Crown of Midnight is the second installment of the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J Maas. This review will hold spoilers for Throne of Glass, but not for Crown of Midnight.

Celaena Sardothien won the competition and has been appointed as the king’s champion. But that does not mean that is loyal to the evil man she is supposed to be serving. Dark secrets and mysteries were revealed in Throne of Glass and now Celaena is coming face to face with monsters she didn’t even know existed. 

Trust is tested and broken as her allies keep secrets from her. Dorian, the crown prince, is still upset about her ending their relationship. Chaol, the captain of the guard, doesn’t tell her information that she needs to know. Nehemia, the foreign princess, is caught in more lies than anyone else. 

When tragedy hits, Celaena must come to terms with the fact that she is alone in the glass castle. She must decide if she can overlook her friend’s indiscretions and whose side she is on. 

This book took me by surprise. While I enjoyed the first one, I loved this one! I had a lot of questions when Throne of Glass ended and this book was able to answer a lot of them. However, it left me on a cliffhanger that is forcing me to pick up the next book as soon as I finish typing this.

Celaena was much more relatable in this novel than she was in the first one because life was finally settling into a normal routine and more of her personal beliefs were revealed. I enjoyed getting to know her on a deeper level and seeing the way she responded to different situations.

As for her trio of friends, I was shocked by all of them in this novel. Dorian, Chaol, and Nehemia all took me by surprise and each in a different way. I thought I had made up my mind about the characters, but I saw a different side to each of them in this one too.

Maas did a good job when writing this novel. There were only a few spots where the writing itself caught my attention, which is still pretty good. While it is always disappointing to find a typo or mistake when reading a book, there weren’t enough to really hurt my opinion of the book.

This book was split into two different sections and while I am not always a huge fan of authors doing that, it didn’t bother me in this book. I know having different parts in novels can provide the reader with an easy place to set down the book, it also changes the flow of the writing.

Maas also switched POV’s quite a lot in this novel. The characters who had the most time were Celaena, Chaol, and Dorian, but there were several other POV’s included as well. This is not a bad thing, but it did catch me off guard a few times because I did not know whose head I was in.

Overall, I gave this book 4.5 out of 5 stars, but since I do not do half stars, I chose to go down to 4 out of 5. I think that if a book gets 5 stars there is no second-guessing it. I highly recommend this series so far. I am so glad that I picked it up again. I can’t believe I didn’t keep going the first time around.

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