I'm doing the "Empire of Storms"/"Tower of Dawn" tandem read

I am in a very special place.

It is my first time reading through the Throne of Glass series. I wish I had read it sooner, but my TBR had other plans for me. However, since I know we'll be reading ACOTAR for one of my classes in the fall, I anticipate a lot of Maasverse spoilers, so I knew I had to read every last one of her books before it was too late.

Having read Throne of Glass in high school, now over three years ago, I thought picking the series back up would be impossible. I was asking myself how I'd possibly remember anything.

But look how far I've come.

I must admit, it was slow going there for a while. There were moments I definitely wondered what all the hype was about. But I pushed on, and now I regret nothing. Queen of Shadows was a sheer delight. Need I say more than simply this: Rowan. Period.

I've heard mixed opinions about reading these next two books in tandem, but since I can only ever read them for the first time once, I figured why not go for the immersive experience? Get the full chronological order?

That being said, I admittedly skipped The Assassin's Blade. I know, I am a horrible person. I need someone to convince me to read it. Any takers?

Anyway, so far the tandem read is actually enjoyable, and it requires very little preparation, despite what I've heard online. All you need to do is look up a chapter guide and then use it to mark each stopping point with tabs. You can find the chart I used here.

All I did before reading was place a tab at the stopping point for each section. That way, I knew that I needed to switch books whenever I got to one of these tabs.

So far, so good. The only downside is that if I'm traveling anywhere during the course of this reading adventure, I have to haul these two massive books along with me, which clearly is not ideal. Oh, the struggles of being a physical reader...

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Is the tandem read worth it? Did you read them separate? I hear that some people even skip Tower of Dawn entirely. Was that you?