Heir of Fire is the third book in the Throne of Glass series and I’m deep into the story now. This book was particularly good as it introduced key new characters and really moved the plot along. To recap: this fantasy series follows assassin Celaena Sardothien as she works to reclaim her Fae family roots, her true identity and find the missing Wyrdkeys that are essential to saving the world.
I listened to Heir of Fire on audiobook and am finding that’s really helping to emerge me into the story. Narrator Elizabeth Evans is amazing and truly makes the whole experience cinematic.
New characters and stories
The key step change in Heir of Fire is the two new important (I know they are, based on the amount of BookTok content on them) characters that are introduced: the witch, Manon and the Fae warrior prince, Rowan.
You don’t need a weapon at all, when you were born one.
So, in Heir of Fire, the action moves away from the glass palace of the previous books, as Celaena has been sent to Doranelle, land of the Fae. Her aim is to find the Queen of the Fae, Maeve (also her distant aunt), discover how to destroy the wyrdkeys and find out where the missing one is. While there, Maeve assigns Rowan to watch over Celaena.
Rowan is a huge, powerful, tattooed, very attractive, immortal (we’re talking 500+ years old) Fae prince and also a distant cousin of Celaena’s (but don’t dwell on that). The two don’t hit it off at first, but that soon changes and Chaol (Celaena’s love interest in the previous book) is a bit forgotten about. Things move rapidly with Rowan and Celaena and they form a bond. Rowan helps her understand more her Fae ancestry and how to navigate the new power that runs through her.
And onto the other new character… Manon is a powerful Ironteeth witch from the Blackbeak clan (there are two other Ironteeth clans, the Blueblood and the Yellowlegs). She comes into the story through the King of Ardalan who strikes a deal with the witches to ride his new deadly beasts, Wyverns, as an extra layer of terror in the upcoming war. We now get witch-focused chapters interspersed in the story and they really add a further dimension. It really helps that Manon is such a great, bad-ass character.
In Heir of Fire we also get our first first reference to the Valg. These are key to the story. They are deadly demon parasites that use human / Fae hosts (like the Asteri in Crescent City) and are the ones threatening to destroy the world as Celaena knows it.
There’s a lot happening in the story now and this feels exciting.
Overall, I’d say the Throne of Glass series has a slightly gentler pace than Crescent City, which felt like a high-octaine trip through every book. Heir of Fire being at this point in the series though, has a lot of bridging to do in terms of its storytelling, so it did that really well and I’m keen to see how the new characters develop through the series.
- Get your copy of Heir of Fire here;
- Audiobook narrated by Elizabeth Evans;
- Running time:17 hours 56 minutes;
- Published by Bloomsbury 2014;
- 576 pages;
- My rating:
Books on the 7:47 