I knew it was coming from the first novella, but I was still completely unprepared for what happened. This novella was too much for me to take. It was so painful and heartbreaking and brutal and even if I knew that the ending was not that bad, I still shocked when I was on the last page.
Sam and Celaena take a mission which is hard for any assassin. You don’t have to even know Sam’s fate to see that their mission was going to be a complete failure. Celaena thinks she can do it, and that she’ll earn enough money for them to start their new lives. Arobynn is still a treacherous bastard. His scheme is far from perfect, but tricky enough to lure Celaena in. Sam, on the other hand, is changed to a point where I almost don’t recognise him. I had no idea why he was so different, but he was.
Although the murder scenes were as bloody as usual, I think the Crime Lord of Rifthold was truly sadistic and, in some ways, a highlight of this novella. Imagine a human being enjoying torturing his victims and playing with their corpses until they didn’t have any blood to splatter. Farren disgusted me most, for his unmeasurable cruelty and extreme brutality, and his sick personality. And again, Celaena fell right into their trap, just like her last time. I pitied her, but also hoped that she would think twice before she leaped.
I’ve read Throne of Glass before this and now everything makes sense. What happened to Celaena was so unbearable. It explains why it is so hard for her to keep herself together whenever she remembers her past, especially when she was betrayed by someone she couldn’t point out. After reading this novella, I felt her rage and the need to find justice. Despite the horrible things that happened to her, everything was perfectly executed by Maas. I couldn’t stop admiring her writing style and how it carried me away and stole my heart.
“She would tuck Sam into her heart, a bright light for her to take out whenever things were darkest. And then she would remember how it had felt to be loved, when the world had held nothing but possibility. No matter what they did to her, they could never take that away.”
“My name is Celaena Sardothien,” she whispered, “and I will not be afraid.”
TandeWrites 