Light Up the Darkness | What Throne of Glass Means to Me

The time has come, friends. It is officially release week for Kingdom of Ash, the seventh and final book in the Throne of Glass series. The book officially came out on Tuesday, and you can be that I started reading it right away! I've finished already, and it is brilliant. Emotional, intense and extremely compelling (so much so that you won't even notice the length as you're reading), I was really blown away by this series finale. I'm still trying to properly process all my feelings, but suffice to say that it's definitely an amazing read!

Light Up the Darkness was born when my friends Kelly of Belle of the Literati, Rachel of Hello, Chelly, Hannah of So Obsessed With and I decided we wanted to collaborate to celebrate the end of a series we loved so dearly! It's time to unveil our most personal post of all - a post entirely about why this series is so special to us and what it's come to mean. After you read my love letter to this series, I'd also encourage you to hop on over and see what Kelly, Rachel & Hannah had to say.

When I first picked up Throne of Glass in 2012, I didn't anticipate the way that this series was going to change my life. Having finished Kingdom of Ash mere days ago, I can certifiably say that this is the series of my adult heart, that it's come to mean so, so much to me, that it's the equivalent only of Harry Potter in terms of how it really defined and shaped years of my life. It's definitely an all-time favorite series that I can see myself revisiting over and over again in the years to come (and still feeling so darn emotional every time I do). 

The series is a masterpiece. The world is so rich, and feels so, so real from the very first moment you find yourself in it. There's a variety of landscapes and cultures and personalities, and the raw honesty with which everything is written really makes every single one of these elements pop off the page. And the story! The story begins with an assassin who competes to become the King's Champion, but it blossoms into something bigger with every novel until it culminates in one hell of an epic finale. There's action and romance, banter and feels and swoons, all woven into the tapestry of a tale that builds and builds and builds on the tiniest of details to weave a bigger picture. And the characters, oh, the characters have my heart. They're so real to me because they're complex individuals who grapple with their circumstances and choices, who form relationships with other folks and who ultimately experience a lot of growth over the course of this story.

All of this gushing about the books has a point, I promise. I wanted to mention all of those things because, for me, this series (and most particularly Throne of Glass) is the book that rekindled my love for writing. I had been suffering from a writing slump (built on a lot of self-doubt, mind you) for nearly four years when I picked up the first book, and it was in reading it that I felt that little ember of desire to write flare up again into a powerful flame. With each successive story, as I witnessed the way it was deftly told, I felt myself absorbing more ideas of what I thought really worked for structure and character development. I was inspired to write again because of the first book, inspired to keep practicing and learning as a writer because of the rest, and for that gift, I will always be grateful.

While I won't completely credit just this series for who I am today, but it's certainly something that played a big role in that. There are so many lessons you can take away from the books (and I'll mention a few more later!), but the one that personally struck me the most is simply expressed in a quote from The Assassin's Blade: "Your fate is yours to decide." It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I was never defined by my past or my present, that I had a say in who I was and who I wanted to be. But witnessing the character development in this series, particularly for Aelin, it really drove that point home for me. It showed me that it was possible - to grow, to learn, to change, to decide my fate - and this served indirectly as a very big source of inspiration and encouragement to do that in real life.

A few other things that I've taken away from the series include:

• One small act can change the course of a life.
• Relationships (of any sort) must be based on understanding the truth of who someone is.
• Change is inevitable, especially if you allow yourself the gift of growth.
• Family is not just the one you're born into, but the ones you choose.
• In the darkest of days, it is the strength of your heart that is the most powerful of all.

I genuinely think I could just keep on going on and on about the deep love I have for the Throne of Glass series. The books are brilliant - there's no end to the takeaways and relatable moments that are in each novel, and they inspire so many different emotions as the story progresses. (I seriously haven't read all that many stories that had me cackling and raging and sobbing in such an intense way.) I'm so incredibly grateful for the fact that it exists, the fact that Sarah J. Maas gifted the world with her words and storytelling, the fact that it brought so many wonderful people into my life. It will always and forever be a series of my heart.

So, I'll leave it at this - if you've not yet read this series, you're going to be in for one hell of a ride. And all those ups and downs and spin cycles of emotion? All those pages? They're going to be worth the read! I really hope you'll consider picking up the Throne of Glass series, if you haven't yet. And if you have and you've been on the same reading journey, cheers to an incredible finale!

Don't forget to check out what the series means to Kelly, Rachel & Hannah!

And in case you missed the rest of the Light Up the Darkness posts...

Series Roulette: My Post / Kelly's post / Rachel's post / Hannah's post

Twenty Questions: My Post / Kelly's post / Rachel's post / Hannah's post