Book Title: Kingdom of Ash
Author: Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Fantasy
Page Count: 980
Started/Ended Date: February 22 – February 28
Total Reading Time: 17 hours 2 minutes

Aelin Galathynius has vowed to save her people ― but at a tremendous cost. Locked within an iron coffin by the Queen of the Fae, Aelin must draw upon her fiery will as she endures months of torture. The knowledge that yielding to Maeve will doom those she loves keeps her from breaking, but her resolve is unraveling with each passing day…

With Aelin captured, friends and allies are scattered to different fates. Some bonds will grow even deeper, while others will be severed forever. As destinies weave together at last, all must fight if Erilea is to have any hope of salvation.

Years in the making, Sarah J. Maas’s New York Times bestselling Throne of Glass series draws to an explosive conclusion as Aelin fights to save herself―and the promise of a better world.

This was such an intense and action-packed book. Sitting down to write a review of it, I’m realizing how much happened in those 980 pages. We start with Aelin still held captive by Maeve and end with her saving the entire world. As I talked about in Tower of Dawn’s review, I am always amazed by fantasy writers. They literally build worlds in their minds. In Kingdom of Ash, not only did Sarah J. Maas have to create this world, a story worth telling, a system of magic that makes sense, but she also had to write a war, with detailed battle plans. As I was reading through the battles, I was thinking how it would have turned out if I had written it: “The good side fought the bad side for a really long time. There were a lot of sword moves and some magic thrown around. For a little bit, it looked like the bad side would win, but the good guys won.” It would have been a much shorter book.

As enthralled as I was throughout this book, I would still like to sue for emotional damages over the death of Gavriel. I honestly didn’t cry right away because Sarah J. Maas has a habit of bringing her characters to the brink of death, then yanking them back (read as: Aelin in every book). She also has a history of killing off characters and bringing them right back from the dead (read as: everyone in ACOTAR). So, I thought, surely she wouldn’t kill off the purest, most lovable character for no reason. Well, apparently there was a reason: to emotionally destroy me.

I know it makes sense for the series to end here. It honestly wouldn’t be fair to the characters to put them through any more trauma. However, I would read the hell out of a novella of the characters living happily ever after. Tell me Rowan and Aelin have precious little fae babies, or tell me about the house Chaol builds for Yrene. Hell, I’d even take a run-down of how trade relations are going. I feel like these characters have become my friends, and I am just as interested in their happily ever afters as I was interested in their adventures.

What did you think of this book? Let me know in the comments!