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 king’s 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. (Cover and synopsis from Goodreads.)

What Took Me So Long?

For some reason, it took me a long time to finish Throne of Glass.  This also happened when I read Graceling last year.  I started to think that it had something to do with reading high fantasy, but then I realized that last year I was on vacation when I tried to read Graceling, and I started reading Throne of Glass right before everything started getting crazy with my recent move. So thankfully, I don’t think it’s the books themselves, or even the genre of high fantasy, that made me read these at such a slow pace:  I simply had so much more going on during those times.  Plus, I think if I had picked up a contemporary book to read at those times, I probably would have gotten through them quicker anyway, simply because high fantasy books, as a rule, are just not easy, quick reads for a lot of people.  They’re so complex and the writing style is just so rich and thick that I, at least, can’t fly through them.


Anyway, I ended up really loving Throne of Glass.  Of course, I knew I would. I loved the whole plot of this story, I loved all the characters, and here’s something I bet most people don’t say often with books these days–I loved the love triangle.  Today love triangles are very often overdone, or are done in a way where it’s really just a couple plus a third wheel who thinks he or she has a chance with one of the other characters, but he/she really doesn’t.  But if I was Celaena, I would have a VERY hard time deciding between Dorian and Chaol.  In fact, most bloggers I know are totally Team Chaol, but I think I’ve always been slightly more Team Dorian.  I love Chaol, too, though, so you understand why it would be a hard choice for me.


If you read my blog often you know that I love my theories when I read books.  I had theories out the wazoo with this book, so many that I had to write this in my notebook: “TOO MANY THEORIES, ANDREA! JUST FINISH THE BOOK ALREADY!” Yes, I wrote it in all caps to myself so that I would stop with the theories and just READ.  But I like that in this book, I had theories but I never really knew what was going to happen, and I was never 100% sure with any of my theories.  And there were a couple twists at the end that I didn’t see coming at all!


Bonus Points…

Sarah J. Maas gets some of my bonus points for the following reasons:

• Secret passageways!  50,000 points.
• Dorian teaches Celaena to play billiards! 1 million points.
• A map in the front! (Yeah, I know this is in like all the fantasy books but I just love maps in books!) 50,000 points.
• Mentioning realistic things like PMS and monthly cycles! (You may think it’s gross, and it is, but I love when books don’t ignore things like this.) 100,000 points.
• People actually KNEW WHO SHE WAS at a masquerade ball!  I’m so tired of books and movies where a character only covers their eyes with a mask (Hello, superhero movies and comic books, I’m looking at you, too!) and NO ONE knows who they are all of a sudden.  It’s so unrealistic!  1 million points.