Heir of Fire

Heir of Fire splits the cast across a continent and asks you to be patient. If you can be, it pays you back generously.

Celaena in Wendlyn is a mess — hollowed out, drinking, furious — and Rowan does not coddle her for a second. Their dynamic is the strongest thing Maas had written up to this point. Meanwhile Manon Blackbeak arrives and immediately steals every chapter she is in.

It is slower than the books either side of it, which is why it lands at four rather than five, but the emotional groundwork here is what makes the back half of the series work at all.