Reviews with content warning for Blood - Kingdom of Ash

I have finally made it to the end of my Throne of Glass reading experience.
"Kingdom of Ash" is the conclusion, at least thus far, to the Throne of Glass series. Aelin Galathynius has promised to herself and her people that she would save them, but she could never have imagined what sacrifices she would have had to make to protect everyone. She is locked in an iron box at the complete mercy of the Queen of the Fae, Maeve. With all of her friends and allies scattered around the land, they will need to find a way to come together to finally end this once and for all.
What an epic and intense conclusion this book was! It was very difficult at times to read about Aelin because Sarah J. Maas goes into intense detail with the types of torture Aelin is subjected to. However, Aelin proves to be such a strong leader because she never breaks, even when she thinks she cannot bear to take any more.
I absolutely loved seeing how much Rowan loved Aelin. He would stop at nothing to bring Aelin safely home to him. It was also his commitment to her that helped Aelin survive the brutal torment Maeve put her through. It was beautiful to see their love and respect grow for one another.
I also enjoyed seeing a quick peek into Chaol's and Yrene's lives. I do really appreciate their story and how it allowed a more robust view of the world.
Overall, I was incredibly satisfied with this book. This installment in the series had a little bit of everything and really kept me invested through the entire almost 1000 pages. Once I started this book, I could not put it down because I was enthralled with the characters.
It was definitely not easy to get through this series, and this is not my favorite world from Sarah J. Maas, but I am overall happy with where everyone ended up!

Content Warnings

raven_go's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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alyanna_dm's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

5.0

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toastyghosty13's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

this book started off very strong off the heels of a cliffhanger from one of the previous books. i loved seeing all of the characters grow into their roles and becoming more mature.

i do think there are an immense number of loose ends that i don’t feel were tied up properly by the end. so many characters that were mentioned in previous books, and plot lines/details of characters that were never elaborated on only to be treated as if they had never existed. i know this is SJMs first major series and how she got into writing professionally, but 8 books deep and i’m kind of disappointed with how rushed and thrown together the ending felt.

Spoiler

i hope that there might be a continuation of the plot lines and characters i mentioned in other SJM works, since there is clearly that multiverse mention with ACOTAR. SJM does have a tendency to pull out old forgotten details to become a plot twist in her books.

despite all of this, i still really enjoyed the series as a whole and will absolutely reread in the future.

edit: changing my rating from 3.5 to 3 after thinking it through more. also here are the exact loose ends i had in mind and vaguely mentioned above

WARNING HEAVY SPOILERS

Spoiler

elide has witch blood, but then how do we know she isn’t immortal? her witch blood was mentioned once and never really brought up again. this could have helped with lorcans fear of her growing old while he stays young, besides binding his life to hers like he canonically does. this would also give elide a connection to the witches now rebuilding their kingdom in the wastes at the end of all of this, since she could help and still maintain a regular cadence with some of the friends she made there
dorian’s mother and brother never being heard of after initial mention
same with chaols mother and brother for the most part. at least we got some closure about them wanting to live with chaol & yrene and reconnect but it would have been cool to see more of them and his father too
i also wished we would have had literally anything with aelin in eyllwe like meeting nehemias family especially when they were so close around the time they found the mirror in empire of storm. she was very close with nehemia and i’m shocked there was no mention of them or trying to get more support from them for the war
it would have been cool to see more about the gods, they’re very mysterious the entire time yet are pivotal in how everything happens. how did the gods get here in the first place? are there more of them? also why do they suck so much? you would think they would actually try to help aelin with bringing them back to their own world, they really made everything more difficult for aelin & crew after their ”special quest” was the main plot pusher the entire time
same goes a bit for the valg, mainly with what are erawans brothers up to right now. while reading queen of shadows i would have bet money that they would have come through a portal for an epic showdown with aelin.
who is the owl at maeve’s side? was it silba? why bother mentioning it at all if it’s never brought up again. i really thought that would play a pivotal point in the war and being an ally
what happened to cressida blueblood? she ran off after facing manon but wasn’t mentioned again, unlike the blackbeak matron who was killed in a main battle by asterin when the thirteen sacrificed themselves
aelin losing her powers for literally no reason at all, the gods suck and if anything i feel like this loss made the final showdown against maeve/erawan kinda lame
aelin might have seen a certain main man from ACOTAR while falling through worlds; i haven’t seen any mention of this in the ACOTAR books though. will that also conveniently be forgotten?
sol, ravi, galan, ansel, ilias, and other characters that came to aid in the war; sjm really didn’t go into detail about them and i want to know more backstory about who they are and why i should care about them. ansel and ilias should have had some sort of catch-up scene that shows what they’ve been doing the last 2 years since aelin last saw them in the assassins blade prequel events.
vaughn, who is apart of the group of warriors that took the blood oath of maeve. i think he’s been mentioned twice throughout the series. why bother even mentioning him when it’s just another character to keep track of that yields nothing to the plot despite heavily implying that he could be important?
rolfe and the mycenians. they come through big time and save aedion and lysandras butts. they are supposed to be this wondrous mythical group of people from the sea, yet they are barely talked about despite being the main reason there are any survivors in aedions legion to go protect terassen after perranth falls.
the whitethorn squad that turns on maeve. we meet their characters initially but they are also barely mentioned again. would have been nice to see anything of the whitethorn family dynamic.

i really wanted to like this book more than i did. i don’t think it did the series justice as the way to tie it all together in the end. imo, about half of the books that came before it had much more pickup and more interesting plot points, so this felt like it faltered in the greatness it was set up for.

the first half of kingdom of ash felt like there was a lot of build up of traveling and dwindling forces on the terassen front all for a (imo) lackluster payoff of what it could have been.

this should have been 2-3 more books, with 2 of them being tandem like how empire of storm and tower of dawn are. the 2 tandem could have been one POV from where aedion and lysandra are and how they are managing with perranth/terassen, while the other could have been rowan/lorcan/elide/fenrys/aelin and their adventure and battles. then a 3rd and final book to actually tie it all together once both sides of the tandem have truly met up, since they didn’t even meet up until the last ~90 pages of kingdom of ash anyways.

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