Reading With Tyler

Synopsis: Goodreads

Together they will rise. Or together they will fall.

Aelin Galathynius has vowed to save her people-but at a tremendous cost. Locked in an iron coffin by the Queen of the Fae, Aelin must draw upon her fiery will as she endures months of torture. The knowledge that yielding to Maeve will doom those she loves keeps her from breaking, but her resolve unravels with each passing day.

With Aelin captured, her friends and allies have scattered. Some bonds will grow even deeper, while others will be severed forever. But as destinies weave together at last, all must stand together if Erilea is to have any hope of salvation.

Review:

Kingdom of Ash is the 7th and final book in the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas. There may be spoilers below for books that came before in the series. Any spoilers for Kingdom of Ash will be hidden. Also, this will be a long one… As I have a lot to say – and I don’t currently have the ability to trim it down! So, just in case I don’t figure out how to do that before the review releases… you’ve been warned. It’s a long one.

“To whatever end.”

Where do I begin with Kingdom of Ash? I was warned going into this that Part 1 was going to be emotional one but Part 2 was going to wreck me and I’d need to have tissues handy. Because of this paired with the endings of Empire of Storms specifically, I went into Kingdom of Ash with high expecations. Possibly, impossibly high expecations… If you can’t tell – I was let down because of this.

So, let’s begin. Kingdom of Ash begins with Aelin’s crews all separated because they’re all trying to tackle different parts of this upcoming war. Some are trying to find Aelin, some are trying to find an army, some are trying to win battles, and some are trying to figure out how to stop Erawan. But none of that mattered in comparison to Aelin & Fenrys’ journey through at least Part 1. My partner recommended I not read part 1 on lunch break at work, which was what led to me only being able to read in the evening for a week. But he was absolutely correct.

“You do not yeild.”

At the end of Empire of Storms (which is where Aelin’s journey pauses as Tower of Dawn takes place on a different continent with Chaol as the main character) everything looked pretty bleak for Aelin. So, I did expect there to be trouble in Kingdom of Ash for her – but I don’t think I was prepared for how that was going to be shown on the page. I never thought Throne of Glass would require content warnings and yet:

Minor spoiler in the form of a content warning

There is on page and reference to off page torture of Aelin and Fenrys. If this is something you struggle with, please take your time with the Aelin chapters of Kingdom of Ash.

Aside from the troubles she’s facing, as I said her whole crew is scattered to the winds handling different parts of this war. And that was honestly pretty cool. I did find it a little hard to keep track of who was in which crew once the crews started joining up and getting bigger. And similarly when multiple crews were doing the same thing but in different places – matching events to which location and which crew in my head became kind of difficult after a while…

I have complained often that I don’t like the way Maas does her POV switches as I often don’t find them very well telegraphed. That has definitely been solved by the time we got here (arguably Tower of Dawn) because I had no trouble figuring out whose POV we were in, even though there were a lot of them at this point. So, I loved seeing that improve!

Now onto part 2… Part 2 was slow for a while. It’s again one of my complaints with Kingdom of Ash as a whole. This book is HUGE and yet Part 2 felt quite a bit slower than part 1. But I was also expecting a lot out of this part because even though Part 1 absolutely tugged on my heartstrings and had me emotional, I knew part 2 was where it was supposed to hit…

I have to talk about the section of this book that absolutely wrecked me but it is so hard to do so without spoilers of any kind. So I’ve hidden it, and there is definitely minor spoilers below (it tells you who this emotional part was connected to, but not what happened). Please don’t read unless you’ve read KoA already.

So, I will not spoil what happened at all. But I will say, I have gone on a journey throughout this series with Manon Blackbeak. She was the reason I gave up on the series (mainly) the first time round… But this time, I’ve grown to love her… And love her character and relationships that she develops with the main cast and the relationships she shows she has with Abraxos and The Thirteen… Well, let me tell you that my heart didn’t survive Manon’s expereinces of the final battle. I was in physical pain reading the handful of chapters that I am specifically referring to…

Following THAT everything else fell flat for me. I was emotionally spent and ruined and kind of found myself getting annoyed at things that were happening after that… I definitely felt like that needed to have happened later so that I wasn’t so disconnected from it.

I don’t think the ending was bad – though I do think we were robbed of some of the wrap ups that Maas was doing, and like I said some of the events just plain annoyed me – I simply felt like the peak had hit a lot sooner and so there was nothing left for the final battle and the wrap up. I have since read some reviews of Kingdom of Ash and within the spoiler ones people refer to certain events as having been highly emotional and I just can’t see how that’s possible. Maybe I’m the out-lier in this situation.. But I do not think Kingdom of Ash was the strongest book in this series. I’m glad I read it though – Sarah J. Maas definitely deserved the second chance that I gave in 2025.

That being said, I’m still debating even now as to whether this was a 4 or 4.5 star read for me… I’m currently rating it 4 stars everywhere, but if I upgrade it to 4.5 stars, I’ll be sure to amend the review to show that! I’m so torn about it… Crown of Midnight and Heir of Fire are the two lowest rated (with the exception of Assassin’s blade, but that’s a collection of novellas) and I’m just trying to decide if they should all be 4 or 4.5 becuase I like these three equally… Time will tell. For now – it’s a 4 star!

“Live Manon.”
“Live.”

I’ve been reading this series over the course of 2025, so here are all the ratings in one place, so we can figure out the overall rating of the series:

The average rating of the Throne of Glass series is 4.6 stars! And honestly, I can get behind that. If I consider the ratings in the brackets rather than the star ratings shown it becomes 4.8 so no massive change. I really did like this series and can see why it gets recommended so often! It’s definitely worth the read.

Overall rating for the Throne of Glass Series: