Throne Of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
Feb. 24th, 2013 11:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
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?
18-year-old Celaena was Ardalan’s greatest assassin until betrayal led to her capture and servitude in Endovier’s notorious salt mines. She expects to die there when Crown Prince Dorian asks her to represent him in a to-the-death tournament against 23 of Ardalan’s greatest soldiers, thieves, and assassins, the winner of which will serve as King’s Champion. If she wins and serves as Champion for four years then Dorian will guarantee her freedom.
Forced to keep her real identity secret, she trains with Dorian’s best friend Chaol Westfall in a castle where danger lurks around every corner and when someone begins to gruesomely murder her competitors, she discovers forces darker than she could ever imagine. Ardalan needs a saviour and only Celaena is up for the job …
Sarah Maas’s debut YA fantasy, the first in a trilogy, is full of plot holes, follows a main character who never convinces either as an assassin or as the focus of a love triangle and is set in a world populated with elements that have been done better elsewhere. Although this started life as a free work on fictionpress, there’s nothing here that makes me want to continue with the trilogy or accompanying novellas.
Celaena never convinces as an assassin – a reckless braggart who needs Chaol and Dorian to tell her how to behave, how to think and ultimately to rescue her. Maas gives her Mary-Sue traits (she’s identified as special by a goddess and mythical queen) and there are hints of magical powers. Ultimately it’s her lack of self-awareness that most irritated me, a trait that also appears in an extract from THE ASSASSIN AND THE PIRATE LORD that’s included at the end.
Chaol and Dorian are both dull – essentially poor little rich boys drawn to Celaena because of her looks and little else. The villains are all defined by their hatred of her and her specialness and suffer from being both two-dimensional and telegraphed too early.
The concept of a secret competition never made sense given that every royal adviser and most castle staff seem to know about it and would surely gossip. Having Celaena keep her identity a secret seemed a needless complication and I couldn’t understand why no one’s interested in investigating the murders, (especially Chaol who should do as head of the palace guard).
I may check out Maas’s next series but I won’t be continuing with this one.
The Verdict:
Sarah Maas’s debut YA fantasy, the first in a trilogy, is full of plot holes, follows a main character who never convinces either as an assassin or as the focus of a love triangle and is set in a world populated with elements that have been done better elsewhere. Although this started life as a free work on fictionpress, there’s nothing here that makes me want to continue with the trilogy or accompanying novellas.
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?
18-year-old Celaena was Ardalan’s greatest assassin until betrayal led to her capture and servitude in Endovier’s notorious salt mines. She expects to die there when Crown Prince Dorian asks her to represent him in a to-the-death tournament against 23 of Ardalan’s greatest soldiers, thieves, and assassins, the winner of which will serve as King’s Champion. If she wins and serves as Champion for four years then Dorian will guarantee her freedom.
Forced to keep her real identity secret, she trains with Dorian’s best friend Chaol Westfall in a castle where danger lurks around every corner and when someone begins to gruesomely murder her competitors, she discovers forces darker than she could ever imagine. Ardalan needs a saviour and only Celaena is up for the job …
Sarah Maas’s debut YA fantasy, the first in a trilogy, is full of plot holes, follows a main character who never convinces either as an assassin or as the focus of a love triangle and is set in a world populated with elements that have been done better elsewhere. Although this started life as a free work on fictionpress, there’s nothing here that makes me want to continue with the trilogy or accompanying novellas.
Celaena never convinces as an assassin – a reckless braggart who needs Chaol and Dorian to tell her how to behave, how to think and ultimately to rescue her. Maas gives her Mary-Sue traits (she’s identified as special by a goddess and mythical queen) and there are hints of magical powers. Ultimately it’s her lack of self-awareness that most irritated me, a trait that also appears in an extract from THE ASSASSIN AND THE PIRATE LORD that’s included at the end.
Chaol and Dorian are both dull – essentially poor little rich boys drawn to Celaena because of her looks and little else. The villains are all defined by their hatred of her and her specialness and suffer from being both two-dimensional and telegraphed too early.
The concept of a secret competition never made sense given that every royal adviser and most castle staff seem to know about it and would surely gossip. Having Celaena keep her identity a secret seemed a needless complication and I couldn’t understand why no one’s interested in investigating the murders, (especially Chaol who should do as head of the palace guard).
I may check out Maas’s next series but I won’t be continuing with this one.
The Verdict:
Sarah Maas’s debut YA fantasy, the first in a trilogy, is full of plot holes, follows a main character who never convinces either as an assassin or as the focus of a love triangle and is set in a world populated with elements that have been done better elsewhere. Although this started life as a free work on fictionpress, there’s nothing here that makes me want to continue with the trilogy or accompanying novellas.
