The library hold list for anything Sarah J Mass is crazypants. Finally this book arrived – looking absolutely tortured. It’s very obviously a popular series. I guess I was just lucky that I actually got the first one in the series.
I have all the sequels on hold, so hold your breath to find out if I actually get them in some kind of order or not.
Just a reminder, here there be spoilers.
So first of all, I thought the premise was solid. Royal daddy wants a personal bully-boy. His son decides to mess with him by getting a world-famous assassin that daddy put in the literal salt-mines to complete for the role as a sly fuck-you. Hilariously petty. I love it.
But it turns out it’s not just a straight-forward competition. Somebody is using forbidden magic. I have to say it isn’t a shock that the King who is slaughtering magic-users for being heretical is also using magic to gain power. It has been a long tradition that the ruling class get access to things that are forbidden to the mere peons in this world as well. I have to point out that Princess Nehemia’s family is not innocent of this – she specifically says that Wyrdmarks are a magic that is carefully guarded and handed down within her own royal family. Just because her country’s leaders are not the ones on the offensive in this specific conflict does not mean that their hoarding of magical knowledge isn’t also messed up.
And I have to say that the Wyrdmark portals are fascinating – they open into other worlds, including the realms of the dead. I mentioned back in my review of ACOSF that I was really interested in the idea of portals that allow you to travel between worlds, and here they are again.
I also want to say that the foreshadowing of Cain’s involvement was really well done. Every time she mentioned him getting bigger seemed to happen after another murder, and it put a tickle in my brain so that when his involvement was finally revealed it made absolute sense. Also Perrington’s machinations and how he was manipulating Kaltaine – it was so obvious what he was doing, so having her confused and in pain was essential to her falling for the plot, so I thought that was really well done.
I put this in the “romantasy” section even though there wasn’t much romance yet – romantic interest, yes. I expect she’ll probably end up with the Prince just because that’s how these things usually roll, but honestly I favour Chaol. He has more personality.
Now for the things I didn’t like.
One. Their age. They are CHILDREN, what the hell, she was imprisoned at 16? 17? And we’re supposed to believe that she already had a successful lucrative career as a professional assassin before her arrest? Her muscles haven’t finished growing yet! Like absolutely starting her solo career at that age if she was training from childhood, but that’s far too young to be holding her own in combat against fighters with decades of practice on her. Add ten years then I’ll buy it.
Two. Nobody can be good at everything, so it makes the most sense to me if assassin training focuses on things that prioritizes stealth. She needs to be able to fight well enough to get herself out of a sticky situation sure, but it makes no sense to me that an assassin would be an expert in direct combat. Poisons, traps, subterfuge, disguise, the best way to kill somebody silently from behind, how to make a death look like an accident – those things make sense. Her being able to interpret the marks at the murder site – that makes sense. Hitting somebody hard, dirty, and lethal to get out of a jam – that makes sense.
Sword-fighting really doesn’t. That’s soldier work and it’s a completely different skill set.
And finally, I read somewhere that this is actually the first book she started writing, and I can really tell. Her writing style here is so much more immature than ACOTAR.
But in spite of those complaints I found the world-building and characters interesting enough to wait for the sequels. Wish me luck!