Dark Hygge

By Sarah J Maas, reviewed by Lauren Kay

To fill the ACOTAR-sized hole in my heart and to get my friends to stop bugging me about it, I begrudgingly picked up this series. I was told it was a YA (ugh), heavier on the high fantasy elements (ugh), and less romance (UGH). However, many women who I adore and respect swore on their lives that this series was objectively better than ACOTAR and likely to be considered SJM’s masterpiece. At this point, I do trust SJM to write a damn good book and if they say this series is her Magnum Opus, then I have to read it.

Upon the first scene, the tone of this book is grittier. Our main character, Celaena, is not a pityable-sheltered girl, but a ruthless, jaded assassin, who has just served a tortuous sentence in the salt mines of Endovier. She remains witty and mischievous in spite of this. She has been ex machina’ed out of the mines by a handsome, cocky prince -Dorian- who in an act of cute rebelliousness wants to have her as his champion in his father’s tournament to pick the royal assassin. Dorian, and his aggressively faithful guard and best friend, Chaol – instruct her to pretend to be someone else, as it would cause a stir if everyone found out that the most infamous assassin in Adarlan was competing.

This is a fairly cut and dry young adult fantasy concept. My pants aren’t blown off by this point but I’m hooked and in for the ride.

However, something is not quite right as the tournament begins. In this world, magic died out a long time ago, but as mysterious things keep happening that interfere with tournament, it seems someone or something still has their magic. Celaena finds herself trying to solve this mystery while also competing and trying to figure out if Dorian and Chaol are friend or foe.

This, as advertised, does not seem to be primarily a romance – but Dorian sure can make a gal blush. However, Celaena gracefully rejects him at the end of the book. Good call career-wise I suppose but I was disappointed.

Ultimately, as I said, this book didn’t blow off my breeches, but-there are enough crumbs here that I’m curious about this world-curious about Celaena and what will happen now that she has won the tournament.

4/5 cause it was well-written and well paced with really vivid characters. Guess we’ll see where this goes.