that these are not books for human eyes, and to keep them guarded like this, which Hafiza has done. Yrene recognizes the Wyrdmarks, and asks Hafiza to give the books to her so that they could take them to Aelin, who would be the one who knows how to read them. Hafiza tells her that she will think on it. Yrene decides she needs time to think, and heads down to the Womb, where she follows the sound of her bell around the womb, until she finds the bell of her ancestor and comes to a conclusion—she has to look inside herself for the solution to Chaol’s problem.

Chaol wakes up the next morning, barely able to move. Yrene comes to him, and hisses when he tells her that he had used warm water to try to remove the soreness, telling him that ice is what needs to bring down the soreness. She tells him that she is going to end the whole thing today, and not giving him much warning, she attacks the spot; the darkness. He passes out from the pain, and faces that darkness inside him—the promises he made, and the ones that he broke to Aelin, and Nesryn, and realizes that they had not broken them to him, but that they had realized long before he did that they had changed and were going on separate paths. He also realizes that he had made a promise to Dorian that he had not yet broken, and he begins healing, walking the path towards the light with Yrene. When he wakes up, he finds himself in the sunlight of the room, and realizes that his legs are working again. Yrene later reveals to him that she realized that the Valg is a parasite—that it feeds on things inside them—just like the anger and the hatred that she had held onto against Adarlan all these years is a parasite, and she figured that if she attacked the darkness, then it would go towards him, away from her, and force him to face the darkness himself. Chaol feels light, elated that he is now able to walk again.

In the interim, Nesryn, Sartaq, Borte and Falkan had made their way to the three remaining towers, finding absolutely nothing. At one point, a group of Rukhin show up including, Yeran, who is Borte’s betrothed. He reveals to them that hatchlings had gone missing and they are searching for them, with Sartaq telling him that he needs to keep an eye out and stay safe—let everyone know in his clan to keep kids and the hatchlings close by at night because of the Kharankui being more active. Once they are gone, Nesryn tells them that it’s time to do a different plan. They look at maps of the Dalgun Falls, and make a plan; however, only Sartaq, Nesryn and Falkan will be going to do this plan—four days, one day to scout, one day to look around, one day to get back and then come home. If they aren’t back in four days, a host of Rukhin will be going for them. So Sartaq and Nesryn fly on Kadara with Falkan as a field mouse in Nesryn’s pocket. They see a hatching in between two peaks and race towards it, belatedly realizing that there is a net there—a trap. Even though Nesryn and Sartaq are hurt—Sartaq having taken on the brunt of the damage—they free Kadara, and Sartaq yells at her to leave. Then they watch as the hatching is killed by the Stygian Spiders. They make their way down the pass, down the shales, until Sartaq gets stuck in a portion that is too narrow. He tells Nesryn to run, and that he loves her, that he wished they had more time, and then he’s gone—taken by a Stygian spider. Nesryn makes her way out of the pass, and realizes that the Stygian spiders hadn’t said anything about killing him, but rather about leaving him until later, so she comes up with a plan requiring Falkan’s assistance. She purposefully gets captured by the Stygian Spiders, and finds herself in the same cavelike structure as Sartaq. Falkan begins to work on chewing his way through the netting, as a spider arrives, and Nesryn asks her for a story about who they are where they come from. The Spider tells her about the three Valg Kings, and about the Valg Queen who had fallen in love with one of the Valg kings, Orcus. She had then made her way through the portal, the gates to this land with her own foot soldiers, the Stygian Spiders, and made them guard this land while she went to a different land, ripping into the minds of the Fae, and made them believe that she was the third sister—Maeve—when in reality there were only two sister queens of the fae. The spider tells them that she is waiting for Maeve to return for her, to come back and call for them, because she had banished two of the three kings as she did not want to return to that world, and fire would only be the one that hurts her. The spider gets sent away by a second spider who tells her that there is a group of ruk coming, and then that new spider cuts Sartaq out, revealing that he is Falkan.

The two of them start heading out and running, when they are surrounded by the spiders. Nesryn uses fire, having been told that the Valg hate fire and are afraid of it, on her arrows and shoots them at the spiders. Falkan asks her for a favor—telling Nesryn that he was seven when his brother fathered a girl in Rifthold, but that when he found the mother years later, she told him she threw the girl out and he hadn’t been able to find her since, and asks her to find his niece and tell her that his riches are hers. Nesryn is about to say something, when he launches himself attacking the spiders, and then suddenly a contingent of ruks lead by Borte and Yeran shows up, killing the spiders and setting fire to the whole place, while grabbing Falkan and taking him back to the hearth. Of course, Houlun is pissed, but they take care of Falkan as he shifts back into his human form, and then a debate rages about what to do once Sartaq and Nesryn tell them what the had learned. He gives them time to come up with a decision, and Nesryn speaks with Falkan telling him about Lysandra. As Nesryn and Sartaq are on their way back to the meeting space, Nesryn receives a messenger—a message from Chaol imploring her to come back now. She asks Sartaq how fast they can ride, sensing that this is not Chaol’s usual request.

Chaol and Yrene spend a leisurely morning and lunch, where he tells her more about Aelin and Celaena. As they talk about how Aelin healed Dorian of the Valg, they realize that the ring that she had placed on him was not made by Mala but by Silba. They realize that they will have to go to Hafiza to speak with her again, even if she doesn’t give them the books, so they make their way to the tower, where everyone keeps telling them that Hafiza is in her workroom, but Yrene knows for a fact that she isn’t there because she had just checked it. They go around checking everywhere she could be, but they don’t find Hafiza, until Chaol asks for hidden passages. Yrene remembers there being passages under the towers, and they make their way to the library, where Yrene asks the Librarian about it—telling her about Hafiza, and asking her not to ring the bell. They follow the Librarian’s instructions, finding their way through a hallway into a cavernous, golden space—and Hafiza is on a golden chair. In front of her is none other than Duva.

The Valg inside Duva reveals that it had been a ring encased in silver that had been given to Duva as a wedding gift from Perrington, and that Hasar had wanted it but that Duva beat her to it, and used that as her wedding ring when she married. She tells Yrene that she had been sent by Erawan because he had heard there was a healer gifted enough, and that she had somehow made it away from the butchering blocks across the northern continent, where he had purposefully killed the healers so they wouldn’t be a threat to him. The Valg had tried to scare Yrene off from healing Chaol, but she just wouldn’t do it, and when she did heal him, she showed the Valg that she was indeed the healer that Erawan was worried about. She also reveals that she was the one that had killed Tumelun. A fight breaks out, and Chaol throws himself in front of the magic of the Valg inside Duva, which once again fractures his back and brings him close to death. Yrene manages to knock out Duva long enough to bring a blade to her, only for Hafiza to show up, breathe on her and put her into a prolong sleep. Sartaq and Nesryn arrive, and Sartaq is grateful that Yrene hadn’t hurt Duva—he had caught enough of the conversation to know that Duva is infected. Yrene cries and tries to heal Chaol, because he is dying and her magic can sense it, but the damage to him is too great, and she hears the Other speak to her about a price and offering to help heal her. Yrene tells the Other that yes, she will take it, and when the Other asks about him being from Adarlan, Yrene tells the Other that it makes no difference. And so a line of healers comes up behind her, helping her heal Chaol from death. When he wakes, Hafiza reveals that their lives are now intertwined—two threads that are now one, and if one dies, so does the other—that was the price that had to be paid. She also tells them that Yrene’s magic will support his legs and back for him to be able to walk, but that when she weakens or tires, he may need a cane or a chair, because the damage was too great and this is the balance of the world. Chaol tells Yrene that he’s fine with this—that a cane or a chair does not make him any less of a man. Chaol and Nesryn also look at each other and come to an acceptance.

The group takes Duva to the Khagan and the remaining princes and princesses, and Yrene begins to heal Duva of the Valg, fighting the complete darkness out of her. Chaol had been at Yrene’s back, but then he moved into his chair, when he felt her magic waver, and felt himself weaken. Yrene heals Duva, and checks on the baby, which is just fine and safe. Everyone rejoices, and the Khagan tells her he will do anything for her saving his child. She, in return, asks him for a favor.

That evening, Sartaq, Nesryn, Chaol and Duva sit in Chaol’s room, and reveal that they knew where they were because Kadja, the servant, had seen Duva sneaking into the hallways—she is on Sartaq’s payroll, and probably will get an earful from Arghun about not telling him. The two groups reveal what they had each found, and put everything together. Hasar arrives with more news—Aelin had battled Maeve and had won, with the ragtag armada that she had made, including the fact that the Whitetorn banner had turned on their own army, and the Silent Assassins had arrived to help out. When all is said and done Nesryn heads up to Kadara’s aerie, and a messenger hunts her down with a letter from her uncle dated two weeks ago. She rushes all the way up to the aerie, and gets onto her own ruk—one that had stayed at the hearth even after having lost his own rider, and accepted her—and flies all the way to her family’s quarter. There, she sees her father, sister and her nieces and nephews safely, with her father telling her that he is staying here until it is safe. When she heads out, she finds Sartaq with Kadara in the courtyard as well, and Sartaq and her father meet and talk, with Sartaq telling him that he’s glad that they made it safely. Nesryn and Sartaq then take a walk around the street, and he tells her that he wants to be by her side. In horror, she tells him not to because he is in the running for the Khaganate, but Sartaq tells her that he and his father had a conversation earlier that day and that he had told his father that he is willing to walk away from being Heir if he could be with Nesryn. As a result, his father had made him Heir.

Chaol and Yrene are on the ship making their way to the northern continent, north to Terrasen, and he talks with Yrene, who now is his wife. As they converse, she shows him the piece of paper that she had been keeping in the locket and all this time, telling him that she can now let it go. He looks at it, and recognizes the handwriting—Aelin had been the person who saved her life back in Innish, and given her the money to make it across the ocean. He puts the information that Yrene had told him about the woman and the information that Aelin had told him about her trip to the Silent Assassins, and realizes with certainty that it was her, and that he is exactly where he has been meant to be. A little bit more of that darkness within him disappears, weight lifted, and he tells Yrene to hold onto it, because someone might be more than happy to see that piece of paper. Yrene asks him to tell him what had warranted such a reaction, and he tells her that he will tell her over lunch. They have half the forces—the armada from the Khagan and Hasar, as well as half of Sartaq’s Rukhin with them heading towards Terrasen, with the remainder to follow within two weeks—this has been Yrene’s request to the Khagan as a favor, to save her people.

My Thoughts:

When I read this book the very first time, I wasn’t really a fan of it, and I honestly do not recall why I did not like it as much as the other books in the series; however, on this particular re-read, I fell in love with the characters, and the story. I think that the themes in this book were something else, and very relevant to today, especially because Chaol was struggling in the darkness, but not willing to come face to face with that darkness within him, born of fear, anger, frustration, guilt and so much more. And I found it refreshing that the portions of the book were a bit of a metaphor for him getting help to heal, but that sometimes being forced to face those feelings and the why behind them, coming to accept them as well and realizing that you could have done a lot better—coming face to face with the reality that it was something you had control over all along—is the best way to heal and become whole. I also loved the development of Nesryn as a character, who realized that she had come home, to a continent where she felt accepted and welcomed, and even cherished. She’s strong, but also she is very much a nod to a lot of people who may have been born in a particular country to immigrant parents, and never truly felt “home” in that country until they returned to their parent’s homeland, and realized that this country had been the home they were looking for, where they belong. I do wish it went deeper into her feelings and conflict around being born in Adarlan to a father who refused to move them back to his homeland after the start of the King of Adarlan taking over everything, because I feel like there is so much more that could have been explored here beyond just the bullying that she had survived. Really enjoyed this book though and I look forward to seeing how the characters work together with everyone else in the next book in the series, and how they come together with the main group in Terrasen.