Confessions of a Literary Addict

This review is spoiler-free!

Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
Series: Throne of Glass #1
Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy
Release Date: May 7th 2013 by Bloomsbury USA Children’s
Format: Hardcover, 404 pages
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Find it here: Goodreads || Book Depository

When magic has gone from the world, and a vicious king rules from his throne of glass, an assassin comes to the castle. She does not come to kill, but to win her freedom. If she can defeat twenty-three killers, thieves, and warriors in a competition to find the greatest assassin in the land, she will become the King’s Champion and be released from prison.

Her name is Celaena Sardothien.

The Crown Prince will provoke her. The Captain of the Guard will protect her.

And a princess from a foreign land will become the one thing Celaena never thought she’d have again: a friend.

But something evil dwells in the castle—and it’s there to kill. When her competitors start dying, horribly, one by one, Celaena’s fight for freedom becomes a fight for survival—and a desperate quest to root out the source of the evil before it destroys her world.

Finally, I’ve started on this series bandwagon that I’ve been putting off literally forever now. Mostly because I didn’t want to have to deal with waiting, but also because I was worried I wouldn’t end up liking the series as much as I was hoping I would. (And I know the three-star makes it look like I didn’t enjoy the book as much as it was hyped up to be, but I’ve seen from MANY people that the first book is not a good representation of how the whole series is, so I’m holding out hope for the next couple of books.)

Nonetheless, I tossed myself in, and here I am. Out the other end, only a little confused now on what exactly is going on. I mean, I understood the plot, or what I thought was the plot (spoiler: not all is what it seems), but that doesn’t really mean I’m in full comprehension of what exactly this book was all about.

I’m not going to go too in-depth on a lot of the things with the book just for the sake of spoilage, but I do have to say I liked the twist that we were given in the book. More than I actually liked the book itself, which is one reason why I gave it a three-star rating. Another reason would be because of the main character, Celaena Sardothien.

As a well-known assassin and overall badass, I expected a lot more from Caleana that I ended up getting. I know she’s only seventeen and she had just spent a lot of time in a horrible prison setting, but hot damn was she annoying a lot of the time. The times I liked her most were the times when she wasn’t really the main focus of whatever was going on — especially the parts where Princess Nehemia came in. That could be because Nehemia was one of my favorite characters (along with Nox), but, in those specific settings, I actually really enjoyed Celaena as a character.

With characters like Dorian and Chaol? Not so much. But I also wasn’t the biggest fan of those two when they were with Calaena either, so. It was a two-way dislike. I also liked Chaol more than I liked Dorian, but that didn’t really change a whole lot on my perspective for the scenes where they interacted with our assassin. Sometimes Dorian almost seemed like a female Celaena with some of the things he said/did, and that could be why I wasn’t his biggest fan. But! He was a prince, and I think maybe he was supposed to be the kind of person he was. (IE spoiled and kind of a dumbass.)

I also could have done with some more action in the actual story, instead of the down time scenes we were given. I know it was probably a necessity, but I still was getting bored a lot more than I would have liked.

Before I dive down details I shouldn’t expand on, I’m going to move onto Maas’ writing-style. Did I like it?

Eh. I can very easily see why some people would, because it’s very easy to get through and it flows quite nicely, but sometimes the details she gave were so overdone that I got bored immediately with whatever paragraph I was reading. She also had a habit of telling instead of showing in some cases (coughcold-heartedassassincough), but I think that was just an aspect I particularly didn’t care for. Some people love that, I’m just not one of them. I’ll just have to get used to it as I go along, I guess.

All in all, not a fantastic read, but I’m interested enough to keep going. Here’s hoping the next ones are great!

Thanks for reading!