Heir of Fire wasn’t a pleasant reading experience. While it wasn’t awful, the hints of a good story and character development were overwhelmed by frustrating characters and glacial plotting. I enjoyed Crown of Midnight because it was a drastic improvement from its predecessor. Unfortunately, Heir of Fire didn’t demonstrate any meaningful growth in Sarah J. Maas’ writing.

Summary
The book takes place a few weeks after the ending of Crown of Midnight. Celaena Sardothien is in Wendlyn with no plans to assassinate its royal family despite her orders from the King. She’s eventually approached by the fae warrior Rowan Whitethorn on behalf of Queen Mab. Mab, in a desire to assess Celaena’s magic, trades knowledge of the wyrd keys in exchange for Celaena training with Rowan to unlock her fae gifts.

In Rifthold Chaol finds himself embroiled in the plots of the Terrasen rebellion. Chaol begins assisting Aedion Ashryver, Celaena’s cousin, in unravelling the plots of the King. Meanwhile Dorian finds himself in an unadvised tryst with a lowly healer.

In the White Fang Mountains, the centuries-old Ironteeth witch Manon Blackbeak and her coven The Thirteen are placed in the trial of a lifetime. The King has offered the witches wyverns and the chance to take back their lands in exchange for the promise to fight in his army. Manon is placed in a ruthless competition to see which witch will become their leader in this new war.

Plot & POV
The most frustrating thing about this book was that Maas didn’t advance the plot in any meaningful way. None of the characters do much to move the plot in interesting directions. Maas’ books are extremely character-centric and that’s a problem because her character arcs weren’t interwoven with the plot. Because of that, this whole book felt like waiting for things to happen and the lack of direction from the majority of the cast made the story feel listless and meandering. I also hated that most of the plot development hinged on happenstance. Characters learn information without earning that knowledge and stumble upon the solutions to their problems way too easily. Manon’s perspective was the only one that didn’t suffer from hollow plotting or dragged outpacing. This is because Manon was given a goal and throughout the story worked to achieve it. In contrast, Chaol, Celaena and Dorian were given paper-thin narratives buried under chapters upon chapters of filler.

One thing that contributed to the bloated pacing of the story was filler POVs. Rowan, Sorscha and Aedion’s perspectives could’ve been cut from the novel and nothing would have been lost. The copious points of view also made the climax difficult to read. Because this book had three separate climaxes that were interwoven with each other switching chapters felt like emotional whiplash. This prolonged feeling of tension was also draining to read and made the ending of the book drag.

Magic & Worldbuilding
The magic of Maas’ world continued to be confusing. Even though both Celaena and Dorian learn more about their magic throughout the novel I still found the way Maas described it to be too abstract. It was easy to grasp that Fae magic is linked to someone’s emotional state, but I wish Maas had delved more deeply and specifically into its limitations and applicability. The climax felt airy-fairy because it felt like Celaena was using magic that hadn’t been explained thoroughly to the audience to defeat the big bad.

Maas’ world-building also left a lot to be desired. I would have loved to see more of the Irish mythology Maas pulled from for her fae lore integrated into her worldbuilding. Mab and Maeve were characters pulled from the Irish epic Táin Bó Cúailnge and I would have appreciated more time spent exploring the fae lore and culture. While we did learn about the Fae their history and culture felt surface level.

Maas also relied heavily on info dumps to relay backstory and world information. These info dumps dragged the novel to a screeching halt and the density of the information was difficult to parse. I genuinely didn’t retain most, if not all, of the information that was dolled out because it was so unpleasantly presented. I wish Maas integrated the history and lore of her world more seamlessly throughout the novel.

Characters & Relationships
While I can’t discuss every character in this book in depth there are four I had things to say about. Rowan was easily my least favourite character in this book, and possibly ever. He’s a brooding asshole and the dismissal of his vitriolic abuse towards Celaena was abhorrent. While he eventually grows to treat Celaena like a person deserving of respect and their overall dynamic after that was enjoyable to read, his “redemption” was too little too late. What frustrates me most about Rowan’s arc is that Maas excuses his shitty behaviour because of his trauma. Because he’s never forced by the narrative to grow, change or even apologize his entire character just puts a bad taste in my mouth

Dorian and Sorscha were almost as infuriating as Rowan. Their bland romance was more shallow than a kiddy pool. Maas can write engaging chemistry between characters so the complete lack of that with Dorian and Sorscha was glaring. She barely gave these two compelling reasons to want each other or any sort of arc or tension. Their romance was paint by numbers and empty. It existed exclusively for a shocking twist and pathos and Maas completely failed to make me care about these two.

Chaol was easily my favourite character in this book. While he wasn’t given a lot to do he was the most interesting character emotionally. What baffles me about him is how Maas frames him as a fearful, indecisive coward. Throughout the story, several characters admonish Chaol for not picking a side or not doing enough to prove his loyalty to Celaena. This was so confusing because Chaol was risking his life to help a rebellion he had no obligation to support. I think Chaol was an interesting character and Maas could have done more to frame his conflict of interest in a dynamic way but the moral simplicity and two-sidedness of the story made an interesting character ultimately two dimensional.

Manon was also a solid character. I was impressed by Maas’ ability to evoke a genuine ruthlessness in her given how poorly she did so with Celaena earlier in the series. The Ironteeth witches chew up scenery so their chapters were fun to read. While Manon’s story was simple I think it benefitted from that because her character and relationships were given more room to breathe. I am, and always will be, a sucker for dragon companions so I loved Abraxos and Manon’s journey with him was a delight.

Heir of Fire wasn’t a fun read. The bloated storytelling does not bode well for future installments in this series. I hope that Queen of Shadows is better than this one, but I honestly have very low expectations.