Book Review: Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas

Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas

Okay, so this is going to sound like rambling nonsense because it all jumbled together for me in my head, and im having mixed feelings about whether I liked it or not. Haha!

In the first book, Throne of Glass, Celaena, aka Adarlan’s Assassin, has to compete in a competition for the king of Adarlan, who stripped the land of all magic ten years ago. Now that she won and is the king’s champion, Celaena works for and kills whoever he commands her to, except she is secretly not at all following his rules. This book was much better than the first in that it has more action, emotion and magic. Yep magic! There are mentions of the lost princess of a neighboring country called Terrasen where the king murdered all of the royal family, but rumor has it that she is still out there! OOoooOO!! Lol. Also Dorian, the king’s son has been experiencing…..things….*Cough* Magic *Cough* anyway things, as you can imagine, get sticky for Celaena and her friends as one of her closer dies and she has to figure out who she can trust now that her ally is gone. And the whole book leads up to Chaol learning a certain bit of valuable and coincidental information and you see it coming all along but that part in the ending was the best!

Recommended age:

15+

On to the ratings!

Stars..

0 = None 10 = Tons

THE FEELS:

There were moments when I felt the feels, like when Celaena sings a song in mourning the loss of her friend.

5.5/10

Violence:

Celaena brutally murders more than ten people in this book. She flies off and has very little self-control and goes on killing sprees that aren’t even apart of her orders from the king. She kills people and beasts and beheadings occur. Talk of blood and flesh being exposed and leaking from wounds are mentioned.

8/10

Sexual content:

Celaena and one of the men she is close to have a sexual relationship. Mentions of her first time and the experience are present, and although realistic they are a little too much for readers under 13 for sure.

7/10

Crude language:

There are quite a bit of minor curse words used throughout the book. Such as “hell” and “damn”

6.5/10

Other elements/comments:

Celaena gives in to her dark side a lot. She won’t kill for the king but for herself and that’s just insane. She finds pleasure in killing, it is what she is good at and something she doesn’t see as wrong. She seems to have no moral center or remorse for what she does and that is disturbing. Please keep in mind that this is not real and such actions are NOT acceptable in any way!!!!!

Overall:

Overall it was interesting to see how the story unfolded and some parts were clever but I do think that the story is dragging on purposelessly. Maas plays off of too many other stories and it’s really obvious too that she has taken elements from other stories and slipped them into her own. I found that highly annoying and found myself rolling my eyes at things like the green flames, use of the phrase “dear heart” or “stone table” (just to name a few) which are all connected to The Chronicles of Narnia. Or things like named swords and a creature that was described exactly as Gollum from The Lord of the Rings.

6/10

Xoxo

- Sarah