Tower of Dawn - Sarah J. Maas (Throne of Glass #6)

Upon reading this book, I had to immediately go back to my reviews of former Throne of Glass books.  This is a strange volume--a book that was supposed to be a novella and ended up at nearly seven hundred pages, taking place concurrently with the prior book in the series, Empire of Storms.  In this, Maas tries to fill in the Chaol-shaped hole that was left in EoS, something that I had mentioned in my review of that book, but I was looking for something else.  The sentence fragments.  Dear lord, did the other books have these sentence fragments?  I don't seem to have mentioned them in my reviews, if they did, and I know I mentioned the use of this "convention" in another book that it drove me crazy in, The Rose and the Dagger.  Either way, whether they were used so blatantly in the other books or not, it is not an excuse, this is a terrible convention and should be abandoned.  Seriously.  The sentence fragments that run amok here continuously yanked me out of the story and had me pounding my head against my Kindle.  Seriously, Maas, did sentence subjects and verbs hurt you as a child?

Now, with that out of the way...

This book dumps Chaol and his traveling companion/kind-of-girlfriend Nesryn on the southern continent of the Throne of Glass world, in Antica, the city of thirty-six gods and the capital of an empire.  If you were looking for a foil to the white, European-based Adarlan, Antica is your answer to it.  With a variety of races and cultures, it's definitely different from Adarlan, in a good way.  Chaol is hoping that the healers who live on the southern continent can fix the paralysis caused by his injuries in the fight against Adarlan's king two books ago.  The healer he is assigned apparently hails from another novella, which I have not read--Yrene Towers.  She is, of course, the most talented and most beautiful healer evah.  While we're on the topic, is Antica not allowed to have people who are the best?  Yrene, from the north, is the best healer.  Nesryn, from the north--her father is from Antica, but Nesryn herself is from the north--is the best archer.  Our absent characters, Aelin and company, are the best at assorted other things.  No one in Antica is apparently the best, and if they are, I'm sure one of those northern characters will soon become interested in that skill and master it and be the best instead.  So, yes, maybe still some subtle racist contexts here.  Hmm...

Anyway.  Chaol gets a hot healer, and Nesryn gets a hot royal who rides a giant bird and thinks she's da bomb, so there goes that relationship.  At first I was onboard with the relationship swapping in this series; after all, few people in real life spend their entire lives with their first romantic partner.  But at this point...just get on with it already.  Anyway (again) Chaol and Nesryn soon split up, Nesryn going off in search of info on the menace that might have followed them to Antica and Chaol...staying put because he's paralyzed, which is a bummer for him, though of course the gorgeous Yrene helps to ease his sorrows.

Remember how Harry Potter spent the entire book in Half Blood Prince angsting over Sirius' death?  This is that book for Chaol.  Except, whereas Harry had faced a very real loss (even if it was still a bit overblown) Chaol was angsty over all kinds of things that, really, he just needed to get over and should have been over already.  This sounds extremely callous of me, I know.  And some of the things, yes, he could feel guilty over, even if they were not directly his fault.  But when the person who is literally going to restore your ability to walk tells you, "Hey, I can do this, but you need to work through what is holding you back.  I will help you do this, but you need to make the effort," and you still refuse to make the effort, well, you lose some of the sympathy factor.  And beyond the healing, there is really not much that goes on for Chaol in this book.  Nesryn only has slightly more action.  There's not a lot of pep in these pages.

Now.  This was not necessarily a bad book.  I liked aspects of it quite a bit--I did like Antica, and the ruks, and Yrene and the Tower.  It's just that this book, and this series, is getting a bit, well, tired.  Repetitive, if I dare say so.  There are only so many times you can try to throw in the same twist before people start calling it, and I saw all of them coming from a mile away--which does not bode well for the one volume remaining.  I'm betting it's going to be pretty much a direct copy of the finale of A Court of Wings and Ruin, because Maas' bread and butter seems to be presenting the same book again and again.  They have fun aspects; they are light and fast and enjoyable to read.  And this same critique could be said of many other authors and genres (romance, anyone?).  Buuuuut you can only write the same story so many times before you lose interest, you know?  Also, there are questions raised that I'm not sure Maas can properly answer at this point, because they seem to be running contrary to what has been set up in other books--like the whole spiders thing?  Why are they not allied in all kinds of different ways with the bad forces running about?  And Maeve?  Really?  That's the route you're taking?

Whatever.  I'm over it.

I'm in this for the long haul, I guess, since there's only one book left.  But it had better be a doozy, because I'm getting kind of tired of this.

2.5 stars out of 5.