When final installments disappoint — the unhappy case of the (almost epic) Throne of Glass series
For months now, I’ve tried to wrap my head about what I was feeling for Kingdom of Ash. I took some time away from the fandom, I read the book again. My emotions were in turmoil, at some clever plot points, some beautiful pieces of dialogue, and still I knew something was lacking. The one word I would use to describe Kingdom of Ash is underwhelming.
I would be a liar if I said that I did not enjoy this book at all. But as the final installment of a series that had so much potential, it did not give me enough satisfaction or closure. How can a book of 121 chapters and over 900 pages somehow have a rushed conclusion? Often, the issue isn’t what is written, but rather how it’s written; the style, the plot, the characterization. I can’t honestly lay all the blame on KOA alone. As much as it pains me to admit, the series started slowly and gradually spiraling down after the third book. It was a sweet descent, for it came with fanservice, and the blow of the fall didn’t taste bitter as it should have. Which is the reason why so many people let this book satisfy them, without analyzing anything further than the words on the page.
The author tried to make Kingdom of Ash an epic finale for an equally epic series. But the seeds of unepic-ness had been planted years before. There was little that could be done to salvage the feel of high quality. Looking back, it is clear to me that the volatility of almost every character was there since the first book, since the prequel even. But it didn’t feel as much of a burden when it was Celaena only toquickly change her state of mind, alter her emotions, divert romantic attention and swap personalities.When almost everybody in the huge ensemble cast started imitating that, the series that could once promisingly be compared to A Song of Ice and Fire in embryonic stage, started resembling a soap opera. At one point, the author stopped doing what was right for the story, and started doing what was easy and desirable. She started searching praise instead of dictating her own rules.
I didn’t hate the book. Some parts were great, some were moving. It just wasn’t enough for a series that wants to be taken seriously but then fails to comply. Maybe teen readers can better appreciate a book where almost every conversation ends with an innuendo or a straight sex scene.
Of the dozen points of view narrating this book (Aelin, Aedion, Rowan, Elide, Lorcan, Lysandra, Evangeline, Nesryn, Yrene, Chaol, Dorian, Manon, I have lost count but know there’s more), the one that, paradoxically, was my favorite to read was Aedion. Despite the fact that his subplot was linear and almost predictable, his storyline was the most emotionally engaging. Aedion was the last line of defense, left to face with the real, ugly, human aspects of war, defending a seemingly helpless cause while everybody else went off galivanting on epic and magical quests. He was stuck watching his army be destroyed in Terrasen knowing there was absolutely nothing he could have done differently. The stakes were so high and he never lost his will to fight, out of love for his cousin, for his land, his people and his army. Even though the way he treated Lysandra was despicable and I won’t forgive him for it.
Lysandra’s arc was honestly disappointing. Maas likes writing all female characters with her signature pandering pretense of feminism by having them talk back to their enemies (or their lovers) with sassy remarks. However, when it comes to actually being emancipated, it doesn’t reflect in their choices and actions. Lysandra, forced to become a high maintenance prostitute at sixteen, would have been the perfect vessel for female emancipation, but in this book she still chose to fall in love with and forgive Aedion, another man who mistreated her like an object. She does a Daenerys Targaryen rip-off speech but then everything is magically forgiven:
“I have been degraded and humiliated in so many ways, for so many years,” she said, voice shaking. Not from fear, but from the tidal wave that swept up everything inside her, burning alongside the wound in her leg. “But I have never felt as humiliated as I did when you threw me into the snow. When you called me a lying bitch in front of our friends and allies. Never.” She hated the angry tears that stung her eyes. “I was once forced to crawl before men. And gods above, I nearly crawled for you these months. And yet it takes me nearly dying for you to realize that you’ve been an ass? It takes me nearly dying for you to see me as human again?”
How is it romantic and “feminist” for her to want to get married to someone who treated her like this because his feelings were hurt that he wasn’t let in on a secret by his own cousin?
Over in Wendlyn, Aelin’s captivity and rescue scenes were beautiful and raw. If there’s anything the author proved to be great at is writing despair. Aelin’s trauma felt realistic and maddening, and even though the well-described PTSD faded away too quickly, the constant sense of anxiety lingered. The series protagonist was a very different person and character in this book; she stopped being that larger-than-life figure that we know and love. Long before Aelin loses her titanic powers at the end of the book, she renounces her agency. What many readers do not realize, letting Aelin’s swagger and jokes convince them, is that Maas reduced her to a frail girl who is not in charge of her choices. Her scenes were lacking that spark, that un-foreseeability that made her exciting. Many plot points were simply, for lack of a better word, dull.
If in all previous books, Aelin’s plans always turn out to be clever and well thought-out; here, her actions here were childish and senseless in so many ways. Why would she ever ask the gods to change the deal and trade Elena — a person who died millennia before her time — for Erawan? And would Maas admit to implying that Aelin’s crippling fear invented (and introduced Erilea to) proto-democracy?
Something that has irked my suspension of disbelief for some time is that when it’s convenient, Aelin’s magical powers can last hours of fighting other magic-wielders or dark creatures, and in other occasions it barely suffices for four minutes of action against an inanimate neutral foe like water coming out of a dam. How powerful exactly is the heir of Mala? I was expecting her to move oceans after three months of spiraling down her power and everybody in the book muttering that she’s an actual goddess.
Moving on to another character’s big journey that disappointed in the end, Manon’s transition to Crochan Queen was extremely cheesy. Her romance with Dorian still confuses me, although I know many people are happy about it. The deaths of the Thirteen truly were tragic, and I shed many tears for their sacrifice. In the end, they taught Manon love, and they taught her loyalty, more than any love interest might have. Regardless, I still look at the series and see the wasted potential of where Manon’s relationship with Elide could have gone. Elide, whose blue blood and witch legacy was never mentioned again. It was just a useful plot device to unite her and Manon in Queen of Shadows, and then it was forgotten because it didn’t add anything to her and Lorcan coming together.
Just to name one plot point that was cheap that also involves a male, you have Fenrys breaking the blood oath. The author broke the rules she herself had set in canon. Blood oaths just cannot be undone out of the soul-bonded’s free will, and Aelin ordering him not to die was preposterous to say the least. It feels like Gavriel, the only prominent character who died of battle wounds, was unlucky to die at the wrong time, when a queen wasn’t around to offer a blood oath soon enough. He was the Finnick Odair of this series: in the chaos of fighting, you almost do not realize he was dead. I had to go back a page to make sure.
Kingdom of Ashes was unnecessarily long. Half of it was copy and paste work of repeated dramatic sentences and lists of people’s titles. There is this misconception in the fantasy genre that if a book resembles a dictionary in shape, it must be a masterpiece. Maas went overboard with the number of narrating characters and with unnecessary plot points that ultimately didn’t change the story or influence the ending. Events that could be solved with pathos in a few paragraphs took three full-fledged chapters, because they needed to feel like the climax of the book, like the scene of Elide rescuing Lorcan and Aelin wasting the might of her power on a water explosion.
This book was the result of poor planning. Yrene Towers needed to be (re)introduced to the audience, but Tower of Dawn was a bad move. Maas thought she needed to write a separate book of that length to give dimension to the Southern Continent and its very useful army. But worst of all, she needed to make Yrene somebody’s love interest to make us remotely care about her. She had to become Chaol’s wife, or she would’ve been just another female character with a sad past, a heart of gold and a heroic future. I have an issue with this.
In a way, Yrene also takes Aelin’s place as omnipotent savior by the end of the book. Maybe the author thought it would be empowering to give this role to a pregnant woman. But my skepticism is the following: what kind of healer — who is repeatedly described to be spending hours making salves and tonics — accidentally gets pregnant in her first month of marriage during a war that both her and her husband will be actively fighting in? Yrene herself didn’t think it was smart. It should be pointed out that Maas was pregnant herself while writing the book and she probably wanted to extend that joy to her characters (she also did the same to Feyre, ACOTAR’s protagonist who also did not want a baby), but the pregnancy is literally only there to diminish Yrene’s credibility as a professional healer and has no consequence whatsoever on the plot.
I won’t spend words on how I think every step in Yrene and Chaol’s relationship is rushed (and the same could be said for Nesryn and Sartaq), because that is beside the point I’m making here. Yrene needed to be reintroduced in a different way, perhaps like Manon was, in an earlier book that also featured the other key players. And while the world-building of the Southern Continent and the khaganate was intriguing, an additional book before the final installment wasn’t the place to invent it. What was the point of the hundreds of pages spent on the Khan’s children when they changed nothing? I would’ve been happy to read an entire spinoff series about them after KOA, instead of it delaying and then lengthen the final book to no end.
There were so many moments in the book that I enjoyed and will cherish, but I was expecting much more, and the inconsistent and inconsequential things outnumber the epic ones. The author even found a way to give her ACOTAR protagonists, Rhysand and Feyre, a cameo, but she couldn’t find one page to squeeze some well-overdue reunions (*cough* Nox) that would’ve made the Throne of Glass series come full circle. And it was comical, the way Aelin quickly dismissed the crown of Doranelle like it was nothing, “Sellene can have it.” A character we have almost never seen, Sellene probably deserved more consideration than two passing glances, and was especially wanting of a final confrontation scene between the Faerie Queens of the West and East.
I didn’t enjoy the out of place colloquialisms that sometimes sounded like the 2000s instead of high fantasy setting. I didn’t enjoy the forced jokes. I didn’t enjoy that Aelin lost her magic and her human body and it was barely touched upon because there literally wasn’t any more time. Dorian’s short Bildungsroman through shapeshifting was weird, a deeper metaphor than the obvious one no doubt lost somewhere in Manon’s arms.
Will I ever be able to read the final chapters of this book without crying? Probably not. Will I ever stop squealing at the original trio saying goodbye for the last time, or at the few moments of love that we were given between Aelin and Rowan, and the Queen and Aedion?
The bittersweet vibe at the end, with that bright promise for the future, only shadowed by the group of friends having to part to finally partake in the official duties of their new shiny titles is how I’ll remember this series. I will carry the bonds that unite those characters with me forever, but I wouldn’t rate Kingdom of Ash more than 2.5/5.
