54 pages • 1 hour read
Heir of Fire
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Background
Series Context: The Throne of Glass Series
Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass series, published between 2012 and 2018, contains seven books and an accompanying collection of short stories, The Assassin’s Blade (2014). The main series comprises Throne of Glass (2012), Crown of Midnight (2013), Heir of Fire (2014), Queen of Shadows (2015), Empire of Storms (2016), Tower of Dawn (2017), and Kingdom of Ash (2018). The books gained popularity and have been included in several Fantasy and YA Fiction lists, earning the Goodreads Best Young Adult Fantasy and Science-Fiction Award in 2015 and 2018.
The series follows Celaena Sardothien, a young assassin later revealed to be the presumed-dead queen of Terrasen, Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, in her efforts to free her kingdom from evil creatures and rebuild her kingdom. The story begins with Celaena being imprisoned as a slave in the mines of Endovier in a country called Adarlan, which is ruled by an all-powerful, evil king. The king organizes a contest to choose his next champion, and Celaena is recruited due to her skills as an assassin. She eventually wins the competition and starts working for the king while befriending the prince, Dorian, and the captain of the guards, Chaol.
Additionally, magic has been banned from Adarlan for 10 years, but strange events lead the three friends to investigate and discover that the king threw a spell to make it vanish. Indeed, he can control dark magic thanks to an ancient race of evil creatures from another world called the Valg, who can invade people’s bodies. Throughout the series, Celaena reclaims her identity as Aelin, the young queen of the kingdom of Terrasen, which the king destroyed. She also meets other characters, like Princess Nehemia, her estranged cousin Aedion, the witch warrior Manon, and her Fae mate, Rowan. Together, they raise an army and defeat the king, destroy the Valg, and free magic. In the end, Aelin and Rowan are crowned as the rightful rulers of Terrasen.
Genre Context: Sarah J. Maas and New Adult Fiction
A term first coined in 2009 by St. Martin’s Press, new adult fiction can be considered a subgenre of young adult fiction, with a few key differences. Whereas YA fiction is generally marketed to adolescents between 12 and 18, NA fiction is geared toward older readers in the 18-25 age bracket. As a result, NA books are concerned with more mature themes focusing on a sense of emerging adulthood. This subgenre can include, for example, swearing, violence, sex, or politics and often explores a character’s identity, career, or lifestyle.
NA fiction often faces controversy as a genre, with critics viewing it mostly as an unnecessary marketing scheme or as a way of further infantilizing female authors who write adult fiction (particularly science fiction and fantasy). On the other hand, NA literature distinguishes between books marketed to younger readers and books that contain more mature and explicit themes.
Sarah J. Maas’s most famous series, Throne of Glass and, more significantly, A Court of Thorns and Roses, are often cited as examples of the renewal of NA fiction. Her books often contain explicit violence and sex, making them difficult to categorize as literature for pre-teens and teenagers. Heir of Fire, for instance, offers a gritty exploration of Celaena’s depression, explicit depictions of physical and psychological violence, and direct references to the characters’ sexualities.
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By Sarah J. Maas
