'Kingdom of Ash' Spoiler Free Review
This book had SOOOOO many characters in but they were all handled well and given enough 'page time.' Much like Marvel's 'Infinity War,' no character felt useless or out of place, and I cared about all of them. Although I was thankful for the wiki, seen as I struggled to remember some of them, this is not a criticism seen as it has been two years since I read the last main series book.
The beginning of the book was handled well too with the characters being separated into four main storylines which converged as the book went on. There's Rowan and Aelin's, Lysandra and Aeidion's, Manon and Dorian's and Chaol and Yrene's, although for some reason it took a while for their story to begin in this book. Maybe I was just eager for more of them after Tower of Dawn? There was no one storyline that was better than the others; I enjoyed reading them all equally.
Sarah has also gotten so much better at writing war scenes since ACOWAR. I primarily consider that to be one of her worst books because of that reason but in this, the war felt very real even despite the magic. There were some very real and tragic deaths in this book, although weirdly not as many as I predicted. Parts of this book had me crying which is always a good sign to me that a book is excellent.
The sex in this book also was not very overpowering. I know that TOG was never really the series that was bad for this anyway, but it is worth mentioning that I never felt the need to skip over any of the sex scenes as I have with some of Sarah's other books as they weren't persistent in this one. I love how much this series has matured as it has gone along and this book, in particular, was VERY adult. We see characters tortured in this book in a way that is brutal but terrifically described. We look at the effects on Dorian after the previous book almost giving him a kind of PTSD, and one of the characters even contemplates suicide.
There is always room for improvement though, and as always I do have a few things the book could have done better. Firstly, the pacing was off significantly, particularly at the start of the book. As I said earlier, the book follows different groups of characters and there time's seemed to be off for one another. At first I thought this was going to be a plot device and that it would all line up at the end but it didn't, for example, Chaol could be fighting a battle in one chapter then in the next few we spend a week with Aelin and then when we come back to Chaol only the night has passed. This was done to create suspense but the pacing was all over the place. I also felt as though some of the storylines were very similar. I won't be going into spoilers in this review, but although all the characters got an arc, some of the arcs were identical. Also, one thing that bothered me personally was that there was a recap of ToD that was only in there for the people who couldn't be bothered to read it. It was like a two page summary of that book which I just skipped. If you wanted to know what happened to Chaol, you should have read that book, not this one!
These criticisms though are just a drop in the bucket compared to the awesomeness that was this book. I would recommend this book to anyone who's a fan of the series, but if you've read this far then, you'll probably love it anyway. I know I am going to re-read this series again, but I could not give this anything less than a five-star rating. The best book of the year by far!
Also, I posted this to Twitter and felt as if I should post it here too:
So I just finished Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J Maas, and I felt like I should say a few words. This post isn’t going to be a review, although that will certainly be coming soon. Throne of Glass is a series that has had so much of an impact on my life that it is impossible to put it all into words. It was the series that got me back into reading when I had lost touch with it. It was the series that brought me to the Booktube community on YouTube and is a significant reason why I started my channel. It was the series that gave me a closer connection with my grandma as we would call every week and talk about the books as we were reading them. I started the series years ago now, and as I have learned more about the world of TOG and fallen in love with multiple characters (Manon will forever be best girl) I have also made friends in real life and learned more about this world. Throne of Glass has been my companion through it all. It is my home. Of course, I know the series is not without its flaws, and I am not trying to paint it in some holy light.
But regarding the impact, it has had on me all I can say is thank you, Sarah, from the bottom of my heart. I got the chance to meet you last year in Manchester, and hopefully, I managed to get across how much your words have impacted me then and now. I remember just sobbing to my grandma after that night because I was so happy I got to say thank you. Thank you for this fantastic experience I will never forget. There’s this song from RWBY (another fandom I’m apart of) called ‘Home,’ and it describes perfectly how I feel about Throne of Glass (and ACOTAR too). I know I’m safe when I can read Throne of Glass and I feel comfortable. I look forward to reading whatever else Sarah writes in the future. I don’t have many people in real life that I can talk to about this stuff, and I imagine most of them would call me a fanboy, but I’d rather be a fan of something to the nth degree than just being kind of ‘meh’ about everything. So hey, if any of you lovely people reading this have gotten this far and you feel even a fraction of the way I do then let me know down below or DM me. I would love to talk to you about TOG further. Thanks for reading my thoughts.
Matthew Gurteen.
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