Ranking Sarah J. Maas’s Books | Part 1

Hey everyone and happy Tuesday!! I’ve been in the worst creative slump recently, and I haven’t thought of any good blog post ideas in a while! Since I haven’t been reading much, I couldn’t do book reviews, and so I had absolutely no idea what to post. But, in honor of A Court of Silver Flames releasing today, I thought it would be fun to rank some of Sarah J. Maas’s books! I haven’t read them all, so I’m ranking the entire Throne of Glass series (minus The Assassins’ Blade), the A Court of Thorns and Roses series, and House of Earth and Blood all in two posts (maybe?). I’ll be ranking them all from worst to best, so I guess that means my least favorite six books are on this post! Extremely positive, I know!

I was totally going to include all of the books in this one post, but then I realized that it would be incredibly long to write and read, so I thought it would be better to split it up into two. So, hopefully, I’ll pick this up later, and continue on with my journey to rank all of SJM’s books!

I’m going to do my best to avoid spoilers in this post, but stay cautious in case I accidentally do. So, let’s get started!

I just found this book to be boring?? I find that I usually don’t like firsts in a series, because it takes a while to open up with the new characters and worldbuilding, especially in these more complex fantasy worlds. The entire book felt slow to me, and I actually DNFed it at first, before returning to it a year or two later. While Celeana wasn’t my favorite at all, I loved Chaol and Dorian, and it was fun to be introduced to them all. However, I am not a fan of love triangles at all, so that was a little bit annoying. But anyways, despite the clichés and the slow pace, I was able to power through and get to the following books (which were significantly better)!

I will forever be extremely upset about the death in this book (you know who I’m talking about), and this person had absolutely no reason to die?? But just did?? And, they were a good character too?? Now that I got all of that out of the way, I found Celeana to be a little bit more tolerable in this book. The characters all got a little more developed from the first book, and it made them all more interesting to read about. Everything especially picked up towards the end with the plot-twist, and I thought that it led nicely into the following book. I know that some people found it to be completely predictable, but I’m the worst predictor of these things and usually completely oblivious, so it kind of surprised me! Overall, it was a nice improvement from Throne of Glass.

We’re finally moving on from Throne of Glass onto A Court of Thorns and Roses! Now, this book annoyed me. I think it actually got worse the second time around. While A Court of Mist and Fury is one of my favorite books ever, I refuse to reread this one, and I will basically skip over it. I thought Feyre consistently made bad decisions in this book, and her personality was not it. I didn’t like the romance between Feyre and Tamlin either, which got even worse after I read the following books. Plus, this was supposed to be a Beauty and the Beast retelling, but Tamlin was not really a beast in any way? I mean, the first time they meet, he’s this kind Fae prince. I don’t get it! I also thought Amarantha was a bad antagonist. Not bad in the sense that she was a villain (because, obviously), but she just wasn’t developed in the way that I hoped she would be. There are also a couple of “plot-twists” or plot points that are not well developed enough. They were simply there out of convenience. Despite all of that, it was a little addicting, so there’s that!

We are moving on to our very first and only novella! Now, I have a bad relationship with novellas. Most of the time, they really aren’t necessary at all, and simply just give us more time with the characters. Which, this one did. I didn’t feel like anything happened in this book at all! Yes, we got to see what the cast was like after the events of A Court of Wings and Ruin, but there was no point. I’ll admit, there were cute moments because I was attached to the Inner Circle, but when I look back at it, it was a bit forgettable! I even forgot to put it on this list initially, and just added it after another read-over.

Okay, I love Chaol, but this book was so out of nowhere?? It totally deviates from the main story line, and I’ll admit that I was a little upset that I’d have to wait for Kingdom of Ash. But a word of advice: DO NOT SKIP THIS BOOK!! I’ve seen people around saying that it’s irrelevant, and that you should skip straight to Kingdom of Ash, but it’s important to Chaol’s character and development. Even though we stepped aside from Aelin’s story for a bit, I liked the entire story about Chaol and his healing process (emotionally and physically). We got to learn more about him in a lot more depth, which was great for myself, a big fan of his character. I liked Yrene too, and though there wasn’t anything incredibly special about her, I still enjoyed reading about her. A part of me in this was like: why does every character need to be in a romantic pairing? But another part of me was like “oh whatever” and enjoyed it anyways, because I really like romance in my books).

Okay so, I think from Heir of Fire, there’s a huge jump in my overall enjoyment of the Throne of Glass series. Maybe I wasn’t feeling the old setting? Maybe the new characters are more interesting? Anyways, there’s a big improvement here. I was kind of sad that Chaol wasn’t in this book, because he was one of my favorite characters from the entire series! I also thought that there were a ton of POVs in this one, which made it a bit confusing at times. But, the story was pretty interesting, and I loved all of the plot points in it! Everything was amping up, and it was exciting to see where the story would go next. I especially loved that cliffhanger at the end, and I was surprised a lot by it actually.

Anyways, that’s it for today, so thanks for reading through this post! Feel free to tell me what you thought of her books if you’ve read them, or if you’re planning to!

Have a great Tuesday everyone, and happy reading!
-Allison