Rating: 4.5/5 
 ***Minor spoilers, spoilers for books 1-4*** 
 Empire of Storms follows three main storylines: Aelin and her court, Elide and her quest to find Celaena/Aelin, and Manon with the Ironteeth witches. Aelin is ready to take her throne, but it appears that her people aren't yet ready for her. She doesn't have the support of most of the Lords, and won't until she proves herself useful. In response, she plans to call in life debts and hatch some schemes in order to build an army to take Terrasen. After escaping Morath, Elide is moving through the forest on the hunt to deliver the stone from Kaltain to Celaena, and pledge her allegiance to Aelin. On her way she meets Lorcan, who is also after Aelin for his own purposes. Manon is still with her Thirteen, but must deal with the outcome of the explosion, and somehow live with the knowledge of what is really happening in Morath. Later events threaten her position as Wing Leader. 
 This series will always be dear to me, and this book has proved why. While the last two books haven't been bad by any means, they were a bit more disappointing than the first two books of the series. This installment of the series has really brought back of excitement and reminded me why I fell in love with this series in the first place. All of the different storylines are interesting in their own way, but Aelin's story will always be my favourite. It features so many of my favourite characters in the series that I couldn't help but to always be looking forward to Aelin's next chapter. Granted, sometimes her chapters didn't have actual progress, but despite that I always look forward to reading about the characters in general. For those who don't like that, the other two storylines always have enough action to make up for the lack of action that can sometimes happen in Aelin's chapters. 
 In all honesty, I didn't have much of an opinion on Rowan before this book. I'm not really a heavy shipper in any series, so while I did really like Chaol and Aelin together, it didn't upset me for long when she moved on to Rowan. That didn't mean that I immediately liked him though. In Queen of Shadows I started to like him a bit more and appreciate their scenes together, but this book was so good in terms of Aelin and Rowan romance. I'm definitely really into it now. It's really clicked with me how good they are for each other, and how great their chemistry is. I loved reading about them, and if you ship Rowaelin (did I spell that right?) you will really, really love this book. If you were unsure about it like me going into it, I feel like you'll probably experience the same thing I did. 
 Overall, this book was fantastic, and I'm really glad that I loved it more than the last two books. It has really renewed my interest in the series, and I don't know what I'm going to do until next May. Thankfully, Maas has more books coming out this May and September, so I'll be able to get a fix of her writing before the next TOG novel comes out. This book had great scenes from my favourite characters, and despite being a little bit spoiled about what happens at the very end, (view spoiler)[ I saw a drawing of Aelin in a box, and heard something about a coffin (hide spoiler)] I was still extremely surprised about what went down. It was so shocking, and I cried for a while. If you read book 4 and you haven't read this yet, you really need to - it was amazing.