Queen of Shadows Mini-Review

I don’t do mini-reviews very often but since this was a re-read and I never reviewed this one the first time I read, I thought – why not?

Goodreads Blurb:

The queen has returned.

Everyone Celaena Sardothien loves has been taken from her. But she’s at last returned to the empire—for vengeance, to rescue her once-glorious kingdom, and to confront the shadows of her past…

She has embraced her identity as Aelin Galathynius, Queen of Terrasen. But before she can reclaim her throne, she must fight.

She will fight for her cousin, a warrior prepared to die for her. She will fight for her friend, a young man trapped in an unspeakable prison. And she will fight for her people, enslaved to a brutal king and awaiting their lost queen’s triumphant return.

The fourth volume in the New York Times bestselling series continues Celaena’s epic journey and builds to a passionate, agonizing crescendo that might just shatter her world.

Rating: ★★★★★(5/5)

If you guys don’t know already, I’m absolute trash for everything SJM, especially Throne of Glass because it basically got me back into reading when I finished high school and got me into all things bookish online.

This is part of my huge ToG reread in anticipation for Kingdom of Ash (which I found out today will be a whopping 992 pages?!?) and the second that I have read it.

I’ll admit that the beginning was quite slow for me, I had to really push through but the action and the pace definitely get faster as you hit the middle mark and onwards. I loved Aelin and Rowan so much – I know a lot of people stop caring for them at this point but I ship them so hard and Rowan is just beautiful for me. It might be weird, but I actually love that Aelin keeps stuff to herself throughout the whole book. I love a good mystery and I love it, even more, when awesome intricate plans are revealed and explained – it’s like learning how the tricks were done at the end of Now You See Me the movie! I have a thing for that so it was pretty fun for me to try and figure out what Aelin was doing in the middle of the night when SJM was not giving many clues at all.

Dorian is, of course, my baby, the ending just made my heart soar and MANON, my second wife, was such a badarse as always. Unfortunately for Chaol, he was not my favourite character in this book. I still somewhat liked him in Heir but from this point on, my care factor started to fly away. It was a delight, however, to meet Nesryn again and I didn’t dislike Elide as much as I originally did which was really interesting for me.

This book was definitely a step up from Heir of Fire, but Heir is still my favourite book because it was like a serious milestone for the series writing-wise as we got two new freaking points of views. I noticed in QoS how much I really enjoyed the third person writing, although at times I noticed that it did get a little hazy but that’s probably because I was just exhausted when pushing through the last 100 pages at midnight when I should’ve been sleeping (but haven’t we all been there?).

Other than that, I don’t really have much to say for this mini-review so I’m gonna leave it so it stays ‘mini’.

Have you read Queen of Shadows? What did you think & are you also rereading for Kingdom of Ash?

Until next time,

xx Tracy