Review: Heir of Fire

Heir of Fire by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Huh...so I thought I'd rated this one four stars the first time I read this, but turns out it was five. Well, now that I've re-read it, I'm bringing it down to four for sure. Don't get me wrong, Celaena's story - and rediscovery of her true self as Aelin - makes for some pretty fascinating reading, but it takes up a huge, huge chunk of a huge, huge book at the expense of Chaol's story. For Chaol, it's a shame that much of what we get is him angsting over Celaena being gone, and worrying about where to go from here, and where should his allegiance lie, rather than him being the man of action we know he should be. It's also connected to the introduction of Rowan in this book - I used to like him, but compared to Chaol, he's way too perfect and attractive, too devoid of flaws, and his function in the story basically amounts to being a knockoff Fae version of Four from Divergent. And it certainly doesn't help that to indicate his "animalistic" Fae nature, he's consistently referred to as "a male" rather than "a man," another Franchise Original Sin not only for this series, but for SJM in general.

But this book does have a lot of action to spare, and even better, it introduces fan favorite Manon. Despite her being another case of Maas not being able to handle such a good character later on down the line, here, where we see Manon as originally intended, she's more than a welcome presence, adding another layer of complication to the ever-expanding storyline of this series.

Two more books to go on this series re-read. At least I'll go into Queen of Shadows remembering the Valg a bit better from this book now.

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