Title: The Assassin and the Empire
Author: Sarah J Maas
Publisher/Year: Bloomsbury USA 1.3.12
Length:   40 Pages
Series:  Throne of Glass #0.5

Overview

Celaena Sardothien is the assassin with everything: a place to call her own, the love of handsome Sam, and, best of all, freedom. Yet, she won’t be truly free until she is far away from her old master, Arobynn Hamel; Celaena must take one last daring assignment that will liberate her forever. But having it all, means you have a lot to lose . . .

My Thoughts

I’ve been waiting for this finale of the novella prequels – just so that we could what led up to Celaena’s capture -and it’s as emotional and heartfelt as i think we were all expecting.  We knew that she had taken a contract to kill one of the biggest crime lords in Rifthold and that it had gone sour, resulting in Sam’s death – but we didn’t quite get to see what led up to that contract.

We know that Sam and Celaena made the decision that they couldn’t be part of Arobynn’s keep and that they needed to free themselves and start a life of their own.  It comes at a cost and it’s not just monetary sadly that we learn this .

They pay off Arobynn to get out of the Assassin’s Guild and find out that while they want to leave the city, it’s going to cost them everything and they need to make sure that they have enough to survive on alone. That’s where trouble starts since Sam comes across a contract to kill people that are untouchable and you know that it can’t end well.

The journey on this final book is seeing if their love is enough to take such risks, and then seeing that perhaps there’s more to Arobynn than we saw before, although it was alluded to plenty in how Celaena calls him ‘father, brother, lover’ – but without action on the lover part.  There are comments that Arobynn makes that you really wonder what the motivation is there.

There’s a lot of build up to the actual attempt on Farran’s life and Jayne’s life and then we see how things go drastically wrong.  I think that in my mind, Celaena was successful with killing Farran, and yet the way that we read this installment, the story is different.  Nonetheless, i’m still so incredibly sad at how we read their demise, and seeing what Celaena has ahead of her in Endovier….well it’s heartbreaking yet you have some hope.

I really admire our author in the telling of this whole story.  I feel like there’s so much depth and intrigue throughout each installment, and the fact that i read this series of prequels at the point that i did allowed me to paint a picture in my head of things and then watch how they played out in the timeline of the story.  All in all, amazing.  Now i’m ready to get into book 5, although it means that i’ll have to wait ages for book 6.  but i’ll do it.  Enjoy!