Crown of Midnight

Review by heyes

Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass #2)

by Sarah Maas

Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult

Rating: N

Content: Murder, Violence, Prostitution, Homosexuality of side character, Sex of main characters, Language (D,H,A,S,B,Bd)

Summary: Caelena is now the King’s Champion. She has fought hard to get to this point and doesn’t want to lose it. but when the king orders her to kill an old friend, when she discovers a rebel group, when her friends are all pushing her to follow her inherent hate of the King and Adarlan. What will she choose her hard earned position and life of ease? or a truth so long pushed away, she doesn’t even know if she believes it anymore?

Personal Review: Well this was a huge disappointment because I loved the first book, loved the characters and loved the plot line. I still have a hard time not thinking about what will happen in the third book. The murder doesn’t really bother me in this book, it is out of revenge or self defense and somewhat gruesome but hey it’s a book about an assassin so you expect some gruesome violence. A character and old friend of Caelena’s is the prostitute and he was enslaved to become one so it is definitely looked on as a bad thing. The homosexuality is involved with this friend who is male and has many male clients. It is not looked at as a bad thing(other than by it’s association with the enslaved prostitute thing) but it’s not looked as a good thing either, more like just normal. Still, it grossed me out. The sex is not descriptive but it was enough to make me permanently dislike one of the characters and if I didn’t have amazing blocking out abilities I probably would have hated Caelena too. I usually am more lenient about immorality in fantasy books, I’m not sure why but I am. This book was hard to be lenient about it though for a few reasons.

1) I am usually lenient because it is not the main story line, romance is usually secondary in fantasy so it doesn’t seem  as influential. But this book, although it has another story line focuses a lot on the romance.

2) It is discussed with friends lightly. I think that sex is a sacred act of love and I think that discussing with friends about how you couldn’t wait so you did it in a broom closet is not only extremely immature, but inappropriate as well.

3) I really liked the book and story line and it was huge let down when they had sex. I just wish authors realized how much less romantic romance is after you make people fornicate, but whatever.

Now all of that being said I seriously doubt that there will be more sex in the third book. The circumstances of the characters does not allow them to marry. The sex is in like the first 100 pages and not in the rest of the book. So if you want to justify it away you can but I would not recommend this book.

-heyes