The Assassin and the Desert by Sarah J Maas

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The 2nd book to read for the first part of May's selections for the SJM-along is The Assassin and the Desert. This is the third prequel novella (listed as 0.3) in Sarah J Maas's Throne of Glass series. This is also included as part of the collection called The Assassin's Blade. The readalong was organized by Jenn (The Book Refuge), but the live show for this book and Heir of Fire was on Tori's (Novel Life) channel on May 15th. As you can probably tell since this review is up a lot later, I did not read it in time.

After the events of the first novella, Aelin has been beaten by Arobynn and sent to train with the Silent Assassins and their leader the Mute Master. Their home-base resides in the Red Desert. It takes a month to get there, and once she does she butts against the new form of training. As Aelin starts to find her place and the new style of training, she also finds new friends and connection deeper than expected.

This was such a great novella. My favorite of them so far! I just loved getting to see Celaena work to develop new skills and really improve her assassin skills. I also loved seeing the differences of how Arobynn trains his assassins versus the Mute Master. It was just so crazy how much more effective the Mute Master manages to train while also keeping a good sense of culture and family between all of his disciples. The way that the whole situation really enforces the feelings that Celaena has started to have towards Arobynn and that was so nice to see as well. We also get her realizing the depth of her feelings for Sam and really start to deal with those.

A quick review for a quick novella, but this really was so much fun. It was fun, once again, to get the full backstory of things that Celaena has mentioned in the full length novels. While they are getting a little bittersweet since we know that at some point Sam dies and Celaena gets captured and sent to the salt mines as a slave, it's just really neat to see the build up of how she really gets to the point that Throne of Glass starts. If you've read the Throne of Glass series but haven't picked up these novellas, I highly recommend them!

Have you read The Assassin and the Desert?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: The Assassin and the Desert, Sarah J Maas, 5-stars, 0 days, eBook, 103 pages, published in 2012, traditionally published