Continuing on with the Girl of Fire and Thorns series, and guess what – we’re half way there!
About the Book
Title: The Crown of Embers
Author: Rae Carson
Series: The Girl of Fire and Thorns #2
Genre: YA Fantasy
Pages: 437
Dates Read: January 10 – 21, 2022
Edition Read: Kindle eBook
Blurb: Elisa is a hero. She led her people to victory over a terrifying, sorcerous army. Her place as the country’s ruler should be secure. But it isn’t.
Her enemies come at her like ghosts in a dream, from foreign realms and even from within her own court. And her destiny as the chosen one has not yet been fulfilled.
To conquer the power she bears, once and for all, Elisa must follow a trail of long-forgotten–and forbidden–clues, from the deep, hidden catacombs of her own city to the treacherous seas. With her go a one-eyed spy, a traitor, and the man whom–despite everything–she is falling in love with.
If she’s lucky, she will return from this journey. But there will be a cost.
Review
I’ll be honest, it took me a while to get into this book and I don’t know why. I enjoyed it quite a bit but I didn’t devour it the way I did with The Girl of Fire and Thorns. I actually had to start over at one point.
This is probably not the book’s fault – I’m in a weird head space right now.
I continue to really like Elisa. She desperately wants to be a good ruler and take care of her people, but she is also in way over her head. So many people are plotting against her and not just the enemy country they are at war with – there are people in her own court as well who want nothing more than to have her eliminated. There are very few people she can trust and that has got to be scary.
One of the people she can trust, though, is my favorite character of the series so far – Hector. He is the captain of the Royal Guard and was also best friends with the dead king (Elisa’s husband, technically, although they barely knew one another). Hector is just such a good person. I don’t blame Elisa one bit for falling for him. It would be hard not to.
This book also dives a bit deeper into the mythology and spirituality surrounding the Godstones. I have to admit I am fascinated by how this building up and playing out. The bearers (the ones who have the Godstones in their bellies) are not the only ones who can use their power, as we saw in the last book, but now we also see more of Elisa being able to tap into her Godstone to realize its true power and potential.
The best part about this book was towards the end, and I will try to explain without spoiling it. Basically, Elisa goes on a quest to find the source of this magic and power but in the end realizes that she doesn’t need it. She doesn’t need to be a strong sorcerer, she just needs to be stronger in her convictions. She has been ruling her country based on bad advice from bad faith advisors, mostly because she was too scared to do it on her own. Now that she has had that realization, I can’t wait to see how she changes her approach in the next book.
GoodReads rating: 4 stars
Categories: Books I've Read
Life With No Plot 
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