Book Review: Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

In a land without magic, where the king rules with an iron hand, an assassin is summoned to the castle. She comes not to kill the king, but to win her freedom. If she defeats twenty-three killers, thieves, and warriors in a competition, she is released from prison to serve as the king’s champion. Her name is Celaena Sardothien.

The Crown Prince will provoke her. The Captain of the Guard will protect her. But something evil dwells in the castle of glass–and it’s there to kill. When her competitors start dying one by one, Celaena’s fight for freedom becomes a fight for survival, and a desperate quest to root out the evil before it destroys her world.

I didn’t really like this book.

I am having an immensely hard time coping with the fact that I did not think this book was that great, it was just okay. Not great, not mind blowing, not the best YA fantasy I’ve ever read. The hype surrounding this series is INSANE and that’s probably why I had such a hard time with this book because, to me, the hype just was not worth it at all.

I’m very disappointed with “Throne of Glass” but at the same time it was alright. In the end I feel like a three star rating is being very generous because I honestly could have easily gone with 2 stars or 2.5 stars as well.

I think what my biggest problem with this book is that it promises things it doesn’t deliver. Celaena is described as the best and most dangerous assassin around and she spends the better half of the book SAYING she is but not SHOWING that she is. Where’s my badass assassin who actually kills people? Where’s the action? I wanted more action! We got to read about some of the tests for the competition but only a handful, why? If we had more insight into this King’s Champion competition it could have been more action-packed and therefore a little more interesting, at least for me. There was a lot of missed out opportunities to read about something other than the love triangle and dresses.

So while I didn’t think there was ENOUGH action and too many descriptions of Celaena’s dresses, Maas did succeed in keeping the plot suspenseful and tense. I did manage to finish the book after all, right? I wanted to know what was going to happen next and that’s what kept me turning pages even when nothing else really did. I really wish I could explain more in depth what I loved about the plot but I can’t  without spoiling it, so you’ll have to find out on your own!

The pacing was pretty fast and seldom was there a time when it really slowed down. I know it took me practically forever to even finish this book but honestly that wasn’t due to a slow paced book so much as me not being very attached to the characters.

Also the world building was pretty decent, there were enough interesting tidbits to satisfy me and make me curious for more all at once. It is a little bit light on the world building for my tastes but it was still interesting and I liked the descriptions of the places, religion, and politics of Maas’s world in “Throne of Glass”.

Remember when I said my biggest problem with this book is that it doesn’t deliver? That mostly applies to these characters. They were all just very bland to me I didn’t feel any sort of connection to them and I was very underwhelmed when anything happened to them.

Celaena by far is the most disappointing overall and honestly I think it may be safe for me to say she’s the most disappointing character I have ever come across. Everyone, herself included, talks about how dangerous she is and how she’s the world’s greatest assassin but I found myself asking “how?” the entire duration of this book. As far as I could see all she did was talk about how skilled she was instead of proving it, I just have a hard time believing Celaena Sardothien is the best assassin this fantasy world has to offer.

Celaena is also extremely vain and we spend an extensive amount of time reading about her worrying about dresses and shoes. I mean for someone who is supposedly the greatest assassin ever you would think she wouldn’t covet material items so much, right? We also hear about how beautiful she is constantly with her special eyes with special rings of gold in them. All of that was definitely giving me Mary-Sue vibes.

Then we have Prince Dorian and Chaol the Captain of the Guard. Meh. That’s how I felt about both of them they weren’t particularly interesting and definitely not very swoon-inspiring.

Honestly my favorite character was Princess Nehemia and I thought her to be far more worthy of my respect. She doesn’t shy away from anyone or anything and I loved her loyalty and devotion to her people and her country. If the entire book was more about her I might have enjoyed it more.

I did not enjoy any of the “romance” one bit. We have borderline insta-love and a tedious love triangle. Count me out.

Celaena is almost instantly enamored and making moony eyes over Dorian and I feel like their “relationship” came out of nowhere, it didn’t feel developed at all since they barely spent any time together. With Chaol it was a little more believable since he was always training with Celaena. Either way I thought both options were very uninteresting and I could have cared less who she chose in the end.

I also feel like the love triangle took away from both the characters and the plot in this book.

I’m going to try my best to just quickly sum up my feelings on “Throne of Glass”:

• I strongly disliked our main character, Celaena.
• I really hated the love triangle.
• I didn’t think there was enough “world’s greatest assassin”-worthy action.
• I did enjoy the pacing and the plot itself, it was actually interesting.
• The world building was satisfying enough.

So there is both good and bad for me which is why it received a sort of neutral rating at 3 stars. I enjoyed it enough to finish but overall I wasn’t too impressed.

I will be continuing the series with “Crown of Midnight” because it seems to me everyone says it gets way better. *crosses fingers*

Eh, not really. For as crazy as the hype is I think if you want to check it out for yourself then definitely go right ahead, it’s not a terrible book but for me it just wasn’t as great as I thought it would be.

Links: Goodreads / Amazon