Review: Queen of Shadows

Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

At first, I was a bit worried that the length of this book would make it too daunting a task to really enjoy. Luckily, like with a good Harry Potter or Song of Ice and Fire book (or Cassie Clare's epic-sized City of Heavenly Fire), this book delivered lots of high action over its considerable length. Even though I'm not at all happy with some of the character development (Aelin being quite an epic jackass compared to the previous books, Chaol's role in the story being reduced into further oblivion, the ship tease with Rowan and Aelin that I no longer enjoy the second time around), there will always be all that action, and, dare I say, the Lovecraftian horror. Those Valg... *shudders*

I still feel like, aside from the aforementioned character-development and serious shipping annoyances (as well as the ongoing preponderance of characters who do this book no good in the diversity department - any and all known PoC and/or LGBT+ characters being minor at best), Queen of Shadows would have made a good ending to the series. Much of the story is wrapped up, with a few loose ends, but none too annoying. It helps that a major antagonist dies in the end (I hope - it would be just like Maas to revive this character in later installments, I think.)

It used to be that I thought this was the series' peak, but now I think it's just part of a slow downhill slide from Book 1 overall. I get the feeling I'm going to drop the rating for Empire of Storms upon rereading that one as well...but I'm still seriously hoping for the upcoming Chaol novel to really rescue the series for me.

View all my reviews