The Assassin's Blade by Sarah J. Maas

To purchase this novel with my Amazon link, click here -> https://amzn.to/3HtEvGu

Description:

Celaena Sardothien is her kingdom's most feared assassin. Though she works for the powerful Assassin's Guild and its scheming master, Arobynn Hamel, she yields to no one and trusts only her fellow killer-for-hire, Sam. But when Arobynn dispatches her on missions that take her from remote islands to hostile deserts, Celaena finds herself acting independently of his wishes and questioning her own allegiance. If she hopes to escape Arobynn's clutches, Celaena will have to put her faith in her wits and her blade . . . knowing that if she fails, she'll lose not just a chance at freedom but her life. A prequel to the #1 bestselling Throne of Glass series, this collection of five novellas explores the history of this cunning assassin and her enthralling-and deadly-world.

Age Recommendation: 17+, 12th Grade- Young Adult

General Content:

Language: 5/10- Nearly every chapter has at least one profanity.

Alcohol & Drugs: 4/10- Some alcohol and drunkenness, not excessive but prevalent.

Violence & Gore: 7/10- A considerable amount of violence, gore, slavery, and mentions of torture.

Sexual Content: 5/10- Some discreet mentions of sex, a moderate amount of kissing, and wandering hands

Parent Guide:

THE ASSASSIN AND THE PIRATE LORD

Ch. 1:

-“Thankfully, her sleepwear was as exquisite as her daytime wardrobe—and cost nearly as much. Still, being sixteen in a room with men made her keep an eye on the neckline of her robe. Her beauty was a weapon—one she kept honed—but it could also be a vulnerability.”

-Celaena recommends killing a fellow assassin with poison after he was caught.

-One of the assassins has been killed, and Celaena is upset that his body wasn’t recovered.

Ch. 2:

-Three assassins had been found murdered by pirate hands, and Arobynn had sent her to be his personal dagger—to extract retribution, preferably the gold kind, for what their deaths would cost the Assassins’ Guild.

-Celaena jokingly offers Sam brandy; neither of them actually drinks it.

-Celaena and the same get sent to the Lord of Pirates (Rolfe) to invest in slaves for their boss.

-The Rolfe suggests that Sam and Celaena could share one bath before winking at them.

Ch. 3

-Celaena jokingly thinks she’d “sell her soul to a pack of demons for a cool breeze right now”.

Ch. 4

-After waking up, Celaena went outside to find pirates, orphans, and “prostitutes stumbling past after a long night”.

Ch. 5

-Celaena describes the horrible conditions the slaves are held in, that there are children, and that some of them are weeping.

-When talking about where one of the slaves would be sent, Rolfe mentions sending him to Bellhaven, “Lots of rich men there needing strong hands to do their building. Or women needing strong hands for something else entirely. He winked in Celaena’s direction”.

-Celaena and Sam discuss with Rolfe his plans for the child slaves. Rolfe states, “We try to keep the children with their mothers,” but ultimately have no control. Some get sold to wealthy households or brothels.

-Celaena recounts a memory of Sam’s mom being sold to a brothel at 8 years old and spending her 28 years of life, before being murdered by a client, becoming a successful courtesan.

Ch. 8

-In order to distract the pirates, Sam and Celaena open a tab at the bar. Sam and Rolfe continue to drink, many of the pirates are drunk, and Sam pretends to be drunk. Here’s how the revelry is mentioned:

“Lowlifes drank themselves into oblivion and gambled on rigged games of chance. Harlots patrolled the room, milling around tables and sitting on laps”.

Ch. 10

-Rolfe, with his dagger at her throat, threatens to kill Celaena. Rolfe threatens to “spill her throat on the ground”…” I want to take a long, long while to enjoy killing you”…” you’re going to return with me…and after I’m done with you, I’ll contact your master to come pick up the pieces”.

-Celaena rushed to find Sam. On the way, she passed “pirate corpses…blood, bone, and squished bits of flesh that she didn’t particularly care to look at for too long…”.

THE ASSASSIN AND THE HEALER

Ch.1

-A young woman (who we later find out is Celaena), who seems no older than 20, is seen “drinking an ungodly amount” of alcohol at an inn.

-One of the other inn attendants (Yrene) describes her coworker as so: “One glance into the corner revealed that pretty face and its attendant body perched on the lap of a bearded sailor…”.

-Yrene walks back to the bar through “a field of groping hands”.

-Celaena mentions that she had gotten “a beating” from her master for destroying his slave trade.

Ch.2

-Mentions of different Gods/ goddesses. Ex. Silba, the goddess of healing.

-Yrene recalls a memory of her mother being burned alive for her healing magic.

-A man grabs Yrene by the waist and tries to pull her into his lap, “‘I’ve got work to do,’ she said as blandly as possible…’ you can go to work on me,’ said another one of the mercenaries”.

THE ASSASSIN AND THE DESERT

Ch. 2

-Once arriving at the assassins' keep in the desert, they searched Celaena; she recounts her memory by saying, “she did cringe inwardly at the thought of the guards pawing at her undergarments…Her taste for very expensive and very delicate underwear wouldn’t do much for her reputation”.

-Celaena recounts her punishment in detail. She was hit over and over by her master until she bled and blacked out.

Ch. 5

-Ansel (another assassin) tells Celaena about her homeland, the flatlands. The flatlands were once ruled by witches until a new witch clan, the ironteeth clan, took over. Ansel tells Celaena a memory from her childhood in which one of her sister’s friends ended up getting taken by a witch from the Ironteeth clan. They heard her scream and later found nothing but “the bones of a child, White as iron and picked clean”.

-Ansel tells her frustrations with the silent assassins' guild. “The flatlands would prosper if they had an army of assassins to defend them. But no, they just sit in their oasis, silent and thoughtful, and whore themselves out to foreign courts”.

-A merchant tells Celaena that he exchanged 20 years of his life for a fine silk woven by spiders. On his way back, he found a witch and asked if she could restore his years to him; she couldn’t, but told him how.

Ch. 6

-“So she began praying to anyone, anything. Kasida gave a sudden burst of speed, as if she, too, understood that only the gods would see them safely over”.

-Ansel admits to Celaena what truly happened to her family. Lord Loch came and demanded they yield to him. When her family refused, he made her father watch as he slit the throats of his family and servants. Ansel was hiding and therefore survived.

Ch. 8

-Ilias wraps his arm around Celaena's waist, caresses her jaw, and gently lifts her head. When he attempts to kiss her, she moves away nervously.

-Ansel doesn’t return to her room after a party, and it’s hinted that she most likely spent the night with her boyfriend.

-Ansel and Celaena get into a fight, Ansel calls Celaena a “spoiled, selfish, b***h”.

THE ASSASSIN AND THE UNDERWORLD

Ch. 1

-“Celaena took in each swish of her hips, the elegant angle of her hand, the exquisite dress that dipped low enough to reveal her generous bosom”.

-Celaena talks to a courtesan in the hall who is preparing for her bidding. She mentions that a bidding is when “girls trained until they were seventeen, when their virginity was sold to the highest bidder”.

Ch. 3

-Celaena comments on Lysandra's “low-cut” dress. Her low-cut ice-blue dress did little to hide her cleavage as she craned her neck over the rail.

Ch. 4

-Celaena attends a party in which “young women in nothing more than corsets and lacy lingerie dangled from swings attached to the filigreed ceiling, and bare-chested young men with ornate ivory collars handed out wine”.

-Celaena watches the man she is commissioned to assassinate in a couple of days, Doneval, who has “one hand already wrapped around the bare shoulders of the girl beside him, didn’t thank either his bodyguard or the serving boy. Celaena felt her lip curl as Doneval pressed his lips to the neck of the courtesan. The girl couldn’t have been older than twenty”.

-Celaena mentions that the girls performing arched their backs so far that “it was a miracle their breasts stayed in their corsets”.

-“Doneval was now slobbering over the neck of the girl on his other side, his hand roaming along her bare thigh”.

-Celaena drinks sparkling wine from nearly every bottle until she is drunk; she comments that the party was “more than a party: it was a performance, an orgy, and a call to worship at the altar of excess. Celaena was a willing sacrifice”.

Ch. 7

-Celaena gets caught spying, she gets hit over the head and wakes up tied up in the sewer, left to die.

Ch. 8

-Sam visits Celaena to check on her, Celaena shifts “suddenly aware of how little her nightgown concealed”.

Ch. 10

-In the sewer during a mission, Sam and Celaena kiss passionately, hands wander. This session is very descriptive. They get back to the assassins' keep and eat dinner together in her room, repeating what happened in the sewer, all clothes stay on.

Ch. 11

-Celeana runs into Lysandra at the keep after her bidding; she’s wearing a “white silk nightgown that barely covered her more private areas”.

THE ASSASSIN AND THE EMPIRE

Ch. 1

-Celaena mentions that she shares her apartment with Sam.

-Celaena goes to find Sam, “trying not to look to the exposed rooms on either side—to the girls and women who weren’t fortunate enough to be sold into an upper-class brothel”.

-A group of people smokes pipes outside of a tavern.

-Sam kisses Celaena's neck and ear while they talk about leaving the city. Celaena reiterates that they have never been intimate but still “enjoy each other”.

Ch. 2

-Sam and Celaena talk about finally leaving their city, sharing the same excitement and nervousness. The chapter ends with a charged moment between Sam and Celaena in which they kiss and he carries her to their bed. They undress, but Celaena shares her hesitancy and says she does not want to go any further.

Ch. 3

-Sam and Celaena wake up together, sharing a bed.

-Celaena and Sam plan to kill the two most famous criminals in the city, one of whom, Farran, is known to have “developed a taste for sadistic torture”.

Ch. 5

-A chained, broken-looking man is brought from a secret passage. He pleads with Farran. He is then pushed back into the passage, and screams are heard soon after. Celaena assumes he is being tortured.

Ch. 6

-While Sam is out trying to assassinate Farran, Celaena tries to keep her mind off of it in different ways. She admits an “utterly sinful romance novel” wasn’t even enough to keep her interest.

-Celaena goes out to search for Sam, she mentions that “the slums were silent…Whores and barefoot orphans and people struggling to make a few honest coppers glanced at her…”

Ch. 8

-Sam’s body is found, and Celaena insists on seeing the body. She describes what Farran had done to him: he had been tortured, hit, cut multiple times, and had his eyes pulled out.

Ch. 9

-Celaena wants revenge on Farran for what he did to Sam, she decides that she will “drag Farran to a place where she could properly repay him and take however long she wanted. Days, even. When that debt was paid, when Farran had no more agony or blood to offer, she’d place Sam in the embrace of the Earth and send him to the afterlife knowing he’d been avenged.”

Ch. 10

-Celaena gets drugged and becomes temporarily paralyzed. While she’s paralyzed, Farran tells her that she is quite beautiful and that he may keep her instead of handing her over to the king. While talking, he “brushed his thumb over her mouth…his hands were roving over her neck now, sensual caresses that promised unbearable agony”.

-While she’s paralyzed, Farran smacks her for “getting blood on the carpet”.

Ch. 11

-Celaena is captured, guards talk about what the king will do to her, if she will be executed, and how. Will she be beheaded or hanged?

Ch. 12

-Arobynn mentions that he betrayed Celaena because he “doesn’t like sharing his belongings [Celaena]”.