It’s getting down to the wire. That’s right, I’m talking about the release of A Court of Splintered Harmony, otherwise known as ACOTAR 6. It feels like just yesterday we were all wondering when Sarah J. Maas would announce her next book, and now it’s less than a week until it finally comes out.
While it’s a no-brainer that fans who are highly anticipating the release of this new romantasy novel have read the other books in the series, there is something else that readers have been asking — do we need to read the other books in the Maasverse to understand what is going on in this one?
Here are your simple answers ahead of the new book’s release.
Throne of Glass’ connection to ACOTAR
If you haven’t read the Throne of Glass books, don’t worry, you’re not alone. While the series is considered one of Maas' best contributions to fantasy, it was really A Court of Thorns and Roses that shot her to fame. Only after the initial ACOTAR craze did Throne of Glass start to get the big hype it properly deserved.
What is Throne of Glass about? The first book follows Celaena, a teenage assassin, who enters a deadly tournament to become the king's personal assassin. If she does this, she’ll earn her freedom from slavery and will be create her own life in a few years to follow.
The books go much deeper than this initial premise, but we’re not getting into spoilers here. The series contains eight novels, and each one gets better than the last. But do you have to read this whole series to understand the new book? The short answer is no.
The longer answer is that the ACOTAR connection in the Throne of Glass series will enhance your experience reading A Court of Splintered Harmony—and the ACOTAR series as a whole—but this connection is not essential to understanding what’s happening. For context, two ACOTAR characters do appear in Kingdom of Ash, the eighth and final book in the Throne of Glass series, but they are not central characters to the plot.
If anything, I’d say you should try to read the Throne of Glass books before the seventh ACOTAR novel, A Court of Forgotten Melody, because it is going to be a longer book, and the chances of it connecting back to the events of Kingdom of Ash are higher. Plus, that’ll give you more time to read eight books. ACOTAR 7 releases on Jan. 12, 2027.
Crescent City’s connection to ACOTAR
So, do you need to read the other series in the Maasverse, Crescent City? This is more of an “maybe,” or a “probably,” because it depends on whether you want to recognize names. I'd call the Crescent City novels “urban romantasy,” since they take place in a modern city with modern technology but also include fae and the other creatures you'd expect in the genre.
The core three novels so far follow Bryce Quinlan, a half-Fae, half-human woman who, after losing her best friend in a horrifying incident years earlier, teams up with a “fallen” angel to solve mysteries that feel eerily similar to what she lost.
Without going too deep into what happens, there’s a chance you might need to read these books for ACOTAR 6 to recognize characters; however, you likely don't need to read them to actually understand the novel.
The reason I say that is because ACOTAR and Crescent City are pretty separate in their stories until the most recent book in the franchise, House of Flame and Shadow. The first third of the novel ties in heavily with ACOTAR, and it also has a tie-in at the very end, without spoiling who's in it.
There’s no guarantee that characters from Crescent City will show up in ACOTAR 6. Still, there is a good chance names will be mentioned, because several of the main characters of ACOTAR interact with people from Crescent City. So really, if you want to know who these people are, you should read the books.
However, A Court of Splintered Harmony is a pretty standard novel length at 352 pages. It’s not super long, so you probably won't have to track too many connections. I’d, again, recommend saving the Crescent City series for the bigger ACOTAR novel coming out next year.
But if you really want to understand the interconnectedness, then yes, you should read them. To me, you should just read them in general, simply because they're so good.
Even so, if you don't have time, you can find the names you might come across with a quick Google search, so don't stress yourself out about it too much.
A Court of Splintered Harmony releases in bookstores everywhere on Oct. 27, 2026.
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