Complete Series
Maas before ACOTAR: an assassin, a stolen crown, and a series that grows from YA competition fantasy into a full-scale epic. Complete since 2018.
Reading Order
Sarah J. Maas
416 pagesCelaena Sardothien, the most feared assassin in the kingdom, is released from slavery to compete in a deadly tournament. If she wins, she'll earn her freedom; if she loses, she'll die fighting. As she maneuvers through the King's court, she realizes nothing is as it seems.
Sarah J. Maas
432 pagesCelaena is now the King's Champion, but her position comes with a terrible price: she must hunt and execute her enemies. Haunted by her past and pulled in dangerous directions, she discovers the king's court is rotting from within. Her every move could be her last.
Sarah J. Maas
496 pagesExiled and stripped of her power, Celaena travels across continents seeking answers about her past and her connection to magic. In a frozen land, she discovers allies who might help her reclaim what was stolen. But freedom comes at a cost she's not sure she can pay.
Sarah J. Maas
688 pagesCelaena returns to her kingdom, bent on revenge against those who destroyed everything she loved. Now she must balance her dark hunger for vengeance with the weight of survival and loyalty. She will risk everything to reclaim her throne.
Sarah J. Maas
656 pagesWar is coming to the kingdom, and Celaena must rally her fractured allies and unleash the full extent of her power. Enemies close in from all sides as ancient secrets awaken. The final battle for freedom begins.
Sarah J. Maas
704 pagesChaol's journey continues in a new land as he seeks redemption and discovers his own power beyond anything he imagined. Surrounded by ancient warriors and supernatural threats, he must decide who he truly wants to be. His choices will change everything.
Sarah J. Maas
1024 pagesThe final installment brings together all storylines as Celaena and her allies fight in an epic confrontation with darkness. Betrayals, sacrifices, and impossible choices reshape the kingdom and its people. Some destinies cannot be escaped.
Urban paranormal fantasy set in a sprawling city where humans, fae, demons, and other supernatural beings coexist. Follow Bryce Quinlan as she navigates danger, mystery, and her own hidden destiny.
Sarah J. Maas's fae saga is the series that turned an entire generation of readers into romantasy people. Five books out, with book six landing October 27, 2026.|||[A Court of Thorns and Roses](/book/a-court-of-thorns-and-roses) started life in 2015 as a Beauty and the Beast retelling with fae courts and a huntress heroine, and for a few years it simply sold well. Then lockdown-era BookTok found it and turned it into a phenomenon. Sarah J. Maas is now one of the bestselling fantasy authors alive, and ACOTAR is the series most new romantasy readers meet first. It is the closest thing the genre has to a shared canon: the court aesthetics, the mate bond discourse, the endless fan-cast videos, all of it traces back here. Reading order is publication order, no exceptions. A Court of Thorns and Roses (2015), A Court of Mist and Fury (2016), A Court of Wings and Ruin (2017), the holiday novella A Court of Frost and Starlight (2018), then A Court of Silver Flames (2021), which hands the lead to Feyre's sister Nesta. Order matters more here than in most series because Mist and Fury deliberately rewrites how you read book one, and going in blind to that reversal is half the experience. Frost and Starlight is skippable on plot but it seeds Silver Flames, so at least skim it. The long wait is finally over: Maas announced on Call Her Daddy that book six arrives October 27, 2026, book seven follows January 12, 2027, and an eighth is still being written. She wrote one enormous story, well over a thousand pages, and split it into parts. Heat climbs as you go. Book one sits around 2 on our [spice scale](/spice-guide), Mist and Fury is a solid 3, and Silver Flames is a 4 with the most explicit scenes Maas has written. Content notes worth knowing before you start: sexual coercion and assault in the Under the Mountain chapters, an emotionally abusive relationship shown on the page before the story names it as one, extended PTSD depiction, self-harm ideation in Silver Flames, and plenty of war violence and grief. What makes the series work is the [found family](/tropes/found-family). The Inner Circle banter carries entire chapters, Feyre's trauma recovery in Mist and Fury is genuinely well handled, and Nesta's book is a raw, angry portrait of self-loathing that a lot of readers consider the best thing Maas has written. Fair criticism: book one is the slowest and weakest, the Tamlin pivot between books reads to some as a retcon rather than a reveal, Frost and Starlight is filler, and the fandom's war over Elain's endgame has become its own weather system. On screen news, the Hulu adaptation died in development after years of waiting, and Maas confirmed in early 2026 that she has her screen rights back with no immediate plans. If you finish and want more Maas, Throne of Glass is the bigger, longer epic and is already complete. If it was the heat and the bite you liked, From Blood and Ash runs hotter and [Quicksilver](/book/quicksilver) hotter still. And if the mate bond was the hook, our fated mates and enemies to lovers trope pages are full of books that chase that exact feeling.
Throne of Glass began as a story a teenage Sarah J. Maas posted online under the title Queen of Glass, and it kept that scrappy energy when Bloomsbury published it in 2012. It sold steadily for years, then the ACOTAR boom sent readers back through her catalog and the series found a second, much larger audience on BookTok. It has a real advantage over most big romantasy series: it is finished. Eight volumes, no waiting, and an ending that actually lands.
The novels in publication order: 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), plus The Assassin's Blade, a 2014 collection of prequel novellas. Order genuinely matters, and there are two decisions to make. First, read The Assassin's Blade before Queen of Shadows at the latest; events from those novellas hit hard in book four and land flat if you meet them out of order. Second, do not skip Tower of Dawn because it follows Chaol instead of Aelin. It runs parallel to Empire of Storms and smuggles in plot that Kingdom of Ash assumes you know. Ambitious readers do the tandem read, alternating chapters of both. It works, but simply reading them back to back is fine.
This is Maas at her least spicy. The early books are true YA, a 1 on our scale at most, and even the adult-skewing later volumes top out around 2 to 3 with a few explicit scenes in Empire of Storms and Kingdom of Ash. The content is heavier than the heat: slavery and death camps, torture, an on-page massacre or two, and a running theme of surviving what should have killed you.
The long game is the draw. Maas plants things in book one that detonate five books later, and the payoff structure of Kingdom of Ash rewards every hour invested. Manon Blackbeak and her wyvern-riding witches steal the back half of the series outright. Fair criticism: the first two books read noticeably younger and slighter than the rest, Celaena is an acquired taste before she becomes Aelin, and the POV count balloons until the finale is juggling a dozen threads. Some readers bounce off Tower of Dawn's slower pace. There is no adaptation; screen rights sit with Maas after the Hulu era ended.
When you are done, ACOTAR is the obvious next stop and runs much hotter. Fourth Wing scratches the war-school itch with dragons, and Zodiac Academy offers a wilder, messier academy saga. For more like Manon, our morally gray heroine and slow burn trope pages are good hunting grounds.