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1) Throne of Glass ★★☆☆�
2) Crown of Midnight ★★★★�
3) Heir of Fire ★★★★�
0,5) The Assassin's Blade ★★★★�

"What if we go on only to more pain and despair? What if we go on, only to find a horrible end waiting for us?" "Then it is not the end."

It took me only a few chapters to understand why this book is either the one that made this series truly become one of their favorites, either the one that made them like it a less lot. Queen of Shadows is the turning point in Throne of Glass, and either you'll like the direction it's going with and the choices the author made, either you won't. I started to not like it, because of two points, but after talking about it with the friend that encouraged me the most to give this series a second chance, my first issue with it was solved. As for the second one, while I don't agree with it, I can understand the point of view of people who do, which made it easier to accept.

You can read said conversation between Mary and I on my status update here, just be warned that there are spoilers for Queen of Shadows. I won't say anymore about it in this review, since this conversation got it covered. I will just say that while this book is full of action, it doesn't forget character's development and stays true to the characters we got to know in the previous books. Maybe you can relate to it, maybe you can't. It depends heavily on letting your emotions not allowing you to do a good character analysis (which was my case with Chaol, who is, by the way, still one of my favorite characters so don't hate on Chaol in the comments) and being able to relate to how someone deals with a situation (which still isn't my case with Aelin, but now I get that it's the case for others and I not only respect that, but still liked her after getting used to it).

This is also the book that picked my interest for Manon. While Heir of Fire is for now my favorite book in the series, I kept putting the book down every time it was Manon's chapter. In Queen of Shadows, she truly gets interesting and has a lot of potential for the next books. Now, to be honest, I love Asterin much more. Dorian is still suffering, Arobynn is still an asshole but an interesting one, and Aedion is still amazing. Rowan is kind of boring unfortunately. I definitely see Aelin and him together, but Aelin still gets her own character's development outside of her relationship with him, which isn't really the case for Rowan in this book. It's a loss, because when he was introduced in the previous book, there was a lot of potential for his character and I expected more in this book.

Two new female characters are introduced in this book, Nesryn and Elide. While they're very interesting and I'll never complain for having more female characters to read about, I wanted to get to know them better. I feel like I can't really root for them now, and I hope they'll have more scenes in the next books in order for me to become more invested in their storylines.

But let's go back to my favorites: Chaol like I already said (and to be honest, the friendship between him and Dorian is the most interesting relationship in this series - don't argue with me), and now Lysandra. Once again, it was a great idea to read The Assassin's Blade right after the third book and before this one. Lysandra is such a great character and I absolutely love her. I won't spoil anything, but I can't wait to read more about her.

Overall, I really loved this book like you can see with the rating. Sure, it's not perfect, but I can't think of a book in this series that I'd call a perfect one (even the one I gave 5 five stars to). I understand both people who fell even more in love with this series after reading this book and people who couldn't get on board with it. I think there are a lot of interesting conversations to have around this book, which is why I put this link at the beginning of my review. But while we can challenge some of our own feelings and opinions, there are others things that make us who we are and that we cannot change - and in that regard, we must respect that everyone is different and didn't go through life the same way we did.