My rating: 9/10
I’ve got to be honest,
this book took me forever to get through. I literally spent an entire
month reading it. To be fair, it wasn’t in any way because I disliked the book,
it was more due to time constraints and being really busy doing other things.
But it may have impacted the way I experienced both the pacing and the plot development,
which I did feel was slightly slow and dragged in some areas.
Overall however, I
really loved Empire of Storms. The different arcs of all of the
characters that have ever been introduced – even the ones from The Assassin’s
Blade – have now almost all come together which absolutely beautiful thing
to see happen. The way that everyone and everything is coming together as part
of Aelin’s court and story is just breathtaking to say the least, and I just
absolutely adore the interactions between all of the characters that I have
grown to love, especially Manon, Elide, and Lysandra.
The big reveal with
Elena and Brannon and their story and how this relates to Aelin’s destiny left
me feeling utterly heartbroken, even though I did slightly anticipate it. I can
imagine that it will make for an epic finale that is incredibly emotional in Kingdom
of Ash.
The one thing that I
didn’t really like so much though (which is why I took just one star off) is some
aspects of the character developments. In particular Dorian, who felt
incredibly…forward and utterly sexualized all of a sudden. The development of
his and Manon’s relationship just happened way too quickly, both from
his side and hers. I find it hard to imagine that an Ironteeth witch – even an
exiled one – would find herself so fast willing to hot and heavy with a human prince.
And likewise, Dorian’s personality just never seemed like the type to go for
something meaningless and hardcore-ish erotic. It is understandable that he
would be incredibly devastated after what happened in Queen of Shadows but
I find it hard to believe how quickly this character development happened,
especially since from the reader’s perspective it seems as though he made a sudden
change.
Also, I know this has
been mentioned before in other reviews, but why does every single female
character have to find some sort of male love interest with whom to have nail-digging
hot sex with? First of all, the super heterosexuality between the main
characters is just too much. And secondly, I also don’t find it incredibly
diverse personality-wise to imagine that absolutely every girl wants to have
the same kind of hot passionate sex the same amount of time into getting to know
the guy. Absolutely every single sex scene
read like it could have been any of the other couples. There was no difference
between them, which just feels…unrealistic.
Otherwise this book
left me feeling all the feels, as the previous books had been doing too. Chaol
was definitely someone who was a big missing aspect in this book, and I definitely
look forward to catching up to his story in Tower of Dawn.
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