Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas – Review

Published: October 23, 2018

Publisher: Bloomsbury YA

Series: Throne of Glass #7

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy

Pages: 992 (Hardcover)

My Rating: 4.5/5.0

Synopsis:

Years in the making, Sarah J. Maas’s #1 New York Times bestselling Throne of Glass series draws to an epic, unforgettable conclusion. Aelin Galathynius’s journey from slave to king’s assassin to the queen of a once-great kingdom reaches its heart-rending finale as war erupts across her world. . .

Aelin has risked everything to save her people-but at a tremendous cost. Locked within an iron coffin by the Queen of the Fae, Aelin must draw upon her fiery will as she endures months of torture. Aware that yielding to Maeve will doom those she loves keeps her from breaking, though her resolve begins to unravel with each passing day…

With Aelin captured, Aedion and Lysandra remain the last line of defense to protect Terrasen from utter destruction. Yet they soon realize that the many allies they’ve gathered to battle Erawan’s hordes might not be enough to save them. Scattered across the continent and racing against time, Chaol, Manon, and Dorian are forced to forge their own paths to meet their fates. Hanging in the balance is any hope of salvation-and a better world.

And across the sea, his companions unwavering beside him, Rowan hunts to find his captured wife and queen-before she is lost to him forever.

As the threads of fate weave together at last, all must fight, if they are to have a chance at a future. Some bonds will grow even deeper, while others will be severed forever in the explosive final chapter of the Throne of Glass series.

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Hot dang, I’ve been waiting to write this review for way too long. Sometimes I just need to calm myself before writing a review because I’m a tangle of shrieking emotions, ya know? Kingdom of Ash was surprisingly good and it was a totally satisfying conclusion which was shocking on many levels. Was it perfect? Definitely not, as SJMaas seems to enjoy pulling convenient solutions out of nowhere, but it was much more solid than A Court of Wings and Ruin, the finale to her ACOTAR series.

This, as one would expect, begins with Aelin trapped in the iron coffin Maeve locked her in. That in itself is enough to induce claustrophobia, but even worse is the face that when she’s out of the coffin she’s being methodically tortured to the point of breaking. It’s horrible and it goes on for chapters and chapters. I GET IT. It’s unspeakably horrible and there’s no way Aelin will be the same when she escapes. It’s the classic hero’s trauma – she’s broken but through her friends/loved ones and her own gumption, she pulls herself up by her bootstraps and beats the bad guy even though she totally didn’t care if she died in the process. To be fair, it was a little more complicated than that, but that’s the gist of Aelin’s entire story arc.

Dorian and Manon were much more interesting, especially since the two have this obvious thing between them. Manon and the Thirteen are trying to unite the Crochans and any of the Ironteeth that will listen so that they might bring about peace between their people. Dorian is second only to Aelin in terms of magical power and he’s determined to find a way to find the last Wyrdkey and seal the gate, even if it costs his life. It’s all so dramatic and honestly I spent most of the book waiting for Dorian and Manon to confess their undying love for one another right before an untimely death. Of course, I expected much the same of Yrene and Chaol, Aelin and Rowan, Elide and Lorcan etc. You get the point.

This is an action packed book and at a whopping 992 pages, it was filled with a whole lot of material. And so, so many POVs which wasn’t a bad thing since they were mostly introduced slowly over the course of the series. And blessedly, no one’s names are stupidly similar. I can’t and won’t begin to cover the plot points because that’s just no fun. If you enjoyed the previous books, this is a must read for you and I’m sure many fans have already read it and shared their reviews. There are some parts where allies conveniently appear out of thin air (literally) and some victories were as anticlimactic and unsatisfying as Supreme Leader Snoke’s death in Star Wars Episode VIII. If you spend time building up a villain, they need a dramatic death even if a simpler, smaller death is what would likely happen in the real world. Aside from these and a handful of corny and eye-roll inducing moments, it was a pretty epic conclusion to one of the most popular YA series since Twilight or the Mortal Instruments.