The Assassin's Blade

The Assassin's Blade by Sarah J. Maas

Celaena Sardothien is Adarlan's most feared assassin. As part of the Assassin's Guild, her allegiance is to her master, Arobynn Hamel, yet Celaena listens to no one and trusts only her fellow killer-for-hire, Sam. In these action-packed novellas - together in one edition for the first time - Celaena embarks on five daring missions. They take her from remote islands to hostile deserts, where she fights to liberate slaves and seeks to avenge the tyrannous. But she is acting against Arobynn's orders and could suffer an unimaginable punishment for such treachery. Will Celaena ever be truly free? Explore the dark underworld of this kick-ass heroine to find out.

After reading both Throne of Glass and Crown of Midnight in a few days, I needed more. So I picked up my only option for more Celaena. This book is a collection of five novellas all set before Throne of Glass. They focus on the relationship between Celaena and Sam who is introduced in Throne of Glass as Celaena's first love. I was so excited to learn more about Celaena's past and most of all of her life as a real assassin, doing her job and killing people for money. But this book turned out to be so much more than just that. It's not about Celaena going around and killing random people but about discovering that she does not agree with Arobynn's choices and standing up for what she believes in. It's about how she gets in trouble and many stories that are mentioned in Throne of Glass are told in this book. We also learn about the background of her capturing and also about what happened to Sam. I'm really hoping that some of the hints that are dropped in this book will be uncovered in the upcoming Throne of Glass novels. I would love to see Arobynn make an appearance in the series. 

I definitely recommend reading these novellas if you like the Throne of Glass series. Even though we all know how it's going to end, learning about how Celaena gets there was so interesting and heartbreaking. I absolutely fell in love with Sam and I was hoping against hope that he would meet a different end. And thinking about what Celaena has witnessed at her age just makes me incredibly sad and I feel like I understand a lot of her actions better now. So reading these stories is definitely time well spent if you would like to know everything about Celaena Sardothien.