Crown of Midnight Review

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Crown of Midnight

By Sarah J. Mass

Crowned by Evil.
Bound by Duty.
Divided by Love.

Celaena Sardothien, royal assassin, is the King of Adarlan’s deadliest weapon. She must win her freedom through his enemies’ blood – but she cannot bear to kill for the crown. And every death Celaena fakes, every lie she tells, put those she loves at risk.

Torn between her two protectors – a captain and a prince – and battling a dark force far greater than the king, Celaena must decide what she will fight for: her liberty, her heart or the fate of a kingdom…

Summary from Goodreads.

So after having Crown Of Midnight sitting on my bookshelf for almost 2 years now, and since I am moving soon so throwing almost everything out I decided that I should probably give this a read as it is so hard to get library books that I want here in New Zealand. Part of me is glad to have finally read this, but now I have 4 more books that I have to read with the final book being released next year (at least I will not be waiting to finish too long though).

Lets start out with what I enjoyed about Crown Of Midnight, and their were mainly 2 things. The first is Fleetfoot. Why? Because dogs are amazing and I always love seeing what they do in stories. The second is the mystery around the Wyrdmarks and what is actually going on in the background with the King.

Aside from those, I found this a very so-and-so book.

As I have said before, love triangles are extremely frustrating and have always dragged down any book that I have with one in it. Not that it truely seemed like a love triangle in Crown Of Midnight but it was supposed to be (between Celaena, Dorian and Chaol). I also found their to be little to no world-building. The things that I love about fantasy, and especially high-fantasy is the worlds that the authors create, and unfortunately Mass did nothing to build upon what she has created. Thinking about it, she did not really explain much about this land in the first book, I hope that she has changed that for the next book.

I also noticed the very obvious attempts at plot-twists. When a plot-twist is done correctly, the should make the reader want to re-read the entire book to see what they missed (if you have seen The Sixth Sense 1999 by M. Night Shyamalan then that is the best plot-twist that I have ever seen; seriously watch it if you have not yet). In regard to these plot-twists, they were more like ‘oh hey, if you haven’t been paying attention enough then tad-dah!!!!’ This frustrates me as all it is doing is confirming what I already was 99% sure off. I do not know whether it is because Mass does not understand how to properly tease a plot-twist without giving it all away or just plain sloppy writing but it just brings down the entire quality of the book.

Which brings me onto the writing style. I liked how Mass kept switching between POV’s, but by the end it seemed like she was using that as a crutch so that she didn’t have to try and explain things from a perspective that would have made more sense. Instead of changing POV’s in the middle of a fight, please do it either before or afterwards. It is just too jarring changing from an Assassins POV to the Crown Prince’s, back to the Assassins’s then over to the Captain of the Guards right back to the Assassin. Yeah I highly doubt that anyone could be able to pull that many POV changes within a handful of pages and make it not take you out of the story.

If you are still enjoying YA books then Crown Of Midnight should be a sure fire win for you, but if you are interested in more than love triangles and very predicable plot-twists then give this a miss.

2/5

Have you read Crown Of Midnight? Do you agree with my review? Let me know your opinion in the comments below!

Check it out on Goodreads here.

Purchase it on Amazon here.

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