The Assassin’s Blade, Sarah J Maas, 2014
Before I get into it! The Throne of Glass series’ reading order is reader’s choice, and the placement of The Assassin’s Blade holds a big weight in the reading experience of the series. I read The Assassin’s Blade third because it’s the publication order and also tiktok says it’s most evocative that way, and I love a good cry. Readers of the chronological order would read this first (as its Celaena’s prequel) but I’ve also heard it can be read second and fourth for different reasons.
Okay! The Assassin’s Blade, ayeee!! This book is sectioned into 5 novellas which establish Celaena’s history with Arobynn (King of the Assassin’s), and Sam (her one true love), both characters we hear of in Throne of Glass and Crown of Midnight. So coming into The Assassin’s Blade as book 3, we already know there’s a tense dynamic between Celaena and Arobynn, and we also know (HUGE SPOILER IF YOU DON’T ALREADY KNOW) Sam is dead.
Novella 1: The Assassin and the Pirate
Celaena is sent with Sam, her strongest competitor as most notorious assassin in Arobynn’s Assassin’s Guild, to Skull’s Bay. Their mission is to demand payment from Skull’s Bay’s Pirate Lord for the killing of Arobynn’s people. Celaena, by the way, is only 16 and Arobynn’s protégée at the Assassin’s Keep in Rifthold. Her relationship with Arobynn has always been nuanced—he took her into the Guild when she was 8 and was left on a river for dead after the King of Adarlan butchered her family. He’s always been a mentor/father to her but is oddly possessive over her and considers her his “favorite.” It’s giving grooming. Celaena is somewhat aware of the inappropriate/toxic way he treats her but she is mostly thankful for the life he’s given her.
Sam was raised with Celaena in the Assassin’s Guild (a year older than her) and has always envied her notoriety as the best assassin in the Guild. The tension with Sam sets up a fun rivals to lovers dynamic. I do wish it was more juicy. There’s a few scenes in which their sexual tension is made showy but mostly her feelings fester off screen in part 2, but we’ll get to that.
As it turns out, the document Arobynn had Celaena and Sam deliver to the Lord of the Pirates wasn’t actually to demand payment from him as she and Sam had been told, but to ally and set up a slave trading deal. The slaves in question are mainly good people who rebelled against Adarlan’s massacre and banishment of Fae 8 years earlier. Celaena decides she will not take part in the slave trade. Sam catches on to her plan to free them and joins. The two play vigilante and free the slave ships, making an enemy of the pirate lord AND Arobynn.
This is where she and Sam turn from rivals to comrades. On returning to Arobynn after ruining his slave deal, both are beaten senseless, but Celaena first. Sam—her now friend—proves to have a greater loyalty to Celaena than even Arobynn thought when he has to be held by Arobynn’s guards while screaming that he’ll kill him for laying a hand on her.
Novella 2: The Assassin and the Healer
Novella two opens at the White Pig Inn, a bar in a small port town called Innish. Celaena waits to board a ship on her journey to the Red Desert where she is to be trained by The Mute Master, another notorious assassin, as punishment for her betrayal of Arobynn. This novella switches between Celaena’s POV and another random character, Yrene.
Yrene waits on an elusive, drinking, lonely Celaena while working as a destitute barmaid. She’s a healer, like her mother was, but lost her powers 8 years ago when Adarlan outlawed magic. At a chance encounter, Celaena intervenes when a group of men are ready to prey on Yrene, and in thanks Yrene offers to heal a cut Celaena was given. Celaena teaches her self defense out in the alley, where five more men attack! Celaena intentionally lets Yrene find her courage and save herself.
She then boards her ship to the Red Desert, leaving Yrene a parting gift of a pouch of gold and ruby brooch, with a note that says “for wherever you need to go, and then some—the world needs more healers.”
Novella 3: The Assassin and the Dessert
The miles trek in the Red Desert to the Mute Master’s Fortress is brutal, but when she arrives she finds a peaceful haven of assassins. She has a roommate, Ansel, who she gets on with pretty well. Quickly, Ansel lets her know how scarcely the Mute Master trains his assassins. He has to find you deserving of his training before choosing you. This sets up an issue for Celaena, who only has 1 month to receive an approval letter from him before returning back to Arobynn.
Ansel and her friend Mikhail tell Celaena about Lord Berick—The Mute Master’s rival—who wants to overthrow the Mute Master and his territory. Ansel, who is a messenger between the two leaders, is requested to bring a message to Berick in a town nearby called Xandria. Celaena travels with her to show the Mute Master that she’s deserving. Meanwhile, Ilias, the Master’s son, has been giving her cute eyes since she’s arrived.
Ansel tells Celaena that she is from flatlands, which used to be a witch kingdom before it was overthrown. She vows to one day get it back. In the town of Xandria, Ansel tells Celaena to hang around the town while she talks with Lord Berick alone, which is odd because Celaena figured she would have at least sat in on whatever the deal between them is.
When Ansel gets back, she sneaks Celaena into the Lord of Xandria’s horse stables and they steal 2 Asterion horses that Lord Berick bought and will soon tire of. In this chapter we see a real bond of friendship which grows between the girls.
When they return to the Mute Master, Celaena is surprised by the amnesty they’re given instead of punishment for stealing two horses. The Master looks at her sympathetically when she expects to be stricken. He decides to train her.
During the Midsummer’s eve festival, everyone dances and Ilias tries to kiss her. She finds she feels too much of a loyalty to Sam (this is what I mean by their lovers pipeline manifesting offscreen). The morning after, something is different about Ansel, who is suddenly angry and jealous that Celaena’s been granted personal training with the Master while she has yet to be chosen. Celaena’s hurt and surprised by this because she thought of Ansel as her first true friend.
The Mute Master silently comforts her when she confides in him about her fear of returning from the peace and tranquility of the retreat to the violence of Arobynn’s Guild. She and the Master have a beautiful, silent training session from sunset to sunrise. It’s giving the crane scene from The Karate Kid vibes, and I’m here for it.
Later in the day Ansel comes to make amends with wine. She has a sorrowful look on her face before Celaena falls unconscious to the poison she spiked it with.
Celaena wakes up in the desert with a letter from the Master that he’s sending her home early. Celaena is confused—did she do something to upset him? When she sees Lord Berick’s soldiers on their way to the fortress, she puts two and two together. Ansel had forged the Mute Master’s letter and made it so Celaena would be gone when Berick’s men attacked. She was a spy all along working with Berick.
At arriving back at the fortress, Ansel is sadistic and vengeful. Celaena allows Ansel to flee, and the Master, who—ironically—speaks, says he is glad she let Ansel live. This is a beautiful anecdote about letting go of bitterness, which Ansel was unable to do. Before sending Celaena off, the Master gives Celaena enough gold to pay Arobynn back for her lifelong debt to him, and says to tell Arobynn that in the Red Desert they don’t abuse their disciples.
Novella 4: The Assassin and the Underworld
When Celaena arrives back at the Assassin’s Keep with her letter of approval from the Mute Master and a chest of gold, she’s ready to tell Arobynn she’s leaving but is taken off guard by his remorse. He apologizes for putting his hands on her and offers her a client, Doneval, who is creating a slave trade route between Melisandre and Adarlan.
When she sees Sam, she’s immediately jealous at the courtesan Lysandra at his arm. After Arobynn takes Celaena to have new armor made, Sam is surprised she’s accepting his gifts. In their ensuing argument it comes out that Sam told Arobynn he would only forgive him if he vowed to never touch Celaena again. Celaena feels like shit.
After some flirting here and there, Celaena asks Sam to help her kill Doneval for half the money. In their stalking of him, however, they can’t really find much other than that he grossly leers at young courtesans.
In probably the book’s most suspenseful scene (and I think my favorite) Celaena is captured by Doneval’s guards and wakes up in a sewer which the river is quite literally being emptied through. Left there to drown, she finds her way to the surface at a sewer grate and screams (it’s giving that one scene with Rapunzel and Flynn Rider, iykyk). Sam, our hero, saves her!
The near death experience gives her the courage to finally pay her debt to Arobynn. She tells Arobynn she’s free, but she doesn’t have the heart yet to tell him she got an apartment and she’s leaving because Arobynn, oddly, looks sad.
Sam then tells her he is actually leaving. He’s going to Banjali 1000 miles away to be the head of assassins there because now that Celaena’s free from Arobynn he has no reason to stay. He says after Arobynn hurt her, he can’t be around Arobynn anymore because he loves her! (There it is!)
During her actual assassination of Doneval, Doneval’s bodyguard warns her right before the murder that Doneval loved his country and she has no idea what she’s done. She’s confused by the remark but pushes it aside and continues her assignment to catch Doneval’s partner. Before she gets him, he kills himself and BURNS the documents which show the locations of slave escape routes which Doneval was supposedly going to hand in to the king. Celaena doesn’t understand—why would he want to keep her from seeing the documents of the slave escape routes? Why would he keep that hidden as if to protect the slaves when he and Donvel were just about to hand them over to the king anyway?
Well, in her next meeting with Arobynn she finds out this too was part of her punishment. Arobynn smugly tells her it was Doneval’s ex-wife Leighfer who was making a deal with the King, and Doneval who was trying to stop it. This is the ultimate betrayal—she has now inadvertently aided on the wrong side of the slave trade. She no longer has any qualms about telling Arobynn she’s leaving. She takes it a step further and sells her Asterion horse to pay Arobynn for Sam’s freedom as well.
Novella 5: The Assassin and the Empire
The fifth novella begins with a time jump showing Celaena on a slave cart. How do we get here?
Take it back eleven days.
Celaena and Sam are at the start of what seems will be a nice, loving life. They’re free from Arobynn, living in an apartment in Rifthold, with money as their only issue. In the few months since their split from the Assassin’s Guild, they’ve spent nearly all of it, which is why Sam keeps attending fights at the Vault—a fighting brothel—for extra cash. They decide they need to leave Rifthold and the Assassin’s Guild as a whole, since no one will hire an Assassin on Arobynn’s bad side. They need Arobynn’s direct permission to leave the Guild.
Arobynn doesn’t easily give it. He names such a large price that Sam goes out and finds himself an incredibly dangerous assignment to pay for it. He is hired to kill the major crime lord Ioan Jayne and his second in command sadist Rourke Farran.
Sam’s stipulation here is that he will kill Farran—the worse one—alone, whether Celaena likes it or not. She can have Jayne afterward. She doesn’t want to agree, but she also doesn’t want him to end up resenting her, as he had in the past, for her arrogance at being the better assassin.
Arobynn, who somehow knows about the assignment, breaks into her apartment to warn her it is too dangerous to kill the major crime lord of Rifthold. He tells her he loves her (which is a bit of a shock even to her), and asks her to stay. She tells him to get out.
Before the assassination takes place, Sam tells her he’s booked them a spot on a ship off the continent for the following week. She’s hesitant to leave, making Sam admit he knows she doesn’t truly want to be away from Arobynn. He tells her Arobynn told him he visited her the other day and to ask about her childhood (which we know from Crown of Midnight is not what it seems), but, like a real gentleman, he says it’s ok if she doesn’t feel ready to talk to him about it yet. He says I love you before going off on his assignment.
Oh gosh, and here’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to read. Celaena waits for Sam to return but he doesn’t. She waits the entire night, going out into town, not hearing news of the assassination, figuring Sam is just taking his time, returning, checking again, drifting to sleep, waiting up. She makes excuses for why he isn’t home yet, but when she returns to her apartment after spending the morning searching and coming up empty, she finds Arobynn in her apartment. He tells her Sam died.
Farran had tortured Sam all night, and I can not fathom how much of a failure Sam felt like, especially since he argued with Celaena that he doesn’t need her help with this one.
Celaena, who falls unconscious and is brought by Arobynn back to her bedroom at the Assassin’s Keep, overhears Arobynn’s plan to kill Farran and Jayne. Celaena, of course, wants the honor; she sneaks out of her room to kill them first. When she gets there, she realizes it was a trap. She easily kills Jayne, but Farran catches her and says this was the plan all along—she’d kill Jayne, making Farran the new crime lord of Rifthold, and she’d then be handed over to Adarlan. Someone betrayed her…but who?
In the King of Adarlan’s royal dungeons, she is completely lost of life and overhearing the guards’ astonishment at her age (remember she is 17!). The guards also talk about the King’s plans for her execution, which she doesn’t actually care about. The plans change, however, at the execution chamber, when her last words are “make it quick.” The King decides execution is too easy and instead sentences her to nine lives worth of labor in the salt mines of Endovier, slave camp
Right before the end of Part 5, Arobynn and Farran are together on a rooftop as ALLIES discussing how Arobynn had planned this WHOLE THING. He said he did this because he doesn’t like sharing his belongings.
Call me fucking shocked.
On Celaena’s trip, she sees a white stag—a symbol of Terrasen (her hometown)—ending on a poignant note of hope. She says what Sam taught her—my name is Celaena Sardothien and I will not be afraid, and then enters the slave camp.
This is now where Throne of Glass picks up from.
So HOLY SHIT book 4 (which will be Heir of Fire because I am going in publication order) will pick up from where Crown of Midnight left off—Celaena is missing Sam, in love with Chaol (in a love triangle with Dorian), and on her way to Wendlyn to kill her extended royal family.
It is SO hard to rate these books individually because I always fear I’m just a biased lover of the series. I will say it did take me a little while to get into it—this could be that it was four months between my reading of Crown of Midnight and this one. I was thinking it would end on 3 stars up until the last part when suddenly I was like FIVE STARS DEFINITELY so I settled on 4 for Goodreads.
Quotes:
And for that one heartbeat, when there was nothing more to it than that, she tasted bliss so complete that she tipped her head back to the sky and laughed.
It was lovely and strange, and as the hours passed, she often wondered if she’d strayed into some dream.
And in the dark, she remembered.
She had believed she could love Sam and not pay the price.