I am utterly speechless. This book was stunning.

“Know that wherever the road takes you, however dark, you will be all right.”

Tower of Dawn is, possibly, SJM’s best work. It is a masterpiece of character building and world and plot building. This explores the grief and healing and souls of each one of its main characters in such a way that struck me so, so deeply. I might very well even call this a six-star read. Perhaps you don’t like this book, and to that I say; you might be wrong! But that’s okay!  I truly do not believe that this series could have been written to NOT include this book! This is not shit that happens off-screen!!!! There are some crazy ass reveals in this and the fact that some people want to skip it entirely just astounds me!!!

And now, to finish off this incoherent nonsense, some of my favorite quotes:

-“He wasn’t certain if he’d ever tried to swim. Not since that sword had gone into the river. Not since he’d left Dorian in that room with his father and told his friend-his brother-that he loved him, and knew it was good-bye. He’d. . .left. In every sense of the word.”

-“For it was love that shaded the entirety of the world here, gilded it. Love and joy. Happiness.”

-“Why does anything thrive? Plants grow best in certain conditions—those most advantageous to them.”

-“Even now, even so far from home, she had never once been alone.”

“This was not the end. This crack in him, this bottom, was not the end.”

“Life. He had life to savor, to fight for. And the breaking that had started and ended here…Yes, it belongs to him. He was allowed to break, so that this forging might bring. So that he might begin again. . .He surveyed the darkness, this piece of him. He did not balk at it.”

-“It was hope that stood beside him, hidden and protected these years in this city, and the years before it, spirited across the earth by the gods themselves, concealed from the forces poised to destroy her. A kernel of hope.”