With the release of House of Flame and Shadow coming in January 2024, readers who love Sarah J. Maas are re-reading all of her works. I personally am reading all of her books chronologically of when she published them, starting with the Throne of Glass series.
It is a huge debate in the SJM fandom about which read order is best for Throne of Glass.
This is what I see most people say on TikTok:
- Assassin’s Blade
- Throne of Glass
- Crown of Midnight
- Heir of Fire
- Queen of Shadows
- Tandem: Empire of Storms and Tower of Dawn
- Kingdom of Ash
This is the way I read the stories originally, and another popular way to read the books:
- Throne of Glass
- Crown of Midnight
- Heir of Fire
- Assassin’s Blade (either before or after Heir of Fire)
- Queen of Shadows
- Empire of Storms
- Tower of Dawn (Most people still opt for the tandem read)
- Kingdom of Ash
Before starting this reading I was a die-hard you should not read Assassins Blade first. I have only read Assassin’s Blade once, as it broke my tiny 16-year-old heart. I read it after Heir of Fire because that is just when I so happened to acquire the novel.
Years later, the debate on TikTok arises where there is all this talk of where you should place Assassin’s Blade in the series. I thought back to my reading and I said if you read it before ToG, you would be spoiling the entire series for yourself. The series is called Throne of Glass, not Assassin’s Blade. I had all these little reasons.
So starting out my re-read I wanted to prove everyone wrong. I wanted to prove that Throne of Glass should be read first.
And I did just the opposite.
I began reading Throne of Glass and then read each short story as it was brought up. (Assassin’s Blade is made up of 5 novellas. 4 were published before Throne of Glass, and 1 was added when they published it as a book instead of just online.) The first and third stories were the only ones brought up as anecdotes. So I read the first three once the Skull’s Bay and Silent Assassins were mentioned.
I did not read the remaining two stories till the end of Throne of Glass, mostly because I was waiting for an overt allusion to the stories. I believe there was one that I missed, but it didn’t matter.
Once I finished Assassin’s Blade, I realized I was wrong. There actually were no spoilers, it just reads that way after you know the story and some of the endings of the first few books.
I officially converted.
I am a believer in reading Assasin’s Blade first. You don’t get any spoilers. You actually get to see Celeana’s badassery more in Assasin’s Blade than if you were to just read Throne of Glass. You get to understand some of the events in the first book more if you read the novellas first.
Officially I think Assassin’s Blade is the way to go.
Now, I do not believe in the tandem read of the 5th and 6th books and I probably will not budge on that. Maybe I will discuss that in another post.
Thank you for reading!
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