Sept 2016 Update:
I no longer support or recommend this series. Book 5 has taken a very unfortunate turn towards graphic sexual content that is not appropriate for the young readers this author and publisher are targeting. Reader beware!

5/5 stars

Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass #3) by Sarah J. Maas

Oh man, I loved Heir of Fire.

The entire Throne of Glass series is so, so good. If you haven’t discovered it yet, I recommend you pick up The Assassins Blade immediately. It contains five prequel novellas that introduced you to Celaena Sardothien: 17, hero, beautiful, lover of fine things, many layered . . . and the world’s greatest assassin. Next, pick up Throne of Glass—technically book one of the series. By this point you’ll be a fully committed, card-carrying member of team Celaena. I won’t have to encourage you to pick up the next book: Crown of Midnight. While Throne of Glass could pretty easily have been a standalone novel, book two picks up where book one left off and introduces the larger story arcs that will continue through the series. And man, that story is FUN! The first half of the book is excellent, but that last 50% is heart pounding, edge of your seat stuff . . . 250 pages of holding your breath and ignoring the world around you!

CoM leads right into book three, Heir of Fire, and honestly–as much as I loved the stories leading up to it, I was completely blow away by how much I enjoyed book three. There are some major changes to the storytelling this time around. Instead of seeing and feeling exclusively through Celeana’s eyes, Heir of Fire is told from no less than six different points of view and in three different locations. We are definitely being set up for this story to go EPIC. I’m not sure how many books we are looking at … I read somewhere 6 or 7, but if they follow the path laid out in HoF, this thing is going to go global. Awesome, awesome, awesome. I’m adding Heir of Fire to my Best Ever Shelf.

Two complaints: First, all of a sudden all the characters like to say sh*t. Where did that come from? Unexpected and out of place. Second, if I’d known Thrown of Glass was going to be a series, I would have waited to read it until all the books were published. Now I’m stuck with the whole waiting a year between stories thing and I hate that! I try to avoid it whenever possible. I much prefer to binge read and entire series at once!

Minor issues. Move over Katniss. Celaena Sardothien would kick your butt without breaking a sweat and smile while she did it.