Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas

Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas
Release Date – August 7, 2012
Publisher Website –  Bloomsbury
Publisher Social Media -  Twitter
Pages -   416 pages
My Rating- 3/5
**received from publisher for an honest review (via Book Expo America)**

Here is the Goodreads synopsis

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.

My opinion is most likely going to be an unpopular one when it comes to this book. While the novel has an intriguing storyline, and a well developed main character it fell a little off the mark for me.

Celaena both drew me in and frustrated me at the same time. She is strong, capable, beautiful, intelligent and quite skilled. She is not afraid to let anyone know this either. I was quickly disappointed when the promised kick butt heroine started fretting about her hair when the handsome Prince showed up. Her quick quips and lethal skill show tons of promise for a character that is not of the usual variety, but she ends up being quite unlikeable. There was never a doubt that Celaena would succeed, and therefore I was less invested in her journey.

The secondary characters are not as well developed. The Prince, Dorian Havilliard, is little more than a beautiful face with father issues. Chaol, the captain of the guard shows some promise, but wasn’t fleshed out enough in this novel. The exception to this is Nehemia, the Eyllwe princess. Nahemia motivations are constantly unclear and she made for a fascinating character that I was captivated by whenever she was present.

The love triangle may not appeal to many, but I found this one to be interesting. I found her interactions with the Prince charming enough, but at times it felt forced. Her relationship with Chaol felt more developed and true. I do, however, think it is pretty obvious who will win Celaena’s heart in the end, so I would hesitate to call it a triangle.

This novel’s writing style was not for me either sadly. I found the beginning a little hard to get through. There will be many who loved it, but I found myself not as invested as I wished to be. The found that the beautiful dresses overtook the assassinations and political intrigue.

The novel has a much stronger second half when the plot begins to unravel and things start to come together. The suspense is kept taunt throughout the novel, and the ending does set up the second (and subsequent) novels wonderfully. The political motivations of the characters were interesting and quite detailed. I enjoyed the fact that there is not a cliffhanger at the end of the novel, but rather a new beginning for the next instalment to start from. It was a refreshing change from other YA novels.

There will be many people who love this novel, and I urge you to read other, more positive reviews. In the end the stellar crown politics, and suspense, were not enough to make up for the undeveloped characters, and an unlikeable main character for me. There is a lot of promise for the future novels in this series, and I do intend on checking out next instalment to see where this goes.