Throne of GlassBy: Sarah J. Maas
Received: From publisher for an honest review
Summary: 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 king's 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.
Review: I'm a bit late to jump on the bandwagon for this book but I thought I should get to it before they start optioning it for a movie. It seems most novels with a large fan base are being turned into movies. I also needed an exceptional book to get out of my reading slump, but I'm not sure this was the right book for it.
While I did enjoy Throne of Glass I did not love it as everyone else seems to. I found way to many flaws in the character development and I couldn't completely get into the story for the first half of the book. Once I did get engrossed into the story I still did not fall completely in love with Throne of Glass.
My first problem was the main character Celaena. When we first meet her she is concentrating on all the ways it would be so easy for her to kill everyone she meets and how pretty she is while she does it. She was arrogant and I couldn't enjoy reading about her. It wasn't until the first task that I could really get involved into the story .Sarah J Maas can write some great action scenes that capture your attention. Those were the highlight of the story.
I had a few other problems with other character developments that I won't get into here because I don't want to spoil anyone that hasn't read this book yet. Basically the character traits did not mix with the characters jobs or descriptions and it annoyed me throughout most of the book.
However, Throne of Glass was a fun novel to read. While it is not a favorite of mine I will continue to read the rest of the series. I have already started the sequel and hope it will be better than the first novel now that the world is set up. I love reading fantasy novels with adventure and magic so I'm hoping this series gets better as it goes on.
This book has gotten so many rave reviews that I'm glad I found someone who was also not wowed by it! Maybe my expectations were too high but it was a bit of a disappointment for me. I agree with you, Celaena does come off as kinda full of herself (especially initially) and I also wish we'd seen her actually being a brilliant assassin, rather than just being told that. I haven't read the prequels so they probably cover that, but still. From what I've heard the series does improve with each book, but since I didn't love the first one I'm not sure if/when I'll read the others.
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