Tower of Dawn by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's pretty funny because I keep going into all these Sarah J. Maas books expecting to dislike it for some or maybe all the reasons I an come up with. I mean, it just FEELS like it should be ridiculed if not put on a pedestal because it's so much GIRL POWER, you know? Like it should be some kind of trendy whatnot that will be quickly forgotten once all the rabid fans have tired of it.

And yet.

Sigh. I keep liking these books MORE each time I get to the next in the series. This one, in particular, is an odd duck. It's just side-characters! Chaol, anyone? I mean, sure, he was pretty big in the story until he lost it when his favorite assassin princess blew his mind, but then he's been pretty much out of all the Big Epic Story since then. Until now.

And what do we have?

A slowed-down tale, but well-written. Don't laugh, ya'll, but this is totally a soap opera novel. Can you say Romance between the misunderstood hospital patient and the nurse with a grudge? I can. And I will. I mean, sure this starts out as a fishing expedition to get more support for the assassin's righteous war, but it quickly becomes nothing more than physical therapy sessions and a bit of deep, deep healing for poor Chaol. His healer has her issues, too, and golly she's mean, but as I said, this is a SOAP OPERA.

It also happened to be rather fun. A nice change of pace. The extra reveals regarding the much larger plotlines were solid and the side story among the wyvern tribes and the spiders was a great change from all the sweaty, sexy, nurse-action going on.

But above all, this entire book was a nice change of pace from THE REST OF THE SERIES. It just goes to show that Maas can mix it up. :)

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