Book Review: Throne of Glass

I finally got around to trying out my first Sarah J. Maas book last week and read Throne of Glass, the first book in the Throne of Glass series. This book counted toward one of my #TheReadingQuest challenges and I was actually really excited to get into this series after hearing it receive so much praise in the BookTube community. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy my experience reading this book and felt the need to tell y'all why. 

*WARNING: This review will contain spoilers! Proceed at your own risk*

Throne of Glass follows a notorious assassin, Celaena, after she is released from a life sentence in prison in order to compete in a tournament in order to become the King's Champion (or the assassin that will do the King's bidding). As Celaena competes in this tournament, there are a slew of murders against her competition that cannot be explained. ....that's really the gist of the plot. And I think that speaks volumes to the quality of this story - there really isn't that much to it. It's a really basic fantasy assassin story (at least that's how it's marketed) and I was actually pretty excited to get to it based on the fact there was a badass female lead and the fact that people seemed to freaking LOVE this series. Unfortunately, the way it is marketed is not what I got from this story.

Celaena is supposed to be the world's greatest assassin, but unfortunately she got caught and thrown in prison with a life sentence. We don't know too much else about her backstory other than the fact that someone in her life was killed. There's really no basis or proof that she is the world's greatest assassin other than the fact the narrator tells you she's the worlds greatest assassin. If you're going to make a big claim like that, you need to back it up with proof. That's persuasive writing 101, and SJM failed in that department.

Not only do we not see proof from her past that shows us that she's the world's greatest assassin, we see on *multiple* occasions Celaena making mistakes, messing up, and all around being a kind of awful assassin. In the assassin's competition, her "handler" Chaol*, tells her to not use all of the skill that she possesses so people don't find out who she is (she's trying to hide her identity for really no obvious reason), which is the way SJM covers up for Celaena for being terrible, but I just didn't buy it.

Speaking of Celaena trying to cover up her identity, there's a point in the book where her identity gets out to the other competitors, but no one seems phased about it. Characters were just like "Oh, I guess that's that Calaena girl. Huh." and Celaena and Khaol were all like "Well I guess they all know now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"... Like... WHY COVER UP THE IDENTITY OF A CHARACTER IF NO ONE IS GOING TO CARE ONCE IT'S REVEALED?! Such a waste of time.

Meanwhile, during this assassin's competition, all the competitors keep getting brutally murdered in the castle they're all staying in by this ~mysterious~ monster, but basically no one is really that concerned and all activities continue as normal. Literally dozens of competitiors are torn to shreds by this unknown creature and everyone's like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. (Basically everyone is like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ the entire book and there's no real stakes in this story it seems.) THAT'S NOT HOW PEOPLE WOULD REACT IF PEOPLE KEPT GETTING MURDERED IN THE SAME DAMN BUILDING YOU'RE SLEEPING IN EVERY NIGHT. Like... really?! C'mon SJM. Give these characters some range of feeling.

This book is under disguise of being a really awesome badass assassin story and if you really boil it down, it just mainly focuses on a really dumb love triangle between Celaena, Khaol, and Prince Dorian. It seems like Khaol and Dorian are both really vaguely intrigued by Celaena but again, there's no real stakes in this love triangle and it doesn't seem like there's any actual emotion from any of the three characters. The biggest connection that any of the characters have within the triangle is the fact that Celaena and Dorian both like reading books and they're both excited that the other one reads books. Like... that's it. Probably one of the dumbest attempted love triangles I've ever read and again, a total wast of time.

While I really disliked everything stated above, I really did enjoy the scenes of the assassin's competition. I really wish that the book focused more on these and raised the intensity of the scenes as well. This had the potential to be very Hunger Games-esque and could have been really fun and gripping to read, but we barely got anything from the assassins competition and that was a huge disappointment. Really the assassins competition was the only thing saving this book from a 1-star rating from me, and if there was more of that kind of content in this book I really would have had a great time reading it. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

Overall, I gave this book...

2/5 Stars!

Have you read any of the Throne of Glass series? If so, what do you think of it?

Let me know in the comments!

*Why the fuck is his name spelled this way, yet pronounced "Kale"?! Fantasy names are so frustrating.