What is “tandem”?
If you look up a Throne of Glass reading guide, you might see some people read Empire of Storms (EoS) and Tower of Dawn (ToD) concurrently, or what we call the tandem. Tandem means reading both novels at the same time, and switching between them at certain parts of the plot.
Who's your favorite Throne of Glass character?
Who's your favorite Throne of Glass character?
Save this Throne of Glass tandem reading guide checklist to mark off your progress while reading!
Do I need to tandem?
My personal recommendation is to always, forever, definitely, most certainly, tandem these books.
Why should I tandem read Throne of Glass?
Empire of Storms and Tower of Dawn are book six and seven of Throne of Glass (ToG) series, following the events of Queen of Shadows. These books cover the same time period in Erilea following the completely different set of characters. You’ll know some of these characters ahead of time, and others will be introduced in new plot lines throughout the books. By the time you reach book six and seven, we meet about thirty characters in the entire series, so their stories are split up between two books.
Technically speaking, Empire of Storms is published before Tower of Dawn and you could read it in that order, but speaking from experience I’ve had many friends who were overwhelmed by the tandem that they read Empire of Storms first.
Empire of Storms follows Aelin Ashryver Galathynius and her company while Tower of Dawn follows Chaol Westfall in the Southern Continent. When my friends ask me whether they should tandem as first-time readers I tell them there is no wrong way to read Throne of Glass Series. In my opinion Empire of Storms is an epic adventure while Tower of Dawn is a romantic comedy. That doesn’t mean one book does one thing while the other does another, they both contain romance and adventure, offer thrilling side quests and epic character development.
The catch is, the Empire of Storm’s ending is such a realm-altering experience in the series that it is near impossible to reset back to the beginning of the timeline of the events Empire of Storms has covered and follow a much more mellow story line in Tower of Dawn. And you can’t read Tower of Dawn first because the ending gives away what happened in Empire of Storms so you’ll spoil a big plot line for yourself.
After arguing for years about which book to read first, the community has finally found a middle ground between these books, making it a one giant mega book. This post includes a guide to tandeming Empire of Storms and Tower of Dawn, it’s a community tested and proven chapter reading order.
As for managing two books at once, this is the easiest on a Kindle edition, especially if you have the books individually (some people have an 8 book mega book version that’s sold on Amazon.) Physical books are a bit logistically cumbersome to manage, but more than doable. It’s the hardest on audio medium with it being kind of hard to refer to the tandem guide while reading on the move, as most audiobook readers do.
I personally read audio tandem, what I did is to add the tandem guide as a large widget in my home screen so I can peek at which chapter I’m supposed to switch to the next book. Another way you can do something similar is to set bookmarks in the audiobook chapters ahead of time referring to the guide at the beginning of each chapter and switch in between books when you hit a bookmark.
What is your favorite SJM series?
What is your favorite SJM series?
FAQ
Can I skip Tower of Dawn? I don’t like Chaol that much and I really don’t want to read a book about him.
No. I’m not Chaol’s number one fan either, but he has his place in this series. But don’t think about Tower of Dawn as Chaol’s story, you’re going to go to an entire new continent and an entire new cast. This cast is CRITICAL for Kingdom of Ash. Not to mention there are incredible reveals in Tower of Dawn about the happenings in Empire of Storms and overall plot. It also connects back all the way to Assassin’s Blade.
Besides, Tower of Dawn is the perfect romcom companion to the intense rollercoaster of Empire of Storms, so they fit perfectly.
I can’t tandem. Is there really no way to read these books separately?
Fair enough. If all these words didn’t convince you to not read tandem, I believe you have a real reason. If you absolutely cannot tandem here’s how I’d read it,
- Read Tower of Dawn EXCEPT for the Epilogue
- Read Empire of Storms
- Go back to Tower of Dawn and finish the Epilogue
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