Review: Empire of Storms by Sarah J Maas

Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas

My rating: 4.2 of 5 stars

I'm dead. Goodbye. Go read this. Now. This series is absolutely phenomenal and I am completely amazed with the complexities and intricacies that Sarah J Maas has put into this story and the overarching plot of all the books. Empire of Storms was not an exception to Sarah's beautifully crafted books. Please do not be fooled by the four stars. I would love to say that I could give it five, but then I feel like then I would be invalidating my review of Queen of Shadows because I did not enjoy these two books on the same level, so I don't think it'd be fair to give them the same rating. It is my absolute pleasure to give this book 4.2 stars though.

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CHARACTERS:
As a general statement, I think it was actually because of the characters that I cannot give this book a full five stars. They are all still amazing and I love them! But there were so many and there were so many different POVs in the book that I felt distant from them. Because there was so much jumping around from character to character in each chapter, I couldn't connect to them as much as I did in Queen of Shadows. I totally understand why Sarah did it this way, because it was the format that the plot demanded it to be like this. It is really just an unfortunate side effect of this demand that we couldn't connect as much as in previous books.
Aelin: SO MANY FEELS!!! Aelin Galathynius is one of the best YA girls of all time and she is such an inspiration. I know that there are some mixed opinions about her personality and her character, but I really believe that she is incredibly strong, both person-ably and mentally. It killed me that she was so selfless that she made plans for everyone else to live out the rest of their lives in peace EXCEPT FOR HERSELF. My frustration with character disconnect was especially strong with her character. I would have loved to have had more scenes with her and have gotten to stay as close to her as we were in Queen of Shadows
Rowan: Holy hell, I love Rowan. I love how he was so supportive, but not overbearing and he let Aelin make her own decisions but also simultaneously making sure she wasn't making bat-shit crazy plans. He has one of my favorite lines in the entire book: "Where is my wife?" I will put on record that this is when I absolutely died. Again. There were so many moments in EoS when the feels were real. This was definitely one of the strongest, if not the strongest. **Dies again as I'm thinking about it**
Dorian: I may or may not have bumped Dorian up on my mental list of character favoritism. He was another character that I was like, holy shit. That whole semi-sex scene with Manon, I was expecting. Where the f*** did that come from??!?!!! Damn. Just.... damn.
If I were to go through each character separately, this post would be waaaaaayyyy too long. I'll post a EoS ship review on my blog later. (link)
WORLD:
Ok, I really want there to be a cross-over with Sarah's other series, A Court of Thorns and Roses Anyone else? Everyone else, yes? Good. Glad we're all on the same page. Seriously, I had already had thoughts about how awesome that would be, and then in an interview somewhere Sarah said that the two worlds exist in the same universe!!!! This gives me serious hope that the two could be merged, even if it's just in like a novella. I would buy that and frame it. (Lol, what if Amren is from the ToG world???) Separating this world from ACOTAR, I really love the different levels that have been created in this world. The government systems and political history are all (finally) fully described and you can't just leave this world once you enter it. Really ingenious and sooooooo great to read.
WRITING
In typical Sarah J Maas fashion, EoS had beautiful and powerful language. The plot IS ONE OF THE BEST THINGS I HAVE EVER READ! Who else has created something so complicated and she had to have known all of this in advance too!!! There are things that are referenced in ToG that we only saw now in book 5! HOW!!?!??? Like I said earlier, the only thing I didn't really like was the distance between the reader and the characters. I think on some level it was unavoidable, but it's still unfortunate.
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If you haven't read this one yet, I don't know how you've been able to wait, but I hope you're super excited because this is definitively an excitable book. For those of you who don't like the ships...... still read it. Enjoy it for the plot and the sass and the words. No matter who you are or why you're reading it, Empire of Storms has something in it for everyone to enjoy and like.

Thanks for reading!

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