It did seem to me that Maas changed her mind about where she wanted the series to go in between Heir of Fire and Queen of Shadows. I felt as if what happens in Queen of Shadows ignores a lot of the the foreshadowing and plot points of the previous books (especially with regards to Celaena/Aelin’s relationships). This gave the book an overall sense of just not quite fitting with the rest of the series. But, I don’t think this was necessarily a bad thing. In the end, I did like the direction the book went.

Also, Aelin annoyed me in the beginning. Maybe part of this was her sudden hatred of being called Celaena, or maybe it was because a lot of her thoughts and actions seemed childish and selfish. This might also have been because the beginning of the book is when she and Chaol act like bitter idiots. Their interactions always made me cringe in the beginning. It was painful to see how far their relationship had fallen. Luckily, this didn’t last. Aeline and Choal do come to a more amiable relationship, and by the end of the book, Aelin was the powerful queen i wanted her to be.

I was also not completely into the idea of a romance between Aelin and Rowan in the beginning. One of the main things I liked about them was that they were platonic and had such a strong supportive friendship. Plus, it does kind of annoy me that Aelin/Celaena basically has fallen for every eligible male not directly related to her...But overall I do really like Rowan as a character. I loved that when he was with Aelin she became stronger. And, they had some really cute romantic moments.  Plus, who doesn’t love muscles and elongated canines?

But, I did feel like the Arobyn storyline fell a bit flat. Arobyn has been this mysterious character pulling strings from the shadows for the past few books, and I was excited for Aelin to finally get some closure. And maybe I just had too high of expectations, but this part of the book just didn’t really work for me. I felt Arobyn himself wasn’t fully fleshed out. I wanted him to be more complex, not just a power-hungry and possessive man. And, I did feel like they brought about his demise pretty easily. It felt rushed to me. And, it definitely wasn’t the epic takedown I was looking for--but I am stil glad that it was included. 

One thing I did like more than the previous books though was Manon’s storyline. Maybe its because the foundation for Manon’s character had already been laid, but I found her and her thirteen to be much more compelling in this book. And the scene where Manon meets Aeline is one of my favorite parts of this entire series.

The ending battle for Rifthold was pretty epic. I definitely liked that we finally get another dimension to the King besides just heartless evil. And the battle itself was suspenseful--definitely a page-turner. I think it was just the right amount of difficulty (although, I did feel like the use of magic against the king was a bit of a convenient way to take him out).