Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas | Spoiler-Free Review

The last book I finished reading just two days ago was the one... the only... Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas. This one is a sequel to Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas which was "just okay" to me.

Not anymore. I LOVED this book, and I have a lot of thoughts on this one! This review is spoiler-free but I do have a longer in-depth spoilery review on my Goodreads page here.
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First can I get an appreciation cheer for the covers of this series. I know not everyone loves them, but I sure do. They're perfect!

Second, this book felt so much longer than 418 pages. And that's not in a bad way, at all. So much stuff happened and the entire time I was hooked. I could not stop reading, and I dragged this book with me everywhere. Even to my brother's band concert. (Don't worry, I did watch him play!)

This book was epic in the sense that it encompassed a lot. It had such a large cast of characters, but at the same time... not. This book was so many things at once that it's hard to write a comprehensible review on it!

Looking back at it, it feels like a lot less happened than it seemed at the time. We had the obvious main points, and then a bit of stuff that didn't seem quite as important or maybe filled up more than I thought it should have, personally. The ending also felt... call me crazy, slow in a sense. Maybe it was because I had been reading this book for a week and was thinking to myself "Okay I'm getting a bit tired of reading this one book..." that it dragged, but for those two points alone I am taking off ½ of a star from my rating of this book.

 

Other than that though, I thought this book was great. I loved the character growth as compared to the previous book in the series, and even though I didn't remember anything (literally, I remember nothing from the first book. This is why I marathon series.) from Throne of Glass #1, I thought Crown of Midnight stood just fine as the first book in the series.

 

As afore-mentioned, the characters were great. Seven pages into the book, and Celaena Sardothien was already kicking major butt. Like, seriously. And my hatred for the king just keeps growing and growing and growing, really. One thing I do wish we had gotten more of in this book was Dorian. I felt like he was overlooked a little bit, but I'm hoping that we get to see more of him (especially with recent developments... being vague on purpose) in the next book (or four! Yay, for long fantasy series!).

 

This book made me feel a lot of things. Like, a lot of things. One moment I was feeling happy for Celaena and then the next I was heartbroken alongside her. I thought Sarah J. Maas dealt with a lot of topics seriously and did it well, and I thought Celaena dealt with some things that happened very realistically.

 

Overall, this book was a very strong addition to the series and I've heard it just keeps on getting better with Heir of Fire (which I really need to read. Like, now.).

 

My rating on this book is: 4 ½ stars and a spot on my favorites shelf! I can feel that this series is definitely going to become a favorite of mine in the future.