We made it. This will be long. We've got a lot of ground to cover, chat.

Kingdom of Ash has been completed. I have read my way through Throne of Glass for the very first time. It's done. I have to say, I think the finale really did satisfy me in every way I could think of. It was bittersweet, fast-paced, and action heavy. We saw growth from Aelin as a character that I've been dying to see and that was preventing me from enjoying my time with her as a character.

This book was far more dispersed. We got every cluster of side characters equally and Aelin no longer dominated the page, which I felt was a good thing for me as someone who doesn't care for her and for the story. It let the other characters shine in ways they really deserved to. I actually consider the story in 2 parts - before the box and after the box. Everyone loves a good Main Character in a Box arc for some reason, but it worked here in really good ways.

It was not a clean rescue. We didn't get Aelin back in the first 100 pages. She stayed gone for the first 350 and mentally gone for the next 150, meaning half the book was giving Aelin an arc to realize where she stumbled and start anew if she wanted. I loved Fenrys in this and getting to know these other cadre members that we didn't get much time with before. Him and Aelin's trauma bonding was heartbreaking and SJM really leaned into villainy here, which I liked a lot. She let Maeve be evil, but her motives be kind of... understandable? That's one thing I've enjoyed about the series. Nobody is clear cut, not even Erawan.

I felt for Aelin in the end. The fear and struggle and suffering... I just really felt for her. Refusing to break and not knowing real from illusion is terrifying. It stripped her of all the mechanics she used to avoid herself and never have to face anything head on, which translated to later in the book when she stopped avoiding herself and charged into battle. I don't think she could've let the army without this arc, evil as it was. She had to become someone new to claim her power and birthright. The person she was didn't have the capacity or ability to step into the role of queen. If she wanted to lead her people, she had to literally be reborn as a new person.

She retains her dry humor and irreverence, but she's lost the self-limiting cockiness and aggrandizing behavior that alienated her from other people. Part of leading is knowing when to accept help, thinking bigger than yourself, and knowing how to balance hard choices for what you need with what you want. The fact is that for the first 6 books of the series, Aelin didn't have that. She was selfish and couldn't think outside of herself for a long time. Later books, she learns to also think of her friends, but still in a selfish way. She doesn't let them in, still keeps them at arm's length, doesn't give them autonomy or choice and decides on their behalf what's best for them without their input. Well-intentioned, of course, but well-intentioned doesn't mean right. It also doesn't mean she's ready for leadership. At all.

But the woman who comes running from Maeve's war camp and sits quietly on the boat through the mountains is different. She's been forced to rely on Fenrys for her mental survival. Her skin has been stripped away and forged anew. She literally loses all the scars that remind her of the person she was and has to decide the kind of person she will become. Her scars are an old version of her that doesn't fit with this new person she needs to be, the person she wants to be. I think that's the key difference between KOA Aelin and EOS Aelin. EOS Aelin was present-minded, she only thought about right now and herself and what she wanted and felt she was owed for herself. KOA Aelin has been through so much that stripped that away and made her realize it wasn't about her, it was about Erilea and Terrasen. She removed herself from the equation to see the real picture at hand - she had to become someone that could lead a kingdom, regardless of whether or not it ended with her on the throne. She had to be the kind of person who loved her people sight unseen more than she loved a crown and power. EOS Aelin wanted the crown and the power, KOA Aelin wanted whatever was best for her people. That's the distinction and why I think Darrow was fully right to deny her the throne in EOS. I stand on that forever.

I loved seeing Fenrys get his arc, tragic as it was. My only complaint is that I wish we'd split KOA into two books so we could get more of Fenrys and Connall, or had more setup for their dynamic ahead of time. I think Connall's death felt a little flat for me because I didn't know him beyond being Fenrys's twin and I didn't know Fenrys enough to have an emotional attachment to that bond. However, it was still devastating to read and empathize with this poor wolf-man who only ever wanted to protect his brother. Maeve had cleaved into Connall's mind and destroyed their relationship, yes. But Fenrys did what Aelin had done - he decided what was best to protect Connall without letting Connall have any agency or tell him what he needed. Misguided as it was, Connall took the blood oath because he wanted to. Fenrys didn't respect his brother's agency and that let himself be manipulated by Maeve into taking it, too. If he had allowed his brother to do what he wished and tell him how or if he needed protecting, I think it would have been a completely different relationship for them.

Sometimes, you have to let the people you love make bad decisions and experience the natural consequences of them. Constantly shielding people from those consequences isn't noble, it damages your relationship and prevents the person from experiencing what they need to from that choice. It's the hardest thing in the world to watch someone you love make a bad decision, but you have to respect their agency to make it. You have to let them experience the consequences. Die a hero or live long enough to be the villain, remember?

I need to opine on Aedion and Gavriel, but I don't even know where to start so let me stretch first.

Okay. Aedion and Manon of all of these characters suffer the most loss and biggest hardship. Yes, even with Aelin in the box. I'll get into why Manon actually paid the steepest price later, let's focus on Aedion. Aedion is in Orynth. Holding the wall. He makes bad choices that get a lot of people killed. Again, intentions were good when he drugged the lords and went to bring the fight to Morath. 100% understand his noble decisions.

But it was the wrong choice that decimated their army. Thank god it showed them the witch towers before they reached the city, but that cost was steep. Darrow, in that moment, was absolutely right to punish him for it. Darrow's commands were actually rooted in good strategy and about conserving lives and forces. Aedion messed up.

In times of war, you cannot have a general that defies leadership. War is too stressful, too precarious, and too dangerous to tolerate insubordination like that. Darrow handled it with an iron fist and he was right to do so. I like him so much as a character because he makes the hard, unpopular, uncomfortable choices that success on a battlefield demand in order to survive. Aedion makes very noble, headstrong choices, but he is not a strategist. He is a front line general. He is brave and strong and powerful and motivating and knows how to lead, but he isn't a war strategy guy. Darrow, however, is. He has the knowledge and history and understands making hard choices to lose battles in order to win wars. He is the reason a lot of people survived and they had the supplies they needed to weather a siege.

Aedion paid the price for his own headstrong blindness. A heavy one. Couple that with the fallout with Lysandra and he just kept paying over and over. Aedion was shattered by her betrayal. He was right to be furious, right to be cold, right to question everything between them, and right to throw her into the snow. That's a very controversial take, but hear me out.

Lysandra and Aelin knew about Aedion's traumatic past. Knew about how he was on the killing fields at Terrasen's last stand at fourteen years old. Knew he had to serve a king against his own people, watch his kingdom be ransacked, and be used and passed around all of Adarlan ending up with a reputation he was ashamed of. Their plan put him, right back into his trauma. It triggered the return to the worst period of his life on purpose in a way that he thought these two women would never, ever do to him. He trusted them. He trusted Lysandra above all others. She betrayed him and was prepared to drop him back into his trauma.

I've been in that situation. Not to get all deeply personal, but I've been in a place where someone I trusted knowingly tried to re-traumatize me in the same way I had shared in confidence. If it's never happened to you, you don't understand what it feels like. There is no reasoning with it. No soft landing. No gentle words. No intervention. The only way you can handle a person who willingly and knowingly does that to you is through total annihilation. Iron fisted slam into the earth. It has to be absolutely clear that the boundary is made of steel and it will not bend. If he bent, if he gave her that inch, he would be opening the door to "permitting" the behavior and allowing other boundaries of his to be crossed. He had to be cold and ruthless and unfeeling. It was literally him versus her and he picked himself. As he should have. Plus, they were in the middle of fighting for their lives, they didn't have time to patch shit up. There's demons in their hair.

I'm glad they repaired things because I do love them together, but I would take a very long time before I fully trusted that person again.

On top of all of this, it's Aedion holding Orynth together. Aedion watching his men die. Aedion keeping at bay an entire city worth of hopelessness. Aedion watching the witch towers coming for the walls. Aedion holding the gates. Aedion losing the father he should have been given more time with. Which I blame Rowan and Aelin for and I'll get into that later. Of all of them, Aedion is one of the two characters who paid a much steeper price than the rest.

Now let's talk about the only other character whose price was steeper: Manon.

Manon, my sweet and darling girl. Manon left the Ironteeth and chased down the Crochans. She became tribeless, peopleless, and only had the Thirteen. Still, she persevered. She did not back down. She chose hope even when nobody gave her any reason to have any. She buried the Crochan dead with her sisters and risked everything to ask them to join her. She went to the middle of the Ferian Gap and risked annihilation to hope with her fellow Ironteeth who had never been allowed to hope before. Manon unmade herself and remade herself because she loved her friends and her dragons so much it was worth it even if it killed her.

When Abraxos is injured and Manon knows it's time for them to die for a better world, her Thirteen do not let her. Their final act is love, in defiance of their entire lives built on hate and cruelty they chose to love Manon more than themselves. They flew to that witch tower for hope, not vengeance. It made them stronger than all the other Ironteeth and the Blackbeak matron could ever have been.

Manon had to stand at the walls and watch her sisters obliterate themselves because they hoped and believed enough in a future they would not live to see. All she could do was witness. Manon, in the end, was the only character who was completely alone. Aelin had friends and family and her mate with her. Aedion had the same. So did Lysandra, Rowan, Lorcan, Elide, Fenrys, Chaol, Dorian, Nesryn, Yrene, Sartaq... all of them had friends and loved ones and family they could lean on. They had someone to hold and process and cleave to in their grief. In return, someone was there to hold them back.

Manon had no one.

She didn't even have Dorian. Not really.

Her grief lived in her heart and she was the only one who could carry it. There was no one to lean on, no loved ones to turn to, no friends to draw strength from. Every person who knew Manon and loved her fiercely was gone. Now she has to return to a homeland her beloved sisters died for without ever knowing what it looked like and build it in their image.

Without them.

Manon's price, more than any other character, was the steepest. Time will heal her, it will build her friendships, gain her new sisters, open her heart up, but she is the only character who must endure her sorrow in isolation. My heart, for her, broke the most.

Aedion might be the only character who comes close to understanding that. Gavriel died hoping his son forgave him. He sacrificed himself for the child who had rejected him and Aedion realized too late how badly he did not want to. He rejected his father in no uncertain terms because of Aelin and Rowan.

Yeah. I said it.

Aelin and Rowan cost Aedion his connection with Gavriel in enormous ways I won't ever forgive specifically Rowan for more than Aelin.

I mentioned it in EOS but Aelin and Rowan took Aedion's agency away and weaponized his relationship with his father for their own gain. They used him yet again the way he had been used by Adarlan and kept him and his father from reconciling earlier than the moment before his death. There was no effort from Aelin to encourage Aedion to repair the rift or find a way to get to know Gavriel.

Gavriel was the only one who stopped to help her in Heir of Fire and she looked at him resentfully instead of encouraging Aedion to know his father was a noble man and there was more to his story. Rowan considered Gavriel the best of them, the most noble, the one cadre member who might have been his true friend, but Rowan never once spoke in Gavriel's defense to Aedion. In fact, Rowan treated Gavriel very badly and acted like he was a completely different type of man than the one he knew him to be. He never defended his friend. Never told Aedion the entire story despite knowing it. Rowan claims "it's not his story to tell", but then never hesitates to weaponize Aedion's existence after telling Aedion it wasn't Rowan's place to divulge his paternity to Gavriel. It was okay to do so to Aedion to get Gavriel to do what Rowan wanted, but not okay to do so for Gavriel when it could have done good and repaired his relationship with his son.

I resent Rowan for it so very much. He is a shitty friend and a bad partner. I will stand here on this hill and say I do not care for Rowan because of how he treats his friends. He doesn't encourage growth in Aelin, never guides her with his centuries of experience, won't hold her accountable, and resorts to immediate violence when anyone holds her responsible for her own behavior.

He mistreated Gavriel at every turn knowing Gavriel was the only true hearted one of his friends he trusted. Gavriel was the best of them and came to Aelin and Rowan's defense multiple times, but yet Rowan always treated him like he had done something wrong by taking the same blood oath Rowan took and only got out of because of a chance encounter. Rowan acted like he had no idea that the blood oath was a compulsion that would kill them to defy. He had the same compulsion, he didn't break it, but somehow expected Gavriel and Lorcan to do it? Miss me with that, he's a dogwater friend. How a man treats his friends is an important glimpse of his character and he treats his friends badly.

Speaking of the Lorcan of it all, that man is owed several apologies by multiple parties and I will accept no Lorcan slander. Released of his oath, Lorcan chooses to go help rescue Aelin. He's the one who gets her to safety. He risks himself over and over again and everyone treats him like shit for it. Even AFTER he's the one who gets Aelin to safety and she forgives him because she understood her capture was largely her fault. Lorcan called Maeve's armada because he thought those ships were Erawan's - RIGHTFULLY so, Aelin never told anyone the plan until she made a showy entrance to Ansel. Her prioritizing her flourishing entrance is the split second Lorcan sent out his call and that is why she got captured. Showmanship over communicating during a time of very real threat and danger to people's lives. She didn't treat any of that situation with the gravity it deserved or her companions with the faith and trust they deserved and that's what cost her. That's why she forgave Lorcan, it's one of the lessons she learned in the box and why she stopped doing that shit after it.

Lorcan called Maeve's ships with the intention of pitting them against what he believed to be Erawan's fleet so they might be able to escape during the naval battle. That's a smart plan. I'm sorry. Based on his limited knowledge? That plan was sound as hell. I side with him. That was smart.

When the blood oath is rescinded from Gavriel and Lorcan, Lorcan is the only one whi tried to get up and do something. Gavriel sat like a sad pumpkin mourning his honor more than acting to save his new queen. Elide stood there and did nothing. Manon didn't even move to stop her. Lorcan is the only one of them on the beach who tried. When he tells everyone this and despite them all knowing beyond a doubt he is telling the truth, they ignore it and dismiss it to keep blaming him. Knowing he is telling the truth. Do you know how messed up that is? Knowing someone is being honest about their motivations and then completely ignoring it to cling to their anger and the made up version of you instead? That is so messed up. Lorcan deserved a hell of a lot better than that from them all, even my girl Elide.

Which brings me back to the hotdog water friend that is Rowan Whitethorn.

Rowan knew - he knew - Lorcan had taken punishment after punishment for him without saying a word. Lorcan paid the price for Rowan leaving. He never spoke of it, never mentioned it, never asked for anything. He did this for centuries whenever Rowan fucked off. Lorcan swallowed every punishment in silence for a man he believed was his friend and he had a responsibility to protect. How does Rowan handle leaning about all of that? Oh. By dismissing it outright and never thinking about it or considering it or coming to Lorcan's defense. Ever. In fact, Rowan is the worst offender in making sure everyone stays hating Lorcan.

Rowan is a bad friend.

Lorcan is a better man than me because after that shit in the caves on the boat with Fenrys and Rowan and Elide ALL ganging up on him, knowing the truth and still choosing to stay and help Aelin - who had asked them all to forgive him and let go - I would have been like alright you are all very much heard, I'm gonna go wander off and find Vaughan, good luck storming the castle. Won't trouble you with my presence since it's unwanted, bye. Lorcan stayed and ate shit from them and still fought his ass off to get Aelin her throne.

Lorcan deserves apologies from every single one of the cadre.

Alright. Continuing on. Chaol and Yrene? Oh, you mean the true heroes of the story? You mean Yrene, the strongest magic user in the whole series? The GOAT? The slayer of Erawan? Yeah I love them. Chaol kicked his dad's ass and stayed to protect Anielle even when he could have left. He prioritized his city and his people and put his dad in his place. Chaol deserved a better father and because of him he will be that better father. All Chaol hate should be directed at his dad. Chaol survived that man and has no magic and trained himself to be the best fighter on the field. With NO MAGIC he can fight standing, on horseback, with a cane, and in a chair. That man did that. Raw battle prowess did that. Chaol deserves way more respect for that. He showed there is no such thing as a limitation, only an adaptation.

Yrene? Unbothered self assured diva. Yrene is self confidence incarnate. She knows exactly who she is. She is the image of what happens when you process your trauma and you do not allow it to control you anymore. She trusts her instincts, she trusts herself, and that's why Erawan can't get in her head or rattle her. She is unflappable. Erawan got in everyone's head but hers because she's processed her life and chosen to heal, the self confidence it gave her to accept all facets of herself made it impossible for him to rattle her.

We love to see a healer being the one who saves the day. No swords, no bloodshed, no warrior cry. Just a woman growing life in herself who knows the incredible power of a gentle hand over a hard one.

Chaol is Wife Guy #1 and he is so proud and supportive of his wife. I love them so much.

Dorian's arc, too, has been really interesting. In my first TOG review, I may or may not have but definitely did refer to him as a wet pencil. I stand by that. His personality in TOG? Boredom. Nothing. Blah. Unexciting. But also he was the hedonistic prince of a demon king and didn't get out much. Watching him get into the world and experience figuring out who he was gave him so much more dimension. When he left Manon for the greater good and picked up the mantle of a destiny that wasn't supposed to be his, he chose to challenge himself about what kind of man he wanted to be.

Dorian had one of the most satisfying arcs. He didn't get his clean ending. He didn't charge into battle to save his own city. He charged into battle to save his friend's because he wants to be the kind of man who answers a call for aid. He wants to be the kind of king whose kingdom rallies to protect its allies. Even when he felt like he was pantomiming, he still acted the way he wanted his best self to act. That's one of my favorite messages:

You are already the best version of yourself, you just have to act like you would want your best self to act.

Fake it until you make it. He never let his quest for self discovery stop him from acting like he wanted his best self to act. In the end, he realized that's all he had to do to be the man he wanted to become. I love that. Dorian is baby.

All in all, I thought this was an incredible satisfying ending to the series. It left enough open that if SJM ever wanted to do more, she could. But nothing felt unfinished and no stone felt unturned. Everyone's circles closed. I laughed, I cried, I got mad, I decided I hate Rowan Whitethorn...

My biggest complaint is I wanted more about Rolfe and the Mycenians. We had them teed up to be something big and I didn't think we got that. I also wish we'd had more about these Wolf Clan fae and they didn't feel like kind of a deus ex a la Endgame. The way that happened didn't fully make sense to me, but it's fine. I also wish we'd have gotten the full breadth of the demon spiders Tower of Dawn built up. That kind of turned into a fart in the wind, which was disappointing. I personally think splitting it into two or even three more books would have deepened a lot of the cast, which ended up getting a little too busy in the last book to have the punch I think I was expecting.

However, I loved the way SJM handled nerfing Aelin. I didn't really care for the multiple worlds thing and i don't love that all her series are connected, but that's me being pretentious and not a big portal fantasy person. To each their own. Anyway, I think she did a good job of reeling back in the overpowered magic of Aelin, giving Dorian closure with his dad, and leaving enough that there's room for more if needed.

Justice for Gavriel, who could have come back inside.

More importantly though... where the hell is Vaughan?