Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas is the second book in the Throne of Glass series, following the first book Throne of Glass. In this book, Celaena has won the King of Adarlan’s competition to become the King’s new royal assassin. So now, she is doing the King’s dirty work, killing anyone he tells her too. Though Celaena despises the King and will never be loyal to him and his decisions, she is hiding it and pretending to be loyal to keep her own secrets hidden and to herself. Trying to do all of this is testing Celaena in many different ways. Especially when she is given a new task that could ruin everything with a new force on the horizon that is threatening the entire world that forces Celaena to make a difficult decision.
This book made me like Celaena even more than I did before because she was making her own choices; even though she won she still didn’t listen to the king and did her own thing, the right thing. She saved the people the king wanted her to kill so they could be safe and no one else would come after them and their families. I like how the author chose to give Dorian magic because I felt like it added more dimension and story to his character than what was already there. I also liked the plot of the story with the workdays and widgets. It seems to be something that has a lot of depth and potential to it to make the story new and interesting. I really liked the big ending with the battle in the other world and the new things that were brought to light about Celaena and who she is. It made for a great cliffhanger for the book and made me excited to start the next one, and hopefully it did that as well for other people who read the book. I liked Mort, the talking doorknob, I thought he was funny and added a little more magic and humour to the story that wasn’t quite there before. With everything going on in Celaena’s life and what she was dealing with because the story is about her, it was nice to get that relief for a bit.
Some things that I did not like about the book, was the fact that Nehemia died. I was really mad when I read that because I didn’t see a point to killing her. I felt like there was many other ways to go that would get the same effect the author wanted without having to kill her. If it was giving Celaena the push she needed or something else, I thought there were other ways to achieve that. And maybe I’m not seeing the full picture of it, but that’s just my opinion on it. I despised Roland, so much. He is really annoying and bratty, but then again that’s kind of the whole point because I think he is supposed to be a villain of the story like the king is; who I also despise with my whole being and his arrogance really got on my nerves sometimes…or a lot of the time, but again he is the villain, so he’s supposed to be hated. And if I’m being completely honest, which I hope you all want me to be, Chaol really got on my nerves sometimes with what he was saying to everyone and the actions and choices he made. Sometimes I really wish these characters were real so I could give them a piece of my mind when they are acting like this, especially when I know they can be better. But, alas it is only fiction, so that can’t happen. And, there isn't anything I wish the author did differently or added in.
So, if you have already read the first book Throne of Glass, and you enjoyed it. Then definitely read the sequel because it only gets better as it goes on. And this one is book 2 out of like 7. So readers are definitely not far away from the end of Celaena’s story, and I’m not done reading about it. Anyway, highly recommend reading, even if you were a bit on the fence about the first one, still give this one a try, and continue on with the rest of the series, like I will be doing.