Tuesday 13 September 2016

Empire of Storms by Sarah J Maas

*Warning this blog post contains spoilers for the first 5 books in the Throne of Glass series (Throne of Glass, Crown of Midnight, Heir of  Fire and Queen of Shadows)*

Series: Throne of Glass, #5

Publication:September 6th 2016 by Bloomsbury

Goodreads Description:
The long path to the throne has only just begun for Aelin Galathynius. Loyalties have been broken and bought, friends have been lost and gained, and those who possess magic find themselves at odds with those don't.

As the kingdoms of Erilea fracture around her, enemies must become allies if Aelin is to keep those she loves from falling to the dark forces poised to claim her world. With war looming on all horizons, the only chance for salvation lies in a desperate quest that may mark the end of everything Aelin holds dear.

Aelin's journey from assassin to queen has entranced millions across the globe, and this fifth installment will leave fans breathless. Will Aelin succeed in keeping her world from splintering, or will it all come crashing down?
 


My thoughts:
This series get better and better with each book. I personally think Empire of Storms is the best book in the Throne of Glass series. Everything is kicked up a notch to the next level. Sarah J. Maas continues to impress me with every book she publishes!

The plot of Empire of Storm was so well paced and full of twists and turns that has me at the edge of my seat at times. At nearly 700 pages I was surprised at how quickly the story flies by. I couldn't put the book down. The action sequences in this book...wow! I had so much fun reading all the sea battles that go down!

There is a lovely bit of world expansion going on in Empire of Storms which I loved. Readers get to visiting lots of places in Erilea. I won't say where- it's kind of a spoiler, but it was so much fun seeing more of the continent.We get to see new places and old- speaking of new and old; readers get to meet new characters and a few familiar faces from the novellas (The Assassin's Blade) show up! 
I definitely think The Assassin's Blade should be read before Empire of Storms- ideally before Queen of Shadows, because people and places from the novellas are a key part of Empire of Storms.

Empire of Storms is told from lots of different persepectives, which I think is a good thing but also a bad thing. There is so many that I feel like we see very little of Aelin. I wanted more of her chapters; it's not that the other POVs are bad- I love a lot of them- I just love Aelin's chapters the most. Elide has a POV which is really interesting, she gets a lot more page time than I was expecting. There was no Chaol, which I was expecting, and it didn't bother me because there was is much other stuff going on.

There is a lovely balance of badass girls and guys. My favourite part of this series is how much strong female characters it has. Aelin and Manon are as amazing as ever but Lysandra really stole the show in Empire of Storms for me.

I loved how much magic is used in this one.  Aelin uses it all the time, exploring what she can do and pushing the limits. Since the release of magic only happened at the end of Queen of Shadows it was fun being able to use magic again.

So Empire of Storms is definitely in the New Adult genre. There is a warning on the back of the book that it contains mature content so it wasn't like ACOMAF where I was shocked/not expecting to read some of the steamier scenes that make it NA. Personally I don't think it was necessary to make Empire of Storms NA; the scenes didn't do anything for the plot (if anything they slowed it down a bit) so you can definitely skip them. I skimmed them and it didn't affect anything really. I was disappointed how much time was spent on these scenes when so much other stuff was going on. They took up unnecessary page time.

Everyone knows a massive part of Throne of Glass is the ships. I was a hard core Celorian/Doraelin shipper earlier in the series and I haven't been the biggest Rowaelin shipper since that started so I'm not really reading this series for the ships anymore regarding Aelin. But I love Lysandra and Aedion so I was so happy to see that they got a good bit of page time in Empire of Storms to develop their relationship. A new ship was introduced and I am not a fan of it. (I won't say who it is because of spoilers), but to me it felt a bit weird. I would have preferred it to stay platonic. In fact there's a few new ships introduced in Empire of Storms and I feel like SJM is just pairing everyone off for the sake of it.


Overall, I loved Empire of Storms and if you have been following the series you should definitely pick it up! I can't believe the next book is the last book in the series! I'm so excited to see what SJM does in it considereing how many directions she can go with the end of Empire of Storms!

My Rating: 5 stars

Thanks for reading,

A :)

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