An Evening With Sarah J Maas

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An Evening With Sarah J Maas Auckland's Victory Convention Centre — Image from Event Finder

Sarah J Maas completed her Kingdom of Ash tour in Auckland.

I managed to grab a ticket a few months ago to this Auckland Writer’s Festival and Bloomsbury supported event here in Auckland, and I’m so glad I did!

If you don’t know who Sarah J Maas is then you’re probably new to the blog and/or you haven’t listened to Sophie and I rave about her on Rants and Reviews Podcast. But in short, she’s a superb Young Adult fantasy author who has written some of my favourite books ever.

Maas wrote the Throne of Glass series, the last of which is Kingdom of Ash and also the A Court of Thorns and Roses series, affectionately called ACOTAR. While I haven’t actually finished either series (I’ve only read books one to four in Throne of Glass, and only book one so far in ACOTAR), I love the stories I’ve read so far and 100000% mean to pick up the other books as soon as possible.

If you’ve never been to an author event like this before then it’s a really cool way to hear about all the behind-the-scenes things that author get up to, and how they write their books, where they get their ideas from etc. An Evening with Sarah J Maas was just like that; an hour of her chatting to us about her characters, her plot lines (of which there were many spoilers and dammit Anjali why didn’t you pick up all the books before going to see her?!), and some of her own story. There was a short time for audience questions, which people had sent in prior to the event, and then for some right at the end of the evening there was a chance to meet Sarah and take their photo with her. Alas, I was not one of those people, but it was cool all the same!

The chats

There were a few things that Sarah J Maas talked about that I wanted to share with you. Sarah talked about how when she was young she would watched movies like Indiana Jones and Star Wars and always imagine herself as characters like Indiana and Luke Skywalker; shows like Buffy and Sailor Moon really taught her the importance of having kick-ass female characters in stories, and you can see that all through her books. Her leading ladies are so kick-ass they’re some of the best in YA.

One of the audience questions was ‘If all your characters were in the Hunger Games, who would win?’ Her answers were brilliant, and even though a few of them didn’t make sense to me due to the fact that I haven’t read them all yet, they were still super entertaining. Some characters she paired up with others from the same books, some she paired up across the series, and some she thought wouldn’t make it at all.

Maas talked about how A Court of Mist and Fury is one of her favourite books that she’s ever written, and she also said ‘book people are the best people’, and that’s my new favourite line. Ever.

What’s next?

Maas’ next book project is a series called Crescent City, the first of which is called House of Earth and Blood, which comes out in January 2020. While we don’t know too much about it yet, she did tell us that it was contemporary fantasy, which she explained as taking a world like the ones in Throne of Glass and ACTOR and speedy ahead a few hundred years where everyone has cell phones and technology is everywhere. It’ll be like fantasy creatures and elements, but with modern conveniences. I’m exited you guys.

And that’s pretty much it! If you ever get to go and listen to your favourite authors talk about their books, then obviously get yourself there! It’s so worth it!

Did you go to An Evening With Sarah J Maas? Or seen one of your favourite authors? Let me know!