Okay this is super long and spoilery and mostly a dump of thoughts for myself so feel free to skip this one lmfao.

The more I read SJM the more I feel like I know what's going to happen in her books. Having read acotar and cc first, I'm really familiar with SJM's writing style. It's interesting to see work from the beginning of her career and feel like.. well, like I can see how things will go. The timeline is pretty clear, but the way she mixes things up is more or less by putting in a bunch of clues disguised as regular things that you'd pass by unless you knew her work, and then a decent sprinkle of red herrings. I do think it's fun to sort through and try to see what may or may not be a clue, so I do like that part. I don't mind the pattern that much, but it's interesting to see it's been noticeable from early on. Side note, I genuinely would be fine if we stopped seeing "she could have sworn" instead of just saying something happened. It's so often, idk, I'm just. Wishing there was something else there? Like just say the thing happened. It's been in every single book, over and over. I almost highlighted it every time I saw it, just to see how many times. It's been more in other books but I still noticed it plenty in this one. Feels nitpicky but 🤷🏻‍♀️ she's been writing long enough that it feels like another way to say someone noticed something should've come  up by now.

Anyway, overall I really enjoyed the story and characters. There are lots of hints throughout the book of what's to come in the future. Some of it was easy to predict, some of it wasn't, but I feel like it was a good enough mix that it kept the book interesting. Like I knew certain people were doing bad things, and it was revealed by the end of the book, but enough detail was left out that it makes you curious to see if it gets revealed and how in the next one.

this specifically pertains to the king being gone during the entire competition, like it's clear he's up to no good, but I want to know what he was doing and why he came back alone when everyone else that was with him died. Very curious. And suspicious. It was obvious that perrington was pulling the strings with Cain and kaltain so it felt easy enough to connect it to the king when he was so avidly anti-magic from jump, but I'd still like to see where it all goes.

One thing I have a bit of a complaint about is that some of the logic involving how assassins - or any dangerous person - would work didn't check out.

Celaena getting annoyed about not getting the same recognition as Cain just, didn't make sense. Not for someone whose entire job is to be as low-key as possible, to the point of her being proud of no one knowing how young she really was. I just didn't feel like that made sense. Her age and innocent appearance would have been something I feel like the king of assassins would have emphasized and made sure to teach her to use it to her advantage. 

Not only that, but he also wanted her to get her better at swordplay with her left hand, so he made her break the other one? Feels wildly illogical. Breaking her hand could've lead to permanent damage and she might never have been able to use it again. Plus, she would've had to retrain extra hard to get back to where she'd been with her right hand. So what then, break her left hand so she learns her right to the same skill level again? I understand demonstrating how severe and unforgiving the king of assassins was when training celaena. But it feels like he didn't do a great job besides being a dick, if he didn't teach her to use her appearance to catch people off guard and broke her hand instead of just tying it behind her back or something. I know this is from earlier in SJM's career but it still bothered me a bit to see the gaps in the logic. Probably the main reasons it's not four stars or higher for me, are the places where things didn't make sense.

Celaena is someone you inherently want to cheer for. We learned a lot about her but not enough to feel like it's everything there is to know. Chaol and Dorian are fun, mostly in the sense that SJM banter is some of my favorite to read. I feel like we didn't learn a ton about them though, like they weren't super three dimensional characters, but I'm waiting to see what happens in the rest of the books before I say more about them. 

Spoiler for this book and acotar: 

I know from the internet that she doesn't end up with either of them, so my hopes aren't up there, but I feel like it'll make sense in the end. Neither of them are like, super deep? There's enough to make you want the romance but they didn't feel like, soulmate special, like Rhys and feyre. Having read acotar and knowing about mates, the comment about the chain between celaena and chaol struck me as interesting, but I know they don't end up together, so maybe SJM changed her mind haha. Either way, I'd like to learn more about chaol and Dorian, but I don't know that we will that much? Tbd.

Nehemia was great. She's very kind and sweet and clever as hell. I would love to see more of her! But I have a small complaint:

nehemia was with celaena when Cain revealed he knew who she was. And celaena said she hoped Nehemiah's comprehension of their language was still poor enough that she didn't understand what he said. But then it's revealed that nehemia speaks and reads their language flawlessly, to the point of not even having an accent. But celaena still had to reveal who she was, and nehemia apparently had no idea? Did I miss something? I mean I really might've, but I don't think I did. Maybe she'll say later that she'd understood Cain and didn't want to alert celaena to her knowing. Idk, but I'm wondering why nehemia didn't just say she knew when celaena revealed her secret. She was there for it and knew exactly what Cain said. Idk, not a huge deal, but I'm wondering if that'll come back or stay under the rug. 

 

Okay last flaw in the logic and then I'm done, I swear: 

When celaena discovers Cain and the ridderak in the tunnels and she makes it out of that room, why doesn't Cain chase her as well? He was suddenly so preternaturally fast that he was able to disarm celaena before she knew what was happening. But she's out of his summoning room and can run faster than him now? All the way down to the tomb, where she defeats the ridderak, and he doesn't come down to fight her? Or see if the beast won or died? He just peaced out entirely without giving any kind of chase, despite just proving he was faster than her? And was unsurprised to see her next time they were around each other. I don't understand why he didn't chase her. Like she was so confident in him not following that she took the time to clean Damaris and put it back on the wall. And she had to go back up the stairs and past his summoning room and into her own chambers and he didn't wait for her or his beast to come back up. He was just gone. I feel like he would've been smarter to stay and wait for whoever came out alive. Idk 🤷🏻‍♀️

Yeah. So overall, not my favorite SJM book, but that's more likely because I've already read acotar, specifically acomaf. Definitely some flaws in the logic that I had a hard time moving past, but nothing to convince me to never read another SJM novel, by any means. Excited to read more but I feel like I was a little harsh on this because I've already read her best work and this is her first book ever published. I'm sure the series will get better and better the deeper I get but this felt almost like a prototype for acotar and crescent city. There are definitely a lot of parallels in the plots themselves. That's separate from the way SjM has linked her books and put them all in the same universe though. I'm actually extremely excited to see the connections between books grow the further I get, since I already know so much from the other two series. It's fun to find the links, like a little scavenver hunt. 

If you read all of this, I'm so sorry, and don't let this dissuade you from reading this book lmao. It's still very good and my rating is mostly in comparison to her other works. Worth the read, 100%.