Review of Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

After serving out a year of hard labor in the salt mines of Endovier for her crimes, 18-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien is dragged before the Crown Prince. Prince Dorian offers her her freedom on one condition: she must act as his champion in a competition to find a new royal assassin.

Her opponents are men—thieves and assassins and warriors from across the empire, each sponsored by a member of the kings council. If she beats her opponents in a series of eliminations, she’ll serve the kingdom for three years and then be granted her freedom.

Celaena finds her training sessions with the captain of the guard, Westfall, challenging and exhilirating. But she’s bored stiff by court life. Things get a little more interesting when the prince starts to show interest in her... but it’s the gruff Captain Westfall who seems to understand her best.

Then one of the other contestants turns up dead... quickly followed by another. Can Celaena figure out who the killer is before she becomes a victim? As the young assassin investigates, her search leads her to discover a greater destiny than she could possibly have imagined.


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I heard about Throne of Glass around three months ago and I loved the sound of it. Poison Study is one of my favourite books and that's literally my only fantasy book on my shelf, so when I heard there was ARC's of Throne of Glass available, I dived head first into the opportunity to snag myself a copy. Assassins! Romance! Trials! Castles! Magical Worlds!

400 pages of complete crap later, I passed the book onto my fantasy loving fiancée to read instead of doing what I wanted to do with it, which was throw the thing across the room. I was just so unbelievably... crap. I could deal with Celaena's ego, in fact I quite enjoyed it. As a beautiful woman and a notorious assassin, I would have been disappointed if she was any different. However, I couldn't put up with her constant whining about the Prince.

There was some redeeming things about this story, and that was Nox and the Assassin trials themselves. The mystery was okay but in the end went a little Harry Potter meets Merlin. I really enjoyed reading about the trials, which were heavily detail- oh wait, some of them were deigned a whole chapter if they were lucky while the others? One. Freaking. Sentence. I want to be exaggerating so much. Most of the actual interesting stuff, you know, the reason why Celaena is there in the first place, is shoved in the background so we can read about Celaena thinking about the Prince and why she shouldn't like him but wants him, the Prince thinking about Celaena and wanting to get in her knickers when he's not insulting her, despite having numerous other women - but he thinks that his Father's reign is wrong so he's so deep you know - and Chaol who thinks about Celaena constantly whilst thinking that he shouldn't be thinking of her and thinking that the Prince shouldn't be thinking of her either. However, I did think him cute in an annoying puppy sort of way.

In between all of this we occasionally have the vapid thoughts of some Lady I can't remember... hang on... Lady (I think) Kaltain, who think of nothing more than... getting in the Prince's knickers. Er.. underpants. I'm sorry guys but this is a guy who has slept with every woman in the castle, constantly insults Celaena and all he has to do to seem deep and handsome and god help me 'dreamy' is to think that his father's rule is wrong and that sending Celaena to Endovia (or whatever it's called) was also wrong. I'm sorry but unlike the majority of the people that will rate this 5 stars, I like my men to be... I dunno... intelligent? Is that really too much to ask in a guy? Oh but he reads books...

There's a lot of elements of other books and TV programs in here - Poison Study, Harry Potter, Merlin etc, and the plot was pretty much worked out by page 200. I'm not sure if I'm reading the rest of the books yet out of sheer curiosity, I do like to torture myself...

2/5

Comments

  1. Ah, I'm so sorry you didn't like this book! I personally really liked it but i get where you're coming from saying it was a mix of other books. For myself it reminded me of Bitterblue, a lot!

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  2. Noooooooo! So disappointed that you didn't like this one. Trying not to hype myself up too much for this one. Hope your next read is better!

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  3. NOOOO!!!!! I have to stop on the second paragraph. Maybe you're not into epic fantasy? Oh well, I guess I'll find out soon enough.

    Talk Supe

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    Replies
    1. I loved Poison Study but haven't had the opportunity to read more and I was really open to it! I wanted more fantasy elements, not just the gushing romance. Ergh.

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  4. Sorry you didn't enjoy this one ...

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  5. At least you get the UK cover which is FREAKING AWESOME. I am not at all a fan of the US version. Sorry this one was a dud for you. I've been reading the novellas, and liking them so far, but I'm not head over heels the way I think a lot of people are anticipating they will be.

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