Crown of Midnight by Sarah J Maas

Wow, so many things happen in this book.

Spoiler alert. Turn away now.

To be fair, I try but inevitably always give spoilers. I like them. It gives me something to look forward to. If you don't like them, you'd be reading the Amazon summary and not any of the reviews, much less Googling other people's opinion of the book.

But wow. In the following chronological order:

Celeana and Chaol get together.

Nehemia dies.

Celeana and Chaol break up.

Dorian discovers that he has untapped magical powers.

Celeana is actually fae and the lost heir of Terrasen.


The first part of the book is adorable. Celeana and Chaol are so cute together. Dorian is super jealous of them, but who wouldn't be when you watch two people first fall in love. But of course, things are not meant to be. Chaol gets kidnapped and Celeana has a flashback of what happened to Sam and goes mental to save him. But after she saves him, she finds out about Nehemia...!!!

All this occurs because of various political machinations. Celeana isn't too concerned about these yet, so I won't go into it until it matters to her. But she gets sucked in by the King, by Nehemia's allegiance to the rebels, by Elena (the first fae queen's ghost)... She feels like a pawn, and can't help by notice that what happened to her before is happening again on a bigger scale.

Nehemia's death affects Celeana severely. She keeps blaming herself, blaming the world and ultimately Chaol for losing her best friend. Chaol, on the other hand, I totally sympathize with. He was just doing his job, like she was. Only she'd been betrayed by people in power before and has since started thinking for herself. Whereas, he has not had to suffer the terrible misfortune of a bad boss who took advantage of him (until now... maybe).

In the meantime, Dorian is all lonesome in his discovery that he has magical powers. He's scared witless because he knows his dad may kill him for it. So he tries to research stuff on his own until he accidentally reveals himself to Celeana. They sort of try to help each other for a bit, but they're a little too wrapped up in feeling sorry for themselves to be effective.

For the last point, only Chaol knows because Celeana revealed herself to save him from a bump in the night that shows up near the end of the book. Finding out that she's fae caused Chaol to get super worried and works to send her away to the last fae allied kingdom in the world, to keep her safe from the king. And just before she leaves, Celeana reveals the last part to Chaol in an obscure way, but he finds out before the end of the book... and cause him to worry some more.

And that's when the next book starts.

!!!