Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6)

by Sarah J. Maas

[Kait ✨]

I wasn’t that excited about this book because I feel like Chaol’s character in recent books has become as boring and limp as a dirty dishrag, and in this book Chaol’s arc was super boring and the romance felt very uninspired and lackluster. Pretty much the only parts I liked were about Nesryn.

Initially I felt a little uncomfortable with Sarah’s approach to Chaol’s injury and disability at first but I actually kinda like how she ended it, and was interested to read this review that talks a bit more about that. I was also unsure about her approach to Antica as I feel like Sarah as a history of cultural appropriation but, again, I was surprised at how decently Sarah handled this. Almost all of the characters are POC; I think Chaol and Yrene are the only white people with page time in this book. And there’s also a major side character who is queer, though I think that was handled a little oddly at times.

This book definitely needed a better editor—a) it didn’t need to be this long, and b) there are sentence fragments, typos, etc. GALORE. I also think this would have been much better published before [b:Empire of Storms|28260587|Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass, #5)|Sarah J. Maas|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1463107108s/28260587.jpg|25272004]. We were left on such an emotional high at the end of that book and I feel like Tower of Dawn has dissipated that. Plus, not knowing what was happening with Aelin would have ratcheted up the tension had Tower of Dawn been published first.

All in all, it was okay—I loved Nesryn’s storyline, but the rest of it was kind of boring. It just wasn’t as fun as the other books in the series, and to be honest, that’s why I’ve always overlooked so many of the issues in Sarah’s books. Will definitely be continuing the series with the final book—I’m too far in now!—but I do hope it’s better edited and the joie de vivre that’s in the other books returns.