A Crown of Midnight

She is the greatest assassin her world has ever known.
But where will her conscience, and her heart, lead her?

After a year of hard labor in the Salt Mines of Endovier, eighteen-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien has won the king’s contest to become the new royal assassin.  Yet Celaena is far from loyal to the crown – a secret she hides from even her most intimate confidantes. Keeping up the deadly charade – while pretending to do the king’s bidding – will test her in frightening new ways, especially when she’s given a task that could jeopardize everything she’s come to care for.  And there are far more dangerous forces gathering on the horizon – forces that threaten to destroy her entire world, and will surely force Celaena to make a choice.  Where do the assassin’s loyalties lie, and who is she willing to fight for?

Trigger Warning: Grief, Murder, Blood, Death, Sexual content, Slavery, and Violence

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My Thoughts

Grief, anger, distrust, betrayal, love, and pure hatred. Welcome to A Crown of Midnight.

This book was filled with revelations and hints for the rest of the series…or so I assume. There was just so much information in A Crown of Midnight that did not have resolution, that I can only assume that Sarah J Maas is setting the stage for the rest of this series. It was almost an information overload.

There’s all things Wyrd – wyrdmarks, wyrdgates, and wyrdkeys. There’s a rebel movement to find Aelin Galathynius, the lost heir of Terrasen. We get to meet more assassins, find secret passageways, get involved in so much more scheming and shenanigans and significant world building, specifically with the City of Rifthold.

This book is from three points of view –  Celaena, Chaol and Dorian (love this because it really broadens our view of what’s happening but also allows surprise to the reader as we learn things others have been doing without us).  We also meet new characters and get a lot more insight into magic and how it was taken from those in Adarlan (I can’t wait to learn even more!).

Our honorable mentions are the King of Adarlan (Still a dick) who continues to manipulate, control, and have his people murdered, Kaltain (I think I feel bad for her now) who is clearly being used and has to marry Duke Pennington (Yuck!), and Archer who the King wants Celaena to kill but was a friend of Celaena’s growing up (all I can say to Archer is you fucked around and found out buddy).

Princess Nemehia, it turns out, is a real friend to Celaena (I should stop being so suspicious). She wants Celaena to be better and does everything (and I mean everything – if you know you know) to get her to stand up and start making change. There is an “event” (at least that’s what I’ll call it) about half way through the book that is not only a shocker but is definitely the turning point of shit hitting the fan.

Now for our favorite trio…

Chaol – This guy! I really want to like Chaol (I swear I do) but for some reason I just can’t get invested in him. I’m like can he be sacrificed to save everyone? He seems to love Celaena and he clearly considers Dorian to be like a brother to him but as he discovers things about both of them he clearly can’t accept them for who they are. He’s still too much of a yes man to the King (Grow a pair Chaol! You know what the King is doing and trying to ignore it just makes you complicit). He just annoys me.

“I’ll come back,” she said quietly. “I’ll come back for you.” And he knew that there was more that she wasn’t saying, some bigger meaning behind those words. But Dorian still believed her.”

Dorian – Yes he is a bit spoiled and sheltered but how can you not love Dorian? He’s compassionate and caring and turning into such a great friend to Celaena. Dorian starts to learn more about some of his abilities in this book and I feel bad for him because he’s isolated for so long (He needs you Chaol!).

“If they wanted Adarlan’s Assassin, they’d get her. And Wyrd help them when she arrived.”

Celaena – our lovely badass assassin. Celaena is now the King’s Assassin buuuutttttt she’s got her own agenda and that does not include doing the King’s dirty work. The first part of the book takes us on a journey with Celaena as she tries to find ways to destroy the King, falls in love, develops deeper friendships, and learns about portals and Wyrds. And then SMACK, the shit hits the fan (aka the Event) and we are left gutted (other’s are left gutted as well) by a horrendous event that catapults Celaena into her descent into an abyss of pain, heartbreak, murder, hate, and vengeance that it does not seem she can recover from.

And this is where it all really begins…

A Crown of Midnight separates our trio which lets the story expand, shifts alliances, and test loyalties. Have you ever heard the expression “this is the beginning of the end”? Well I believe this is the book that will change everything for this series. 

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Favorite Book Quotes

“I worry because I care. Gods help me, I know I shouldn’t, but I do. So, I will always tell you to be careful, because I will always care what happens.”

“Why are you crying?”
“Because,” she whispered, her voice shaking, “you remind me of what the world ought to be. What the world can be.”

“The best lies were always mixed with truth.”

“The rest of the world quieted into nothing. In that moment, after ten long years, Celaena looked at Chaol and realized she was home.”

“It’s never made any difference to me when it came to you. I’d still pick you. I’ll always pick you.”

“But death was her curse and her gift, and death had been her good friend these long, long years.”

“Some things you hear with your ears. Others, you hear with your heart.”

“Who said anything about shame?” She gestured down to her naked body, even though it was covered by the blanket. “Honestly, I’m surprised you’re not strutting about, boasting to everyone. I certainly would be if I’d tumbled me.
“Does your love for yourself know no bounds?”
“Absolutely none.”

“Then Celaena and the King of Adarlan smiled at each other, and it was the most terrifying thing Dorian had ever seen.”

“I don’t think you realize who you’re dealing with.”

“Celaena Sardothien wasn’t in league with Aelin Ashryver Galathynius.
Celaena Sardothien was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, heir to the throne and rightful Queen of Terrasen.”

“It was like coming home or being born or suddenly finding an entire half of herself that had been missing.”

“If they wanted Adarlan’s Assassin, they’d get her. And Wyrd help them when she arrived.”

“Enough! We have enough enemies as it is! There are worse things out there to face!”
Celaena slowly turned to him, her face splattered with blood and eyes blazing bright. “No, there aren’t,” she said. “Because I’m here now.”

“To escape death, she’d become death.”

“So, Dorian closed his eyes, and took another long breath. And when he opened his eyes, he let her go.”

“In every way that counted, I failed him.”

“She won’t understand. And when she goes over the edge, there will be nothing to pull her back.
“She will find her way back. She always does.”

“Ashryver Eyes
The fairest eyes, from legends old
Of brightest blue, ringed with gold”

“He’d loved her so much that she still felt the echoes of it, even now.”

“Let them tremble in fear at what they had awoken.”

“I can’t tell if I should be ashamed of wanting to hold you on this day, or grateful that, despite what happened before now, it somehow brought me to you.”

“Hide from fate all you like,” Baba Yellowlegs said as they turned away. “But it shall soon find you!”

“Perhaps the world would never be perfect, perhaps some things would never be right, but maybe she stood a chance of finding her own sort of peace and freedom.”

“I’ll come back,” she said quietly. “I’ll come back for you.” And he knew that there was more that she wasn’t saying, some bigger meaning behind those words.
But Dorian still believed her.”

“There was a time when people valued honor and loyalty — when serving a ruler wasn’t about obedience and fear.”

“What’s the point in having a mind if you don’t use it to make judgements?”

“You were right. I am a coward. And I have been running for so long that I’ve forgotten what it is to stand and fight.”

“From now on, there would be no other oaths but this, no other contracts, no other obligations. Never forgive, never forget.”

“It was as if her heart was too full of the dead, too full of those lives that had ended well before their time.”

“If they let you out,” Kaltain said, both of them staring into the blackness of their prisons, “make sure that they’re punished someday. Every last one of them.”
Celaena listened to her own breathing, felt Chaol’s blood under her nails, and the blood of all those men she’d hacked down, and the coldness of Nehemia’s room, where all that gore had soaked the bed.
“They will be,” Celaena swore to the darkness.
She had nothing left to five, except that.”

When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a terrifying creature arrives to demand retribution. Dragged to a treacherous magical land she knows about only from legends, Feyre discovers that her captor is not truly a beast, but one of the lethal, immortal faeries who once ruled her world.

At least, he’s not a beast all the time.

As she adapts to her new home, her feelings for the faerie, Tamlin, transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie she’s been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But something is not right in the faerie lands. An ancient, wicked shadow is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it, or doom Tamlin – and his world – forever.