Review: Throne of Glass, by Sarah J Maas
Original Pub.: 2012
Edition: Bloomsbury, 2012
Pages: 404
Age Range: 14+
Genre: YA, fantasy
Series: yes, Book 1 (prequel short stories available)
Dedication: yes, “To all my readers from FictionPress — for being with me at the beginning and staying long after the end. Thank you for everything.”
Why I picked it up: well-known YA
I have seen this book in every bookshop and on most shelfies of YA lovers. Sarah J Maas has written two well-known series now, and until now I hadn’t read any book of hers.
Celaena is our main character, a deadly assassin who has survived a year of slavery in salt mines. She’s been rescued quite literally by a prince, but not in a helpless sort of manner. The prince needs a champion who will survive a cruel competition to become the king’s official doer-of-sneaky-bad-things, and for Celaena this is a slim chance at freedom. So she moves to the castle, pretends to be a lady, and fights others in a sort of gladiator showdown.
On the whole, I wasn’t blown away by this book. Was it the will-they-won’t-they love triangle? Was it the strange subplot about the jealous court lady? Was it the obviousness of the “evil” characters? There were a lot of fantasy tropes in this book, which I kept hoping were red herrings, but stayed unchallenged until the end. On the other hand, the king’s conquering and colonising of neighbouring lands was presented negatively, which was refreshing.
The book was clearly written as the first in a series. There are many unanswered questions that are interesting enough to attract the reader to continue with the story. Simultaneously, the ending is satisfactory and does not leave cliffhangers. Most interesting to me were the untold stories: Celaena’s mysterious past, how she ended up caught and enslaved, how she survived the mines, and relationship with Sam, a character mentioned but never appearing. Apparently there is a prequel of short stories, which I am tempted to read in the hopes that these questions are addressed. The over-arching story of magic and the history of the land is also attractive. A glance at Throne of Glass’s Wikipedia page shows that the story does indeed get a lot more complicated and varied, and that the history of magic is the focus of the series as a whole. I may give the second book in the series a go!
Conclusion: I would recommend this to teenagers looking for some romance and adventure, but to me as an adult reader the standalone book felt weak.
