Quick Take
- Narration: Elizabeth Evans has become the definitive voice of this series, and her reading of Aelin in particular carries the weight of someone who has lived inside this world across five volumes.
- Themes: Loyalty and betrayal at scale, the cost of power, war as both strategic and personal
- Mood: Epic and emotionally exhausting in the best sense, with a finale that multiple readers describe as devastating
- Verdict: The fifth Throne of Glass audiobook delivers the genre pleasures the series has built toward, though listeners new to the series will be completely lost.
I remember exactly where I was when I listened to the final two hours of Empire of Storms. I was on a stationary bike in my apartment at eleven at night, having told myself I would just get through one more chapter, and then I could not stop. The ending hit me in the way that only long-running series can hit you, when you have spent so much time with characters that their losses feel personal rather than fictional. Sarah J. Maas earned that effect across five books and hundreds of hours of accumulated investment.
Empire of Storms is the fifth entry in the Throne of Glass series, which means it is entirely the wrong place to start. This is a review for listeners who are already somewhere in the series and trying to decide whether to continue, or who want a sense of how the fifth volume compares to what came before. For those listeners: this is a book that rewards the patience you have already demonstrated, and it is also a book that will leave you needing the next one immediately.
Our Take on Empire of Storms
What Maas is doing with Aelin’s arc across this series is genuinely ambitious. She began as Celaena Sardothien, assassin, and the transformation from that first novel’s setup to the queen navigating alliance politics and multiple fronts of magical war in Empire of Storms is a substantial piece of character work. The political maneuvering in this volume, as Aelin tries to hold fractured alliances together while Erilea fractures around her, has a different texture than the earlier books’ more contained action. Maas scales up, which means she sometimes sacrifices the intimacy that made the first volumes so compelling.
One reviewer, a consistent advocate for the series, noted that she was nervous about this particular installment because it operates simultaneously with the events of the companion novel Tower of Dawn rather than sequentially. That structural decision, splitting the characters across two books, creates an unusual reading experience: Empire of Storms ends with a cliffhanger that only makes complete sense once you have also read Tower of Dawn. Maas and her publisher have since recommended readers read both books simultaneously, alternating chapters. For audio listeners, that approach is more complicated to execute but arguably worth the effort.
Why Listen to Empire of Storms
Elizabeth Evans is the unsung asset of this series. She has narrated the Throne of Glass audiobooks from the beginning, and by the fifth volume her command of the voice is absolute. Aelin’s combination of arrogance, grief, love, and strategic ruthlessness is a performance challenge that Evans handles with consistency: you never feel her straining for effect. The ensemble has expanded considerably by this point, and Evans differentiates between multiple characters across many hours without losing track of any of them.
The romance in Empire of Storms has drawn mixed responses from reviewers, with some noting that this installment pushes the content further than earlier volumes in the series. Listeners who have been reading these as relatively clean high fantasy should be aware that the romantic content escalates here. This is not a dealbreaker for most readers in the target audience, but it is a shift worth flagging.
What to Watch For in Empire of Storms
The ending. Multiple reviewers referenced the need for significant tissue preparation, and that response is calibrated. Maas has been building toward certain events for the full length of the series, and Empire of Storms is where the bill comes due. The book is emotionally expensive in its final hours in a way that the earlier entries were not, and Elizabeth Evans delivers those moments with full commitment.
One reviewer made a sharp observation: she loves the series despite finding it somewhat problematic, and she thinks those aspects deserve discussion even while acknowledging the series’ genuine strengths in giving women emotional agency and power. That tension, between a series’ feminist ambitions and some of its storytelling choices, is worth holding in mind. Maas’s work generates devoted readers and genuine criticism in roughly equal measure, and both responses are defensible.
Who Should Listen to Empire of Storms
Only for listeners who have completed the first four Throne of Glass books. For those readers, this is where the series’ long investments begin to pay off in full, for better and worse. Elizabeth Evans’s narration remains a consistent pleasure across the twenty-five-hour runtime. Skip the series entirely if you are sensitive to content that escalates significantly in later volumes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I read Empire of Storms and Tower of Dawn simultaneously or sequentially?
Maas and her publisher now recommend reading them simultaneously, alternating chapters at certain points in each book. In audio, this requires some logistical management but is worth it since the two books cover the same timeline from different perspectives.
How does Elizabeth Evans handle the expanded ensemble cast in this fifth volume?
She differentiates characters consistently and clearly across a very long runtime, which is an underappreciated skill. Listeners who have followed the series this far will find her readings of returning characters immediately recognizable.
The romantic content escalates in Empire of Storms. How explicit does it get?
More than earlier volumes. This book pushes toward new adult territory in its romantic scenes, which represents a departure from the earlier books. Most reviews treat this as appropriate for the series’ audience, but listeners who preferred the cleaner earlier volumes should be prepared.
Is the ending of Empire of Storms a cliffhanger, and how severe?
Yes, and it is quite severe. The events at the end of this book connect directly to Tower of Dawn and Kingdom of the Wicked, and understanding the full scope of what happens requires at minimum reading Tower of Dawn either simultaneously or immediately after.
