leahrosereads
Written on Aug 17, 2019
I wish this was about Nehemia. Now she was an interesting character.
The first book in New York Times bestselling author Sarah J. Maas's sweeping fantasy saga - now available in hardcover with a new look to match the series!
When magic has gone from the world, and a vicious king rules from his throne of glass, an assassin comes to the castle. She does not come to kill, but to win her freedom. If she can defeat twenty-three killers, thieves, and warriors in a competition to find the greatest assassin in the land, she will become the king’s champion and be released from prison.
Her name is Celaena Sardothien.
The Crown Prince will provoke her. The Captain of the Guard will protect her. And a princess from a foreign land will become the one thing she never thought she’d have again: a friend. But something evil dwells in the castle—and it’s there to kill. When her competitors start dying, horribly, one by one, Celaena’s fight for freedom becomes a fight for survival, and a desperate quest to root out the source of the evil before it destroys her world.
- ISBN10 1599906953
- ISBN13 9781599906959
- Publish Date 3 December 2015 (first published 2 August 2012)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 18 January 2023
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Imprint Bloomsbury YA
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 416
- Language English
Reviews
I wish this was about Nehemia. Now she was an interesting character.
thepunktheory
Written on Jan 16, 2019
Celaena Sardothien is one bad ass bitch and I love her for it.
She sends all the men flying on their asses and packing. She's brilliant and she knows it. You might think this sounds like the description of an arrogant and one-dimensional character. However, Sarah J. Maas created an intricate young woman who has as many scars on the outside as she has on the inside. There are so many aspects of her to discover, I'm not even sure seven books are enough.
The thing I enjoyed most is that she is subtly different from your blueprint YA heroine. Usually, you can tick off all the assets a writer has to include for this particular kind of character. There are some familiar traits, but Celaena feels most certainly different than other famous YA women (Katniss, Tris, ...).
She's relatable in many ways and I already jutted down many quotes that are simply brilliant. Some or deep and heartfelt, others are just hilarious. This character talks back, has a great sense of humor and a ton of sarcasm to offer!
There are many intriguing (female) characters in Throne of Glass. You'll love them, you'll hate them, you'll hate yourself for loving them. SJM really has a way of writing characters who hit you hard.
stacey_is_sassy
Written on Aug 7, 2018
I just didn't feel a connection with any of the characters. This was definitely not a romance...but that could be a...YET. There were some lusty thoughts flying around but I never felt like they were true feelings.
Everyone is a baddie, no one I felt was truly heroic. There was a brief time I thought the heroine acted a little selflessly towards another character, but it was fleeting. I don't really want to fight the good cause with any of the characters because deep down, the cause doesn't seem very noble.
The narrator does a good enough job. No problems telling the characters apart.
A little too expensive to go on in a series that I wasn't completely sucked into. Unless a humungous sale has them all for under $5.00 each, I think the Throne of Glass series ends here with me.
girlinthepages
Written on Jul 15, 2018
This Review was Originally Posted at Girl in the Pages
This may be more of a rant than a review. Not necessarily a bad one, but definitely an impassioned one. Because Throne of Glass and I have perhaps the most love-hate relationship I've had with a book all year.
So there were some high expectations I had for this going in, based on the plethora of rave reviews I've read:
A) A kick-butt, take-no-prisoners, no-holds-barred, assassin protagonist
B) A well done love triangle
C) A creative fantasy world with good world-building
I can say after finishing the novel that b & c were pretty well accomplished, but part of me just can't get over expectation A, which is what drew me to the novel in the first place.
Celaena. There are so many things to like about her. She's sassy (SO much sass between her and Dorian especially). She's intelligent. She refuses to be talked to as a second class citizen because she's a female. She can be a feminist and still like feminine things (not all progressive women have to be tomboys!). I loved all these things about her, but the thing I could not reconcile with her character was that she was supposed to be an assassin (and not just any assassin, but the most dangerous assassin in the entire kingdom). There were multiple times when she gets startled or surprised, bumping into tables, jumping in the air, etc: "A door shut somewhere inside her rooms, and Celaena jumped, the book flying from her hands" (267). And OK, maybe she was just rusty on training from being in Endovier, but I just couldn't forgive the scene during Yulemas (basically a Christmas-type celebration) when she wakes up in the morning and finds an UNMARKED bag filled with candy lying on her pillow, and then proceeds to stuff her face with it. Now I am all for stuffing one's face with treats, but this is problematic for me as a reader because 1) How are people always sneaking into her chambers in the middle of the night without her noticing? and 2) If you are an assassin aren't you supposed to be concerned about an UNMARKED, MYSTERIOUS bag of candy being potentially poisoned? (This was my first assumption when she discovered it! I was sure it was going to make her violently ill). I mean, not eating candy from strangers is like Halloween lesson 101 for little kids. Where are her assassin-y survival instincts?
So basically I really like Celaena in every aspect except the assassin bit. Which is problematic, because, you know, the plot.
Anyways, I think the love triangle was indeed well done, if subtle. The romance is much more in the background and less involved in the plot than most YA, which can be a good or bad thing depending on your preference (I prefer more predominant romances myself). Both love interests were equal contenders, and neither felt like they were "thrown in" just to create conflict for the "obvious" choice, and I can honestly say I don't really have a preference for one over the other because I think Maas wrote Chaol and Dorian as equally strong contenders. Both men are intriguing with hints of deeper back stories, and there's not so much of the good-guy-bad-guy dichotomy that's often in love triangles. I loved Dorian's sass, but I think there's a lot more to see about Chaol beneath the surface that's going to be really fascinating.
The world building was done well too, there wasn't really any "info-dumping" and I felt like details about the geography, monarchy, class systems, etc were well-paced in the time that they were revealed. I will say I found a lot of influence from The Song of Ice and Fire series (especially with the structure of the geography and the monarchies). There's a handy map at the beginning of the book which I loved looking at because it shows the depth to which Maas has gone to build her world, as it's very detailed.
My love affair with this book really began in the last third of the novel, when magical and supernatural elements (some of my favorite things in YA) came into play. Not only did it give the novel a darker tone but it introduced a lot of interesting lore and I'm really curious to see how it fits in with the religion (which is really awesome-sounding and matriarchal-seeming, with a main Goddess who bore a lot of demi-gods/saints). There's good magic and bad magic at play, and Celaena is trapped in between, and it's hinted at that she herself has some connection to the supernatural (which was banned in the kingdom about a decade ago). The last 50 or so pages really sucked me in, as Celaena really started to show her assassin training and the pacing of the novel picked up with action-packed battles, shocking political revelations, and the promise of a much more nefarious plot and political intrigue in the next book.
I also feel like I need to again address that Maas, while writing a protagonist that hasn't quite convinced me that she's an assassin, does a really great job at writing strong female characters (Celaena included). Nehemia was a favorite of mine, a foreign princess with her own agenda and kingdom to look after who knows she's Orientalized and uses it to her advantage. I also really liked Kaltain- I know she's supposed to be Celaena's antithesis, but whatever her behavior it's driven by an ambitious will that has me really curious to learn more about her as a character, as she has that aura of a femme fatale. Maas just writes females in a way that convinces me that they're as active agents in the storytelling as the plot itself. These women drive the plot, rather than letting the plot steer them.
Favorite Quote:
“We all bear scars... Mine just happen to be more visible than most.”
Overall: Throne of Glass began as an over-hyped novel that struggled with slow pacing for the first half. Yet the many strong female characters coupled with an action-packed last few chapters reeled me in to the point where I will without a doubt be reading the sequel. If you're a fan of fantasy and want female characters with agency and cunning this series may well be for you, but beware that Celaena may seem more like your spunky best friend rather than Ardalan's most feared assassin.
Ashley
Written on Oct 2, 2017
Okay I need to take a deep breath. Inside a paper bag. Because this book is like.. yeah. This was my single most highly anticipated novel of 2012. I'd been looking forward to it since.. well, maybe not that long compared to some people, but at least before the cover art was released! But the strange thing is, I wasn't worried about the hype. I never worried that the book wouldn't live up to it because I just knew it couldn't be anything short of amazing. Although, that didn't stop my hands from trembling when I turned to the first page! :D
Okay I'll start with Celaena because she is so deliciously and incredibly awesome! I want to be that woman! Imagine you're working as a slave, when all of a sudden some guards pull you out, throw a bag over your head, and start guiding you down various maze-like corridors and staircases. You'd probably be getting dizzy, feeling nauseous, wondering where the heck you're going, mentally going over all your actions to figure out what warranted this... not Celaena. She's too busy memorizing the building's layout, blindly familiarizing herself with her surroundings, and planning a million different escape/murder attempts... just in case. Yeah, she's freakin' awesome. She's so badass that she always has an escape plan. When she enters a room, the first thing she does is find all the exits, mentally calculate how long it would take to incapacitate the guards, and estimating the chance of success. Why the bloody hell can't I do that??
Celaena is a great character because she has such a broad personality. On the one hand she's a super kick-ass, deadly assassin. On the other hand, she's a hardened slave who has faced serious hardship and brutality. On yet another hand she's a sweet bubbly girl who lets a romantic thought slip through, but she never becomes one of the mindless shallow women of the court. I love how she's not just a kick-ass, but cold-hearted assassin. Celaena has depth. She has intense emotions, a past that haunts her, loves and passions... and she can kill you with her bare hands. Gentlemen, you should be swooning over her — doesn't she sound like the perfect woman??
In Throne of Glass we get to read from several different points of view, including: Celaena's, Captain Westfall's, Prince Dorian's, and Kaltain's. It was fabulous seeing through the eyes of all these characters — I actually didn't expect that before starting the book! By 'hearing' from all of them, we get to really understand all their personalities and motives. We have the colourful, slightly arrogant, but charming Prince Dorian; the silent and more withdrawn—but still mysteriously sexy—Captain Westfall; and we have Kaltain — the manipulative, scheming, "pretending to be your friend but actually hating your guts and plotting to humiliate/crush/expose you" woman of court.
This book was often compared to A Game of Thrones, but I wouldn't say that's really true, and I mean that in a positive way. I'm probably in the minority by saying this, but I don't like A Game of Thrones all that much. I love the overall story but find the books to be too slow, drawn out, way too descriptive, and have too many characters that I frankly don't give a shit about. NONE of this was the case in Throne of Glass! Throne of Glass was constantly on the move, with characters that you either adore or love to hate, had incredible world-building that will suck you in and make you want to live in that land, and every moment of reading was pure bliss.
I got completely wrapped up in this book's fascinating world-building, court intrigue, scheming, mystery, action, and romance. Throne of Glass has it all, and it combines all these elements brilliantly. I was never bored, I was never dreading reading from a certain character's point of view, and I got completely invested. I was invested in the characters, the plot, and every single event. When I wasn't reading, I was thinking about the book. I thought about it on my daily walks, in the shower, and before I went to bed. I mulled over the plot in my brain again and again. I made predictions, I thought about the characters, and I replayed my favourite parts of the story. I think I purposely drew out my reading because I wanted to savour and enjoy the experience. I was dreading the last few pages because I didn't want the book to end!
I'm so thrilled that Throne of Glass exceeded every single one of my expectations! I LOVE looking forward to a book and I love it when you finally read it and it goes above and beyond. There is no better feeling in the entire world!
Kerka97
Written on Feb 10, 2017
Liz (Bent Bookworm)
Written on Oct 16, 2016
I have done my best to avoid spoilers and there are definitely no plot spoilers! However if you don’t want to know ANYTHING about the characters you might not want to read.
[b:Throne of Glass|7896527|Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1)|Sarah J. Maas|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1335819760s/7896527.jpg|11138426] launches us into what promises to be an epic fantasy adventure. I love the way we’re immediately thrown in with Celaena in a dangerous, scary situation because I, naturally, want to know HOW THE FUCK she ended up there. Also how she can seem to be so young and yet so skilled, so brutal…and yet so obsessed with frilly dresses.
Both of these are totally Celaena. I’m still not sure how she does it or why, especially as she even notes that all the layers of skirts hamper her fighting skills. Only somehow she doesn’t seem to get caught in particularly bad situations while all dolled up. Hmm.
The forest was different here. The leaves dangled like jewels – tiny droplets of ruby, pearl, topaz, amethyst, emerald, and garnet; and a carpet of such riches coated the forest floor around them. Despite the ravages of conquest, this part of Oakwald Forest remained untouched. It still echoed with the remnants of the power that had once given these trees such unnatural beauty.
Maas has created a beautiful world that is by turns thrilling, intriguing, and terrifying. I would like to visit, but retain the option to return to my own world with the push of a button.
Stephanie
Written on Sep 10, 2016
But leave me alone, I love Chaol so much.
empressbrooke
Written on Aug 9, 2016
Leah
Written on Jul 29, 2016
I can't wait to read more in the series! I love the world, the characters, I'm shipping Celaena and Dorian, though I like Chaol, too. So either or! But so far I'm team Dorian, because he's just so sweet!!!!
Princess Nehemiah is also AMAZING. Spin off or what?!?!??!???! I need the other books from the library ASAP!!!!! And for the love of god I hope Fleetfoot survives all the books. For the love of dogs, SJM, make it so!!!