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The main book to read for the month of June for the SJM-along was the fourth book in Throne of Glass, Queen of Shadows. The readalong is created by Jenn and we are reading through Sarah J Maas's backlist in publication order. The live show for this book was on June 30th and hosted by Rachel! I was able to use this for the prompt trope or sub-genre outside comfort zone (young adult (ya)) for Summer of Swoon!
Celaena, now officially going by her real name of Aelin, is back in Rifthold. She hopes to save her cousin Aedion, steal back her family's amulet (that also holds one of the three wyrdkeys), save Dorian (via rescue or mercy killing) and connect with the remaining members of her court. Aelin is making plans and working on getting things into place to retake her rightful place as Queen of Terrasen. While Aelin is manipulating things around Rifthold, Rowan shows up to help out. While they work together with the rebels, Manon is over in Morath discovering more about what the Duke of Perrington is doing in his experiments. As she and her Thirteen struggle against what's expected of them by the Blackbeak Matriarch and her machinations to treat all witches as chattel, Manon befriends a servant to learn more.
Another 5-star read, another great addition to the series. First off, I do want to mention that this book felt a lot more cinematic especially at some of the fight scenes. The confrontation between Manon and Aelin was so well done as well as the big battle that starts off the last 100 pages. I was so tired staying up late to finish this in time and once it got to the last 100 pages I was wide awake and couldn't put it down until I was finished. Everything that was happening was so elaborate and cinematically written and I just had to see what would happen next. We are back in Rifthold for most of this book, and I feel like a lot of the previous plot threads were wrapped up for Rifthold and now we'll be moving back into more of the world. I was surprised by quite a few of the revelations and cannot wait to see what Sarah J Maas does next with the storyline.
I don't want to get into too many spoilers, but I have to say one of my favorite scenes was the rescue of Aedion. It was just so perfectly planned out. A part of me was thinking that something had to go wrong and it wouldn't work out, and while it didn't go exactly 100% to plan, they still got Aedion out fairly quickly. Another favorite scene was the fight between Aelin and Manon. Everything leading up the battle followed by the battle and how it helped Manon deal with what was happening to the witches was such an important part. I also loved seeing Manon and Aelin both be the bad-a** women that they are. The only real detractor for me was I felt there was a regression in Chaol's character growth back to where he was before finally taking a side that wasn't the kings. He was once again frustrating for me and I really hoped that he would be able to move past the actions that Aelin's had to take. He just seemed a little too butt-hurt to me and once again not looking at the whole picture of what's going on.
I cannot wait to read more from SJM both in this series and in general. I am loving every single addition to this series and have no idea how things are going to go. I'm sure eventually we'll be taking down the "big bad," but seeing that whom we thought was the big bad was taken down this book and we still have three more full length books to go! I'm just really loving that I finally picked up Sarah's work and couldn't be more grateful to Jenn for creating this readalong.
Have you read Queen of Shadows?
Bookishly Yours,
Stasi🍎
STATISTICS: Queen of Shadows, Sarah J Maas, 5-stars, 2 days, Paperback, 645 pages, published in 2015, traditionally published
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