Review: Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

Meet Celaena Sardothien.
Beautiful. Deadly. Destined for greatness.

In the dark, filthy salt mines of Endovier, an eighteen-year-old girl is serving a life sentence. She is a trained assassin, the best of her kind, but she made a fatal mistake: she got caught.

Young Captain Westfall offers her a deal: her freedom in return for one huge sacrifice. Celaena must represent the prince in a to-the-death tournament—fighting the most gifted thieves and assassins in the land. Live or die, Celaena will be free. Win or lose, she is about to discover her true destiny. But will her assassin’s heart be melted?

I’ve read nothing but great things about this series, so I was excited to finally read it. Unfortunately, it did not at all live up to my expectations.

Celaena is supposed to be the greatest assassin ever, but she was betrayed and ended up in a prison camp. I would have liked this to have been explored further. We don’t really get any information about her assassin glory days. We get hardly any details about her former trainer, her fellow assassins, or her past other than in vague terms. In addition to the poor background, I felt that the rest of the world building was pretty shoddy. There’s talk of old magic and different gods, but they were never really explored either. Though, the magic was explained a little towards the end of the book, though I still didn’t totally understand it.

While Celaena was a mostly likable character, I didn’t find her the great, strong female character everybody praises her for. She was often shallow and petty. Other than one time where she talked about how music makes her feel, there wasn’t really much depth to her. I also would’ve liked to have seen the other characters more developed.

Then there was the love triangle. While I almost always hate love triangles, this one was particularly poor. Neither Dorian nor Chaol were developed enough for me to care that much about them. Celaena was also incredibly fickle about who she liked more at any given moment.

Overall, I just didn’t care for Throne of Glass. The pacing was slow, the characters were not very well developed, and the plot just didn’t really interest me. While I almost always have to finish any series I start, I don’t think I’ll be continuing this one.

Rating (out of 5):
Plot: 2
Characters: 2
Readability: 2
Enjoyability: 1.5
Overall Average: 1.875 stars