A review by Elizabeth Manthos
A review by Elizabeth ManthosCelaena Sardothian is Ardlan’s most feared assassin. As part of the Assassin’s Guild, her allegiance is to her master, Arobynn Hamel, yet Celaena listens to no one and trusts only her fellow killer-for-hire, Sam. In these action-packed novellas, Celaena embarks on five daring missions. They take her from remote islands to hostile deserts where she fights to liberate slaves and seeks to avenge the tyrannous, but she is acting against Arobynn’s orders and could suffer an unimaginable punishment for such treachery. Will Celaena ever be truly free?
The Assassin and the Pirate, The Assassin and the Healer, The Assassin and the Desert, The Assassin and the Underworld and The Assassin and the Empire, are all set before Sarah J Maas’ debut novel Throne of Glass. The Assassin’s Blade follows the ups and downs of Celaena and we finally find out what happened to the infamous assassin before her appearance in Throne of Glass.
I originally read The Assassin and the Pirate when it was first released and was waiting for the full collection to come out before reading the five novellas as I wanted to immerse myself in Celaena’s world.
I was pleasantly surprised by the collection as a whole and found myself smiling, crying and feeling triumphant with Celaena. I found that my emotions were even more intense reading the novellas as I knew what she had gone through in the first novel in the series and I felt connected to the characters.
Sarah J Maas definitely has a talent for making her readers invest in the characters and connect their emotions to the emotions the character is going through. This was evident in my reading of The Assassin and the Empire, the final book in the collection of novellas. My sobbing through this novella was almost on par with my reading of The Fault in Our Stars.
All in all this was a fantastic read and showed Celaena off more as an assassin in this collection of novellas than in the novels. It showed her fierceness and actual skill as an assassin in hunting her targets.
I highly recommend The Assassin’s Blade collection of novellas to any fan of the series and those who want to read a good young adult series.
Pages: 448
ISBN: 9781408851982
Publisher: Blooomsbury
