By: Stephanie Wyatt
This book is a prequel to her Throne of Glass series. It tells five stories during Celaena’s time as Adarlan’s Assassin. I started Kingdom of Ash (the last book in the series ) a few weeks ago. I decided to stop reading and finish this book first. I’m glad I did. I feel like I understand a few characters better now. I feel like a lot of choices that I thought were random were explained, so now they make sense.
It took me a while to get into this book. The pacing is good. I missed certain characters that aren’t introduced until later in the books. I did like the fact that each story fed off of the previous story, but you could still pick any of the five and not be confused while reading.
The stories have all of the wit, humor, and romance of the series, and it was nice to meet some of her fellow assassins. I feel I can appreciate it more after reading the majority of the series, but I can imagine the excitement of seeing your favorite side character come back, or getting to read their origin story. I think reading it later also helped me appreciate the character development. I also think it explains Celaena’s attitude in Throne of Glass perfectly. I am a glutton for backstory. It is one of my favorite parts of world building, so this book was right up my alley.
Overall, I normally don’t reread things for a while, but I can see myself rereading this if I ever just miss the world and its characters. I don’t have to reread all 7 books to jump into the world again. I also think it’s a good introduction to Sarah J. Maas as an author. You can get a feel for her writing style without having to commit to her other eleven books. (Just a warning: You probably will want to anyway.)
You can find the book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Scribd.
Functionally Fictional 
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