Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Better. Better than the first book. By a lot.

Yes, the first one is perfectly decent and FUN when it comes to the whole mystery subplot, physical competitions, and a BIT of the romance angle, but the second pushes most of that aside. It focuses, instead, on INTRIGUE. Court intrigue. Celaena is kinda weak in that, as an assassin, she does remarkably LITTLE killing, but I can appreciate how she sticks it to her prig of a King and does everything she can to subvert anything he cares about.

That's FINE. Entertaining, even.

And on top of that, the whole magical subplot gets better. More interesting. And the mild reveals about Celaena's history continues to slowly trickle out pleasurably. Did I mention that it happens slowly? Yes, well, that's okay. The pacing is just about perfect across the board. More, pacing is super important for any UF book.

Huh? Was this supposed to be a UF book? Nope! But it has ALL the hallmarks of one aside from being fantasy in a fantasy realm. YA feel and trademarks, first-person snark and Mary Sue, and a continuing three-way romance undergoing some strain. EVERYTHING here is familiar. Old School. Not even the magic is all that impressive.

But the writing flows. The writing flows well. It's fun and thanks to the new reveals and the history that came before in the first book, it's starting to get some real meat. Hell! Celaena finally broke down with ugly tears! We all love it when Mary Sue shatters into a million pieces. :)

Oh. And that cliffhanger. M***er****er!

Yeah. Well. I guess I could have seen that coming. Dock me a few points here.


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