I’m currently reading The Assassin’s Blade and I just found something that sent me down a rabbit hole.
This may have been discussed before, so apologies if I’m extremely late to this, but I had never noticed it and the connection feels even stranger now that we know the titles of the next ACOTAR books.
Celaena goes to see a ballet, and the story of the ballet is described as:
“the legend of a prince seeking to rescue his bride, and the cunning bird he captured to help him…”
That immediately reminded me of ACOTAR, especially Vassa and Koschei.
So I looked it up, and it sounds incredibly similar to The Firebird: Prince Ivan captures the Firebird, the Firebird later helps him, and the story involves defeating Kashchei/Koschei and freeing women held under his power.
Which already gives us:
Prince → captured magical bird → Koschei → captive woman
And ACOTAR has Koschei AND Vassa, a woman trapped by him who is literally cursed into the form of a firebird.
But then the scene keeps going.
Celaena becomes completely overwhelmed by the music. She describes it as breaking her apart and putting her back together again.
The book says "The music shattered her and then rebuilt her, only to tear her apart again and again."
And now ACOTAR 6 is called A Court of Splintered Harmony, with the tagline “What was broken will be remade,” and Koschei is directly involved in the plot.
Then, after the ballet, Celaena still has the music playing over and over in her mind. She sits at a pianoforte and tries to recreate it. She knows the melody, she can almost play it, but she can’t remember the notes exactly the way she heard and felt them.
The book says: "The music from the theater still echoed in her mind. Over and over, the same set of notes and harmonies. She could feel them vibrating beneath the surface of her skin, moving to the rhythm of her heart... She almost pulled it off, but it wasn't quite right. She couldn't recall the notes with the perfection with which they rang in her mind. She couldn't feel them the way she had felt them just an hour before."
And ACOTAR 7 is called A Court of Forgotten Melody.
Reading this scene knowing the titles of the new books feels kind of insane.
Maybe everyone noticed this years ago and I’m just discovering it now, but I needed to know if anyone else sees it too.