Review: Fantastic Companion Novella.  See Calaena become the woman she is.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 4, 2013
Celaena went against Arobyn’s orders with the Pirate King and now she must pay a price. First she paid with flesh and now he has sent her to train with the Master of the Silent Assassin Master residing in the desert to learn how to obey orders. Celaena has a month to prove herself to him and receive a letter to take back to Arobyn or else she can never return.Celaena wasn’t sure what to expect with the Silent Assassins. It is different from anything she has ever known. While Arobyn is harsh and brutal always making sure that Celaena saw everyone else as a rival, the Master of the Silent Assassins has them train together and share their knowledge with one another. The last thing Celaena thought she would find is a friend in the middle of a pack of assassins let alone a female friend at that.The novella’s carry so much information about why Celaena turned out the way she did. Especially after being a slave for a year, that would have wrecked someone else but perhaps she made ti through because of some of the lessons learned here.“If you can learn to endure pain, you can survive anything. Some people learn to embrace it—to love it. Some endure it through drowning it in sorrow, or by making themselves forget. Others turn it into anger. But (view spoiler) let her pain become hate, and let it consume her until she became something else entirely—a person I don’t think she ever wished to be”I really think I’m getting a better look into who Celaena is and what her motivations are. If nothing else I get why she wasn’t so keen to go see Arobyn once she was set free from the mine. Who would really want to go back to a man like that? I really enjoyed Celaena exploring her feelings a little more for Sam. He was always supposed to be just her rival so why is she starting to think of him differently.All and all this is a great side story to one of my favorite fantasy series. While it is not necessary to read the novella to understand Throne of Glass or Crown of Midnight I think it is a great accompaniment to them. I know I would have liked Caleana’s character even sooner if I had read these in advance.