Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas
Published by Bloomsbury on October 23rd, 2018
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 992
Format: eBook
Source: Purchased
Goodreads
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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.
There will be spoilers for the entire series including this newest book. Read if you dare!
God. Where to even begin?
Back before the dawn of time (in blogging years anyway) I picked up a pretty well-hyped book,
Throne of Glass. Everyone was stark-raving mad about this thing, and frankly, I was not terribly impressed. But I liked it enough to read book 2 and that's when my love for the series really took off. Over the last six years, I have invested so much into this series--time, energy, and oh my god, the money. I loved this series so much, I basically preached the Word of Celaena to anyone who would listen. And then
Empire of Storms happened. There was a severe drop in quality, from the craft of writing all the way to the nonsensical plot and character development, that book was a mess. I suspect this degradation in quality started in
Queen of Shadows but I was still blinded by love at that point. All this is to say, this will be a very negative review of a book in a series I once loved. I wasn't always a hater, I didn't read a gigantic series just to talk shit. I genuinely loved these books for a long time and I feel pretty betrayed by this entire mess.
The first thing, and easiest thing, I'm going to tackle really quick is the writing. I don't know what's happened to SJM but she's completely divorced herself from the English language. For every full sentence with a working subject-verb relationship, there are at least 5 fragments to follow. She doesn't understand how a clause modifies the subject before it. She doesn't understand how to link clauses. She doesn't make sense. I basically read Kingdom of Ash twice because I kept having to go over and over what was written because it was so lacking in clarity. These books are written in a limited third person point of view, and yet the point of view was constantly switching from character to character, even within the same paragraph. There were words used incorrectly, words that didn't belong at all and should have been caught in copyedits, and nonsensical metaphors. This book was written by a lunatic. It was absolute mayhem.
I also have a real problem with how SJM creates "tension." She does this by either 1) pulling away from the most important scenes and plot points just to create dramatic effect, or 2) by just keeping the reader in the dark. She doesn't actually build suspense, but rather lies to the reader or ignores a problem altogether. I do not want to read about a character nearly dying, just to take a break and go to a sex scene. That's not tension, it's fucking annoying.
So, plot choices. I will reluctantly concede that it seems like SJM planned this book a lot more than she planned Empire of Storms. That book lacked focus in a major way, with weird unrelated events just strung together. But at least in Kingdom of Ash I felt like everything was working towards one goal. That said, some of these choices were just dumb. There's no getting around it. For instance, Maeve is a complete idiot. She has Aelin captured, right where she wants her. And, knowing her friends are definitely going to be searching for her, Maeve still leaves Aelin with Cairn in the middle of an army camp and heads off by herself in search of some wyrd collars she heard about. She didn't even investigate the claim, she just left, leaving the window wide open for Aelin's escape/rescue. Mighty convenient for the queen of the fae, who has survived thousands of years, to suddenly be stupid right when the plot calls for it. This is not the first or the last time the books have relied on Maeve dropping the ball intelligence-wise.
There are a LOT of conveniences, borderline deus ex machina moments as well. People showing up just in the nick of time. Magic randomly working differently than it always has. Some of the most egregious moments were toward the end. Aelin and her army were a WEEK away from getting to Orynth where the main battle was happening, and all of the sudden the Little Folk show up with the actual Lord of the North and show them some short cut that gets them there just in time to save the lives of some friendly faces. Then a little later Aelin opens a portal to the "hinterlands" in the north where the Lost Fae of Terrasen were waiting to come and help vanquish the enemy army. Let me make it clear that these fae were not mentioned by Aelin and her crew even ONCE throughout the whole novel. One thousand pages and they finally showed up in the last 100 to help save the day. (Also, speaking of late introductions, what made SJM think it was okay to introduce dryads in the last 100 pages?)
The one plot-thing I think we've all been waiting for was the forging of the lock and sealing the gate. Wow, what a contrived mess that was. So for those wanting to know, Dorian and Aelin forge the lock together. They go through some portal that takes them to a crossroads where all the worlds in existence meet. While there, they give their magic over to forging the lock. This drains them of their super-awesome, extraordinary powers. Then, for some reason, Dorian's father shows up and gives them some spiel about "Nameless is my price." That's right!! NAMELESS IS MY PRICE, which is written on the Amulet of Orynth so I'm not sure how Elena missed it, apparently has always referred to Dorian's father, the nameless King of Adarlan. We learn that Erawan wove some spell (??) to erase the King's name. So the King offers himself up in Dorian's place and helps Aelin finish making the lock. Then for NO REASON WHATSOEVER, Aelin tries to get the gods to leave Elena behind, and also leave Erawan behind. WHY. The entire point of forging the lock and sealing the gate is to get rid of Erawan! Especially considering they need the Fire Bringer to kill him if the gods won't. I am seriously at a fucking loss on this one. Why in god's name would Aelin ever risk leaving Erawan in Erilea?? Of course, the gods betray her anyway, but what the actual???
In the end, forging the lock and sealing the gate takes almost all of Aelin's magic and her human form. Which makes total sense, I know. Why it wouldn't take her actual MAGICAL form is lost on me.
(ALSO REAL QUICK LET ME JUST SAY THAT I WASNT EVEN READING AN ACOTAR BOOK AND RHYS STILL SHOWS UP AND SOMEHOW RUINS THINGS.)
Okay. Deep breath. Let's talk about the characters.
I want to talk about Manon first because I think Manon is SJM's best character. She really stumbled into greatness with Manon. She went from a bloodthirsty, angry killer and was able to turn everything around, reunite her people, grow a soft spot, learn to love, and yet still keep that deadly, immortal, and cold air about her. If you want to know which character has grown and changed the most, while still remaining that actual character, it's Manon. Where others have completely lost themselves, she still remains true to who she is deep down, while embracing the new. I still find her sexual relationship with Dorian to be absolutely heinous and wildly out of character for the both of them, and I wish it wasn't a reality at all, though.
Speaking of Dorian, he's the most wildly inconsistent character of the bunch. I know he went through trauma in Heir of Fire, but he's an entirely different character from who he was in Throne of Glass. There really is nothing left of that Dorian at all. And while there were parts of him in this book that I found salvagable (like the self-sacrificing parts, the teamwork parts, the studying magic parts) I find him overall distasteful anymore and would like to throw the whole man away and start over. Like, for example, he learns to shapeshift in this book. Okay, cool. Except he shapeshifts into one of the witches--not just a random woman but someone who is actually there, actually exists--and then goes on to be wholly disgusting about it. His first thoughts are about masturbating, breasts, things like that. If I were that witch, I'd feel violated. Now, I know this is the author's absolutely OBSESSION with sex and porn, but no fucking thank you. The only time he felt remotely redeemable and like he was back on the right path was when he was with Chaol.
Chaol is another great character who got the short end of the stick just for being a mortal human. It was very clear that SJM got tired of writing him and didn't want to deal with the transition from Chaol to Rowan, so she just DESTROYED HIM. Now, I haven't read Tower of Dawn and I do not plan to, so I didn't get to actually see his development, but it's staggering how much he's changed--but this time it's in a good way. I know the basics of what he went through in the southern continent, and he rose from the ashes of the destroyed glass castle and came back better than ever. He still has that overwhelming sense of loyalty that makes him who he is, while also having gained the wisdom and clarity to face the challenges presented to him in Kingdom of Ash. I know everyone hated him because he was the dissenting voice against Aelin in Queen of Shadows, but I think he's the one with the most sense, honestly, and anyway thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
Lorcan is still a gross, ancient creeper, and Elide continues to deserve so much better than him. Lysandra is still on my shit list because of her shitty, deceptive plan with Aelin from the last book (her plan to use Aedion to breed, knowing full well he had been sexually abused in the past.) Yrene was pretty great, actually, though I thought the pregnancy stuff was SO heavy handed. Did Sarah recently have a baby? Anyone know? The other members of Aelin's squad were inconsequential. We barely knew them as individuals beforehand and that changed by maybe a fraction in this book. Rowan continues to be the most boring person alive.
So that brings me to Aedion. My precious bisexual teddy bear, who willingly gives up everything he has for the sake of Terrasen. I love him so, so much and he deserves a better author entirely. I mean, he was betrayed in a very disgusting way by Lysandra and somehow HE ends up being the one apologizing? I think the mcfuck not. He's the one character I have genuine emotions for and I hated the things SJM did to his character. He is a softie at heart. He's gentle and honorable. But when it came time to get physically intimate with Lysandra he ended up the exact same as all the other "males" in this godforsaken series (and in SJM's other series.) It was so gross to me to see him acting so out of character. It's like SJM knows only one way for men to behave and so they all act THE SAME. It's heinous.
Speaking of heinous, I hate the character that Aelin has become. Hell, Celaena would absolutely hate Aelin. Sam is rolling over in his grave. Despite her rhetoric for a better world and other people getting to use their voices, she's a tyrant. The arrogance that was once bravado to cover vulnerability is now just plain arrogance with nothing softer to temper it. There's absolutely nothing relatable about her at all anymore. At the beginning of this series, Celaena set out to fight against tyrannical empires, seeing what happens when too much power is held by one person. Now, at the end, she's queen of Terrasen, queen of the Little Folk, queen of Doranelle, and probably more that I totally forgot about. She's also spoken of conquering other territories if she ever gets bored in her long, immortal life. She has turned into the very thing she set out to eradicate. And all without the authorial self-awareness that's needed to pull this thing off. It's not a conscious decision by any means. It's just everyone blowing smoke up Aelin's ass because she's the best. For reasons.
Kingdom of Ash falls victim to more of SJM's gross porn. There were admittedly less sex scenes in this one than there were in Empire of Storms, and they were (mostly) less detailed, but it didn't make them any less gross or unnecessary. Like I said earlier, we would be ripped away from the action so we could see two characters have sex. Who cares about this? And all of the characters were so preoccupied with it. It's just... gross; I don't have another word for it. There's just no need for any of it. You can achieve the same things with a fade to black scene. And what is with all the characters noticing when someone has sex? Why does Aelin have to scent it on Elide? And why are Rowan and Aelin constantly fucking where they can be found? What does all this sex and sexual content add to the overall story of a young woman fighting to regain her kingdom? NOTHING. And the scenes are nasty anyway; they're poorly written and all blend into one another since every character is the same.
This review is getting long so let's cut to the chase on some other flaws. SJM is incapable of the following: banter of any kind; forming complete sentences; making a magic system that makes sense and is consistent; character motivations, especially when it comes to villains; giving characters distinct voices. It's just utter failure on all fronts.
It's a shame. This series started out beautifully, with such potential. The main three characters were excellent, the themes of fighting oppression and tyranny were great (and actually clear!) The magic was once consistent and made sense. But now? This is pointy-eared pornography with a heaping dose of Lord of the Rings plagiarism (everything from the creatures, the characters' titles, the battle at Helm's Deep, "Terrasen calls for aid!" and SO MUCH MORE.) It's so sad to me that a book series that once meant so much to me has turned into such derivative, contrived drivel. I feel bad for the fans who have hung on this long, because they deserve so much better than their favorite author is giving them. The only good thing I can say now is that it's finally over.
