Heir of Fire by Sarah J. Maas
Throne of Glass, book #3
published on September 2nd 2014 by Bloomsbury USA Childrens
romance | fantasy | paranormal
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Lost and broken, Celaena Sardothien’s only thought is to avenge the savage death of her dearest friend: as the King of Adarlan’s Assassin, she is bound to serve this tyrant, but he will pay for what he did. Any hope Celaena has of destroying the king lies in answers to be found in Wendlyn. Sacrificing his future, Chaol, the Captain of the King’s Guard, has sent Celaena there to protect her, but her darkest demons lay in that same place. If she can overcome them, she will be Adarlan’s biggest threat – and his own toughest enemy.
While Celaena learns of her true destiny, and the eyes of Erilea are on Wendlyn, a brutal and beastly force is preparing to take to the skies. Will Celaena find the strength not only to win her own battles, but to fight a war that could pit her loyalties to her own people against those she has grown to love?
–
You didn’t need a weapon at all when you were born one…
Each Throne of Glass novel features a different side of Calaena Sardothien. In Throne of Glass, we were introduced to the feminine, prim and proper version of our heroine. Crown of Midnight gave us a ruthless killing machine. Finally, in Heir of Fire, we were able to see Calaena as a desperate, defeated and hopeless creature. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. Maybe I liked seeing Calaena as a fragile girl who only wanted to do good, but unfortunately can’t. But to be honest, I’m kind of unsure about whether I like her or not–this has been my issue since book one. I’m really indifferent to her.
Here was the dream–the nightmare–made flesh.
Action-packed and gritty–this book will make you wish you had a seatbelt on. Most characters showed their deadly sides and definitely proved that they were badass. We have a whole bunch of new characters who I thought were radiating strength from the beginning–Rowan and Manon. Rowan is a powerful, faithful and mostly-kind Fae who will play a big part in Calaena’s self-discovery. Manon is a witch (I’m unsure of why she’s relevant in the story–we’ll see in future books!) with a thirst for blood. I loved her straightforward, bitchy attitude.
Of course, with strong characters come the weak ones. Chaol, who I at least respected in book two, turned into a guy I didn’t care about at all. I wanted to skip a few of his chapters just because I couldn’t bring myself to care about his situation. Dorian and Sorscha–NO. Just no. These two wanted to make me pull my hair out. Can I cut them out of the story, please?
She burned and burned and burned.
Plot-wise, Maas did a mostly-great job with keeping me interested in the multiple storylines. (I say “mostly-great” because DORIAN, SORSCHA AND CHAOL–nope, don’t care.) POVs were constantly swapping, but I didn’t mind because each person had a different and interesting story to tell. (Basically, I was interested in only the plotlines for Calaena, Manon and Rowan.)
There were also a few surprising twists towards the end. Maas is one of the only authors who can pull off these kinds of twists and still gets away with it. There was this one twist that I didn’t particularly have any interest in, but it was SHOCKING, let me tell you that.
Another little issue I had with the book was the length. Was it necessary to make it this long? I think a few parts were sort of filler-y and could have been taken out. Lots of parts, especially in the beginning, were kind of slow.
Overall, I still enjoyed Heir of Fire much more than I did Throne of Glass, but a lot less than I enjoyed Crown of Midnight. Bad things were balanced out with the good things, but I think Rowan really outweighs a lot of the things I hated about the book and this book had its fair share of flail-worthy aspects and eye-roll-inducing scenes.
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About Aimee
Aimee loves being a little bookworm (okay–she doesn’t like being little). She also loves chocolates and sweets but is freaked out by the thought of possibly getting diabetes.
I Adork You 
I definitely enjoyed this one more than you did but I just realized I never really looked at the books as giving us a different side to view Celeana as! You’re totally right though but my ignorance completely failed me here! Great review!
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Aw, I was very caught up in this book – though the beginning was a little slow for me – and I just loved Dorian and Sorsha! It’s too bad this series is a bit hit or miss with you so far – hopefully it will get better for you with the next books?? There’s still so much to go, it’s kinda stressing me how much patience I’ll need to wait for these books. :D
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Lovely review, Aimee!! From your review I gather that you DID like it although there were some problems. As an avid ToG fan, that makes me happy that you did like some parts! :D I did feel like the book was a bit long but I, like Charlene, got caught up in the world-building and Wendlyn in general. Chaol annoyed me so much in this book!! I think Sorscha was put in this book to make that horrifying end happen… She was a means to the end… But oh gosh, ROWAN <3 You didn't mention Aedion though!! :o Maas does pull those plot twists on us though… I'm really excited for the next book, HoF set up the next book to fabulous. Speaking of fabulous, fabulous review, Aimee <3
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It seems like book 2 & 3 should have been switched around, doesn’t the heroine normally rebound after hitting rock bottom to become her kickass self? At least that’s how it works in Urban Fantasy. I was under the impression that pretty much everyone who reads this series falls head over heels in love with it, so thanks for the different perspective, and 3-stars is still pretty darned good!
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Oh I’m sorry that you were able to enjoy this book as much as you’d hoped Aimee. I was a huge fan of the first two book, and although they both left me in a complete mess, I’m hoping that this one doesn’t. I was also looking forward to get more of Chaol too, but now I’m not so sure. Thank you for your honest review Aimee, it’s always great to read a differing opinion on a book that everyone has seemed to love! :)
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Oh man, your review has to be the one of the only three-star reviews I’ve seen for Heir of Fire! Everyone else seemed to absolutely love it, but after reading your thoughts, I’m not so sure I’ll enjoy it as much as everyone does, too… Then again, I haven’t even read Crown of Midnight yet, so who knows, haha. I think it’s really interesting to see Celaena’s charactorial transformation throughout the series, though. I like that with every book, we seem to be getting closer and closer to the “true” Celaena — like, she starts showing us the raw sides of herself, rather than the prim and proper one in the first book, like you said. But it’s such a shame that you still felt nothing much toward her. Characters aren’t much if the reader can’t connect to them. :/
Chaol and Dorian, too?! I have to admit that I kind of shipped Celaena and Dorian together in ToG, but all my other bookish friends were telling me that reading CoM would change my mind, and now I see that Chaol becomes some kind of shallow wannabe love interest and Dorian hooks up with some chick with a weird name and I’m assuming they do some pretty stupid cheesy stuff throughout the story which is why you want to pull your hair out?
Ugh.
I’m not sure which is worse: bland characters, or the multiple perspectives. I don’t do well with multiple POVs at all, because it becomes really hard for me to relate to a character. And most of the time, unless they’re executed well (which is rarely), I just don’t see the point in having so many people tell a single story. I’ve heard there’re up to 7 perspectives in the book, if I’m not mistaken? IS THAT TRUE? O_O But at least you didn’t mind, so that’s a plus. xD
Bahaha, now I’m curious to been Rowan. I might enjoy Heir of Fire more now that I know what to expect, but yeah. Thanks for such an informative and entertaining review, Aimee! <3
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I think you nailed my feelings for this exactly Aimee! (Minus the whole Dorian + Sorscha thing…I rather liked their romance!) I felt like the multiple POVs were what made the pacing so slow. I mean, Maas pulled them off nicely, but I felt that there were some POVs that weren’t really needed to tell the story. (I mean, did we really need Manon and Aedion’s POVS?) I felt that, maybe if they were all connected or intertwined in some way, it might have been more entertaining.
Nonetheless, thanks for sharing and, as always, BRILLIANT review! <3
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I sort of skimmed this review because I haven’t read Crown of Midnight or Heir of Fire yet (only Throne of Glass) and sometimes worry about getting spoiled. (I mainly just read the bold bits.) I’m glad to see you enjoyed this overall, though I’m sad to hear you didn’t enjoy it as much as Crown of Midnight. I often feel like sometimes series books get too carried away with length. It’s like they’ve already split up the story into multiple books, but then they feel they have to make each book longer as the series goes and fill it up with extra stuff that just isn’t necessary, and it drives me a bit batty. I mean, when it was HP I was excited because I just wanted to read it all and I didn’t care and the more pages the more I could make the story last! But now it’s just sort of like… get to the point already.
I do think it’s cools e get to see some of the different sides of Caleana. That should be fun. And I’m curious about the boy situation since I didn’t love it in Throne of Glass. (I enjoyed Dorian, but totally didn’t get the love everyone had for Chaol.)
Anyways, great review! I definitely need to start catching up with this series! I’m so behind >.<
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This was such a great review and so different to a lot I’ve read! I’ll admit, I just did the longest post I’ve ever done on my Heir of Fire review – I totally got carried away fangirling (it happens to the best of us) and I don’t think I could have physically fit anymore gifs or fan art in hahaha XD
I totally agree with you on Chaol – I wanted to skip his parts as well, which is a shame because I used to really like him! But Rowan, Celaena and Manon – I loved them! I felt so sorry for Dorian, and I didn’t actually care that much for Sorscha… It’s more that I wanted him to be happy. I really enjoyed how long it was and all the world building, even though there was a lot of it! :D
I can’t wait to see what happens next!
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Awwwwwwwwww! I don’t want to enjoy a 500+ long book less than the first. :c This book seems to be so polarizing and I have only occasional middling reviews. I’m hesitant to try it because it’s so loooooooooooooonnnnnnng and I don’t want to read something loooooooooooooooooongggggg that also happens to be boring.
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