Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Fantasy, Romance
Published by: Bloomsbury
Pages: 644
Format: Paperback
Rating: ★★
Series: Throne of Glass (#1) | Crown of Midnight (#2) | Heir of Fire (#3)
Where to Find: Goodreads | Amazon

This book should be subtitled: Caleana Sardothien is dead and gone, so don’t expect anything. Okay, so I’m not this series’ biggest fan – it’s got plenty of those already – and it’s no secret that I didn’t really enjoy Heir of Fire either, however Queen of Shadows takes the biscuit. After all the hype I was reading on GoodReads I found this book to be terribly disappointing.

Firstly, the Manon chapters that I hated in HoF (because they had no relevance to Celeana) turned out to be my favourite chapters in this book. I felt like they were the only sections where the plot actually progressed. This should not be the case at all! Manon really developed as a character, and her story is the only one that I’m generally interested to continue. Finally, we understand why the witch clans are important, and what’s even better is that Aelin came face to face with Manon and their dynamic is intriguing to say the least. Where their relationship will go from here I have no idea!

Secondly, why the heck does Aelin think she’s a completely different person to Celeana? It really didn’t make sense when I saw very little difference in their personality. If anything I thought Aelin was the most underdeveloped character! She kept trying to convince everyone that Celeana was heartless and evil, and I thought this was a really inaccurate description of her character. At least Celeana had hobbies I could relate to, and was kind to her friends. No wait, at least she /had/ friends. Cel wasn’t a cold-hearted murderer, she was an assassin following the line of justice. Come on.

The last fifty pages were just match making. All of the ships from the previous books are burned to the ground but don’t worry because there are 4 significant male characters and 4 significant female characters and it wasn’t hard to guess the pairings.
Most importantly, I had issues with the plot in general. 400 pages were dedicated to killing a character from the prequel that I haven’t read. And I’m under no obligation to have read the prequel, and now have no intention to. What would be the point when I know the fates of every character?

Considering this is a five book series I may as well read the fifth one just to put another series on my completed list, but even so I’m still heavily undecided on whether or not to continue. The characters have changed so much from the first two books and, honestly, I don’t care for them anymore.