Review: Tower of Dawn

Tower of Dawn by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

These days, it's hard to find anyone who genuinely enjoys Sarah J. Maas' books anymore - she's kinda done a lot of her readers dirty with her recent forays into erotica and general lack of diversity, but more recently, she's been working to correct some of the flaws that have turned so many readers against her. Tower of Dawn, I have to say, is her best effort in that department yet, not only because it helps make up for Chaol's total absence in Empire of Storms by giving him his own much-deserved book, but also because it includes more diversity among its cast - by necessity, since it takes place on the Southern Continent. So we get a lot more PoC rep, and more queer rep (not in any main characters, but I feel like she does a better job working it into this book than any of her previous ones.)

The real controversy with this one, of course, surrounds disabled rep, since Chaol's whole arc seemingly revolves around him traveling south in a last-ditch attempt to heal the nigh-unfixable injury that cost him his ability to walk in Queen of Shadows. Of course, to reduce Chaol's story to that slick one-sentence peg does it, and him, a great disservice. While I'm not physically disabled and can't really comment on the rep, I can tell you, without spoilers, there are tons of surprises in store. And for all the talk I've seen about Chaol having to put up with microaggressions - like the fact that he's actually asked, to his face, if his dick still works - said microaggressions are challenged pretty quickly, as the one responsible, healer Yrene Towers, expresses regret for her unprofessional behavior the next time she gets a POV chapter. Yrene, in fact, is one of my favorite characters in this book, because she's so conflicted for most of the story - caught between her duty as a healer and her resentment towards Adarlan and its army because they killed her family, and was Chaol responsible for any of that death by virtue of being part of that army? Hell, while we're at it, Chaol has to confront his own Adarlanian (read: white) privilege quite often as he and Yrene grow closer and closer.

Relationships, of course, are a pretty big part of this story - and yes, there's some sex involved. Thank God it's nowhere near as explicit as the infamous "velvet-wrapped steel" type scenes we've had to put up with in every SJM novel since ACOMAF, but for those who long for the series' early days when all love scenes were fade-to-black at best, I think those days are still pretty much over.

And you know what else is a big part of the story? The ongoing war that Aelin's been fighting back home. Though she's nowhere to be found in this story (and thank God for that - I've soured on her too much lately, to be honest), she and Rowan and their war still weigh on Chaol's mind. Not only because he's here to heal his injuries sustained in that war, but because even though Queen of Shadows could have easily been the end of the series...nope. The Valg return with a bloody vengeance here, and even if you're not arachnophobic, you'll want to run for the bloody hills.

Oh wait, that's where they hide...

While I think this book could've been a little shorter - because isn't it true that SJM's been pretty ill lately too? Jeez, the woman's liable to burn herself out! - at least it didn't feel as long and draggy and/or full of filler as the other 600-700 page bricks she's put out in the last 18 months. (Though I'm still annoyed with those stupid Bible-thin pages that are so difficult to not tear when I turn them!) That said, though, I feel that Tower of Dawn is a more mature novel than we've come to expect from SJM lately, in a good way, because though it's not free of her usual problematic nature, it's all the more thought-provoking for it. It's something of a return to form, to what SJM does best - characters who are flawed but lovable, and truly horrifying Lovecraftian threats for them to deal with all day and night.

I'm actually dreading the seventh (and supposedly final) Throne of Glass novel now, because Tower of Dawn, the Chaol novel we all deserved, is, for me, the final proof that he should've been the hero all along, not Aelin. If every novel in this up-and-down series were like this one, I'd have less trouble recommending it to anyone and everyone.

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