The second installment in Sarah J. Maas’ Throne of Glass series is called Crown of Midnight and for a good reason! In the first Throne of Glass installment, Celeana Sardothian won the king’s competition to become none other than the king’s champion herself. Upon accepting this task to do his bidding, she is given a first task that requires her to kill the king’s enemies in cold blood. But Celeana has no time for unjust murders and kidnappings, so she comes up with a plan that helps evacuate the victims and keep her king’s needs in check.
The entirety of the book is contained within the string of information that comes from Celeana living within the castle where the king, Chaol, and Dorian all live as well. Obviously, she becomes best friends with Chaol and honestly even more than friends throughout the tail end of the book. Dorian and Nehemia, a princess warrior from another kingdom, become extremely close allies to her as well.
As Celeana continues her castle adventures with her friends, she’s also becoming quite familiar with persons who travel in and out of the king’s meetings weekly. One thing she takes quick notice of is one of the king’s visitors and Dorian’s cousin, Roland, who is wearing an interesting black ring that the king himself along with other royal court advisors also wear. Suspicious, right?
Celeana finds herself visiting a secret chamber under her royal bedroom that contains the tomb of past royals along with a sassy talking door knocker, Mort, which is weird because magic is seemingly banished from her kingdom. Upon her visit to the tomb, she finds out from Mort that she is in a great position of power, and the world is now dependent on her. Big things are coming for Celeana. In addition to that conversation, one of the royal court’s soon-to-be wives, Kaltain, tells Celeana that big things are coming; she hears the flapping of wings in her dreams.
This information is all so important to the plot of the entire story as Kaltain and her family used to possess magic and Mort, the talking door knocker, is seemingly magic himself. It seems whatever power that has a hold over the kingdom has its limitations. Upon the weirdness of magic limits and strange dreams of wings and battles, Celeana, who is still the king’s assassin champion, is in charge of killing Archer Finn. Finn, from what information the king can gather, is putting together a band of traitors. But Cealena has a past with Finn and cannot bring herself to end his life.
In honor of not spoiling the entirety of the story, all I can say is friends of Celeana’s get murdered and shit hits the fan with the king and any loyalty that remained of his son and captain of the guard. The story begins to get juicy when Celeana discovers the families within the kingdom who had possessed magic long ago, including her’s, and the evil hands that limit the kingdom’s powers of good. In addition to discovering the past magic of the kingdom that has long been banned, she also finds proof that there are strange demonic creatures in the clock tower of the castle, with strangely human features.
There is so much more that happens in the last couple of chapters of the book but for the sake of letting your mind be blown by itself, I am going to suggest you carry on and purchase the book as soon as you possibly can. The amount of cliffhangers and curves the story takes is astounding and I can’t possibly get enough of it.
Sarah J. Maas has this way of telling a story the way it should be told—with no detail left unsaid. The way I am able to immerse myself into the story and understand the full emotions of each character and how they’re feeling is insane. I’d love to see this series turned into a Hulu show or even a series of live-action movies because there is so much I want to see of the story with my own eyes.