Tower of Dawn

About Tower of Dawn

Tower of Dawn is a 2017 novel by Sarah J. Maas, published by Bloomsbury Publishing. It is a companion novel to the Throne of Glass series and takes place concurrently with Empire of Storms, following characters who do not appear in that volume. The central protagonists are Chaol Westfall, the former captain of the royal guard, and Nesryn Faliq, who travel together to the Southern Continent — specifically to the Torre Cesme, a legendary healing tower — seeking both medical help for Chaol's spinal injury and military alliances against the encroaching darkness.

The novel is substantially longer than most entries in the series, at 692 pages, and it operates at a different pace: more diplomatic, more focused on recovery and psychological healing than on action-in-the-moment. At its core, Tower of Dawn is a novel about what it means to rebuild — a body, a sense of purpose, and a relationship with someone you have wronged.

The Torre Cesme itself is a rich setting: a center of learning and healing with its own internal politics, rivalries, and secrets. Maas uses it to introduce a significant new character — Yrene Towers, a young healer with her own complicated history — and the relationship that develops between Yrene and Chaol becomes the emotional center of the book.

Place in the Throne of Glass Series

The Throne of Glass series is one of the most commercially successful young adult fantasy franchises of the past decade. Tower of Dawn was originally conceived as a novella before expanding into a full novel, and its events are essential to understanding the series' conclusion in Kingdom of Ash.

Maas's world-building in this installment is particularly detailed, introducing the khaganate (a Central Asian-inspired empire) and exploring political alliances across a continent that the series had previously only referenced. The novel also contains a prominent storyline about disability and recovery — Chaol's paralysis is handled with greater specificity and emotional honesty than is typical for this kind of fantasy narrative.

Why It Has Been Banned

Tower of Dawn has been banned or challenged in 36 school districts across 7 states, including Florida, Iowa, Maine, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin. As with other books in the Throne of Glass series, challenges most frequently cite sexual content and mature themes.

Maas's adult-crossover fantasy series has been a consistent target for book challenges in recent years, particularly in Iowa and Florida, where broad legislative changes enabled administrative book removals across dozens of districts simultaneously. The sexual content cited in challenges is in keeping with the standard of the upper-YA/adult crossover market, and the books are widely available to adult readers without controversy. The challenges focus on their presence in school libraries specifically.

Along with Empire of Storms, A Court of Mist and Fury, and Kingdom of Ash — all of which are also on this site — Tower of Dawn has become part of a larger pattern of challenges to Maas's entire body of work rather than any single book in isolation.