Gotta hand it to Maas for being incredibly skilled at making you have a complete 180 towards one of her characters.

I wasn't looking forward to this book. I left Queen of Shadows really disliking Chaol, so the idea of reading a whole book dedicated to him seemed unbearable. But Tower of Dawn far exceeded my expectations, and dare I even say... I liked it better than Empire of Storms.

Tower of Dawn picks up right after Queen of Shadows, as we follow Chaol on a quest to not only to try and regain his ability to walk, but to win Aelin another ally. We're introduced to a whole new continent in their world, that seemed heavily inspired by Mongolian culture. There's also an entirely new cast of characters that I became enamored with and invested in.

I was also totally sucked into the romance between Yrene and Chaol. Their romance is very slow-burn, and doesn't have the usual possessiveness that Maas typically writes into her romances. It takes over half the book to develop, and Yrene and Chaol truly felt like equals.

Chaol gets a crazy amount of character development in this – his character always rang hollow to me in the previous books. But getting to read so much from his perspective, and understand more of his background, and to watch his mental healing in this one really made a huge difference.

I read EoS and ToD in tandem – something that ended up being a great idea. The plots of the two books line up quite nicely at key points through the story, and I could see having so many questions if I had just initially read EoS on its own, or vice versa.

Overall I was really impressed with Tower of Dawn. I felt it was paced much better than EoS – there wasn't really any part of the story that drug on for me. EoS felt rushed in a lot of ways, where ToD had more time to flesh out the characters and build the plot to an exciting climax. ( )

1st read: December 2020
2nd read: October 2023

Not a favorite in the series, but I liked a lot of it.

Not much happens in the first half of this long book. (And a certain relationship is drawn out way too long, in my opinion.) The second half was much better though.

Tower of Dawn occurs at the same time as the Empire of Storms. It focuses on Chaol and Nesryn while they visit the Southern Continent. Two-thirds of this book was focused on Chaol and Yrene, with the rest focused on Nesryn. I don't mind Chaol's and Yrene's stories, but I liked Nesryn's story better, and I wish there was more of it.

If I decide to read this series again someday, I might only read parts of this book. ( )

After the monumental cliffhanger that was dropped in the previous book, the fact that this one was only about Chaol, Nessryn, and Yrene was pretty insufferable. I found it so difficult to get through. Especially when the outcome was so obvious. The only interesting thing that came out of this was the revelation about Maeve. ( )

Although I am enjoying listening to this series, I also find myself not that invested. Therefore, I didn't mind that we did this side trip, despite the cliffhanger. On the contrary, I think I actually enjoyed the change of setting quite a bit. I was also surprised at the amount of reveals this book gave us.

And as an added bonus, there are significantly fewer instances of curled toes than in the previous book... ( )

This entire book is about Chaol and Nesryn and I definitely missed the other characters. I wish she had woven some of their stories into this one to break up the exhausting chapters of Chaol struggling with his injuries and emotions. That said, it was still interesting and I loved learning more about the history and deeper plot points. I'll be happy to return to the rest of the cast in the next book though! ( )