Heir Of Fire is an infuriating book. I've been reading the Throne Of Glass series since late last year. I honestly thought I'd found a new fantasy land I could get lost in and for a while it was, until the third installment.

The first two books were amazing. Great story telling, brilliant plot twists, interesting characters the whole 9 yards. I loved how true colours of the characters were always hidden until it was necessary to show them ie. Nehemia, The King even book 3 had Sorscha. it made for some exciting revelations and twists.

 The scenery was so detailed I had to close the book for 5 minutes just to sit there and mentally construct Adarlan and the Glass Castle.

The love triangle drama from the first installment had me begging for more. (Was rooting for Chaol the whole time). I'm a guy I've never read a romance book and never will but I do enjoy when a bit of romance is sprinkled onto books from other genres ie. Percy jackson, The Mortal instruments etc.

 Celaena's stubbornness immediately made her my favourite character and it's super rare for the main character to be my favourite. Although this later changed.

The combat mechanics were fast paced and enjoyable

The books also knew when and how to be humorous

All in all very well written then we come to the 3rd book. Not a completely terrible Installment but didn't hit the bar set by the 1st two titles.

My main issues with Heir Of Fire have to do with Celaena's chapters. Her storyline started out Interesting, a bit of psychological turmoil, meeting the fae. So far so good then immediately downhill.

My first and biggest problem was the predictability we had seen so much of Celaena in the initial installments that almost everything she did was kind of expected. Don't get me wrong familiarity with characters is a great thing but when it makes the characters far too predictable the chapters get very bland.

The love angle here just felt overused. She meets Rowan, they start out at loggerheads with each other, then something happens and they begin to understand one another, and final they become friends or lovers. This was the same case with Chaol and Dorian and it was interesting then, but having it a 3rd time was just hard to stomach.

The combat mechanics were awful, very magic based and more Introspection than action. I just wanted to skip through that whole battle between Celaena and those creepy skinwalkers.

Celaena beginning her journey to overpoweredness is the biggest slap in the face. Honestly there's nothing worse than op heroes. In Throne Of Glass and Crown Of Midnight Celaena's investigations and deductions and combat skills are what gave her an edge over her enemies now we're seeing her become this extremely powerful fire-bender and it sucks. She moved from being Batman (the best dc character) to Superman (the worst superhero period).

Rowan enslaving himself to Celaena permanently put him on my characters that deserve to die list and he even surpassed Khaleesi, because if there's anything worse than someone who keeps asking people to bend the knee it's one who actually bends the knee.

The reaction to the destruction of the slaves was stupid stupid lazy writing. Yeah killing a bunch of slaves is horrible the king is a dick. But Celaena walking out and exploding, Aedion crying his heart out, Chaol and Dorians reactions were all pretty bad. I mean this part was written to evoke some sort of emotion out of the reader but we didn't know any slaves and don't care if they're all annihilated. It's like the scene in transformers 5 were that little girls transformer dies, we don't know the little girl and we don't know the transformer therefore we don't give a s**t. Seriously you want an emotional reaction from your readers, you grow a pair and kill Nedd Stark.

Chaol and Aedion's quest line was tolerable. Dorian and Sorscha's romance was a nice break though it had a problem I'll mention later. The quest line that kept me reading though was Manon's. Exhilarating story. Witches, wyverns and war no woman can't write that well (see what I did there).

Manon's toxic relationship with her grandma, her (I'm hoping gay) relationship with Asterin, choosing Abraxos and saving the blue blood. Just brilliant writing.

I'd like to mention two more problems with the series that aren't specific to the 3rd installment.

First is the King's stupidity. The king is pretty smart, kind of a genius actually. Building the towers, removing magic from Adarlan but keeping it in his son, breeding war wyverns in secret. Basically a brilliant tactician. However it seems Sarah has made him intentionally stupid when it comes to anything regarding Celaena. This man could tell when something had saved Celaena during the battle with Cain, he manipulated both Kaltain and Cain, he effortlessly slew Celaena's parents. Yet he refused to investigate the wyrdmark on Celaena's forehead, he couldn't put two and two together when Baba yellowlegs was murdered and wasn't even a little suspicious when Celaena was faking the deaths of her contracts. He just seems to have a huge blindspot were Celaena is concerned. it's lazy writing, at least come up with elaborate scenarios that explain why the hell he hasn't caught Celaena already.

My second issue is how the brilliant description and narration in the books fall short when it comes to sex scenes. You know what I mean.

In conclusion while the Throne Of Glass may be a great series the 3rd book is quite the embarrassment. I don't know whether or not I should start Queen of Shadows I don't want to invest time in a book only to end up with another Heir Of Fire.

If you found any other problems with Heir Of Fire or the other books please comment. If you disagree please tell me why. If you've read all the books so far tell me whether or not I'll regret reading Queen Of Shadows.