Assassin's Blade
by Sarah J. Mass
Ok to preface this, I am an insanely big Throne of Glass fan. It was the first series I read that got me back into reading after a several year slump, and I fell in love with it. I read those books faster than any I had before. For some reason though, I never read Assassin's Blade until now, almost two years later. I dont know what I was expecting, but it definitely lived up to my Throne of Glass love.
Now ok, I know a lot of people argue about when you should read this book. Some say it should be first in the series, others last, and some say it should be placed in
between. Now from my experience, I loved reading it as the last book and I will explain why.
This book has a lot of characters that we hear about throughout the series, but are only really important in the last book. Because all these characters were really only important then, I think that if I were to have read this book in the very beginning, I would have completely forgotten them after 7 books. So, being able to read this book and find out who they all were and how Celaena came to know them was much more interesting to me and helped me fully understand the events in the last book. So my official recommendation would be to read it last, but honestly it's just personal preference.
Now onto the actual book, I loved it, pure and simple. It has a much different tone than you will probably be used to after reading the full series, but the tone of writing fit the story that Sarah J Mass was trying to tell. It is set before Celaena entered the salt mines of Endovier, and tells the story of how she became an assassin, how she grew up, and the friends that she made before her life in the castle. It is broken up into multiple parts, showing her adventures in each particular area ranging from the pirate cove to the red desert.
Celaena is noticeably younger, less experienced, and does not have the emotional growth that we see her go through in the full series. You might think this would be annoying but I think it gave so much more life to her character, and showed how much she had really been through to get to where she is. Part of the reason I loved her character is that she worked for every single thing she had, and she absolutely deserved to be as cocky and powerful as she was. In some ways it helped cement that idea to me because you see how much she trained both mentally and emotionally. It was not like many young adult fantasy books where the heroine trains for a couple of weeks and is magically insanely powerful for not much of a reason.
Now since this is a no spoilers post, I will not go that much into detail, but I just have to mention this. I cried like an absolute baby in some parts of this book. For the most part it was a pretty tame story, but some events happen that are just absolutely heartbreaking and I cannot seem to get over it. Those that are more familiar with the series might already know what I am talking about because it is pretty widely talked about (do not look up fan art after you read it - it will actually crush you.) This makes this book not only a good read but also an impactful one for the entire series.
The rest of the story is full of the cocky and funny girl we know and love. It also has some cool action scenes and plot twists that honestly I could see coming but were still interesting. It was definitely not my favorite book in the series but that is a very hard thing to do so I loved it anyway. I loved the writing and appreciated that we got some backstory on Celaena, since she references her past throughout the whole series.
If you are a fan of Throne of Glass, or any of Sarah J Mass’s books, or honestly the young adult fantasy genre in general, I highly encourage you to read it. If you want to see the full reading order of Throne of Glass, it is on my blog page and you can read more about the recommended place to read the book from the authors opinion herself.