Wow. Way to change the pacing of a book. And just... everything really.

Let's start from the beginning.

Okay, so I was very disappointed with Throne of Glass. Instead of the fast-paced high-stakes story with a badass assassin as the main character that I expected, I was given an average story about a girl who also happened to be an assassin and how she's taken to the palace to drool over dresses, balls and whether she'd rather kiss the Crown Prince or The Captain of the Guard. And compete to become the King's Champion in her spare time. I didn't really care or connect with the characters. It was all very average and just meh.

That's how this book starts too. For the first 20 or so chapters (there's a total of 56) this whole thing just dragged and I had to actually make myself read it. We still have Celaena, who has known slavery and hunger but spends all her salary on shoes, dresses, hats, jewelry and other nonsense. All very assassin-like of her too (yes, that was sarcasm).

And of course we get the stupid love triangle part 2. I already got into this in my review for Throne of Glass but there was absolutely no need for a love triangle, it should have been a slow burn romance with Chaol since the beginning, which would have made everything that happens in this book (on a romantic level) way much better.

I mean, she did go from kissing one guy to having sex with the other and being hopelessly in love like she'd always known he was the one and always will be.

It just became too cheesy all of a sudden. I mean, broom closets? Really? I really wanted to love the romance in this book but couldn't. I found myself just rolling my eyes most of the time. And Dorian was just being all jealous and adding nothing to the plot.

So here I was, thinking about giving this a 2 or 3 star rating and not really caring about the story or the characters (Mort and Ress were probably my favorite characters at this point. And they don't really talk or show up that much).

But then

Chaol gets kidnapped and that other thing happens with Nehemia that I was not expecting at all

and everything goes to hell from then on and it's great. And that's where I got the story I was hoping to get from the beginning. We forget about the love triangle, the pacing changes, the stakes are raised and plot twists are thrown at every turn. I couldn't put it down. I started caring about the characters because there's actually some character development happening. I especially liked the turn Dorian's character took, finally becoming more for the story than just a pawn of the love triangle.

I do have to say that I saw the final plot twist coming from a million miles away, but that didn't make it any less awesome. And it leaves at a great place for Heir of Fire to pick up. I'm not giving this 5 stars because it took a third of the book for the good stuff to actually happen, but once it happened it was great.