Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1)

by Sarah J. Maas

[sa090]

Finally did it, this book or rather reading something by the author was one of my goals for 2018 and now I can finally say that I have read one of the books SJM has written. Overall though, I’ll say that while it has some good things, there are some glaring problems that I simply can’t ignore.

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I know that I she wrote this when she was supposedly 16, but any editor should have been able to rectify some of the problems and more importantly, her supposed decade on working on this (which I’m assuming makes her 26 at the time of publishing) should’ve also given her enough time to revise it. But I guess the problems with this book are only from my perspective since so far this book has the most notes/bookmarks I’ve given a book while reading, ever. Over 20+ of them filled with examples of why some things would not possible work, but since they’re spoiler filled I’ll be leaving them for the comments section below where I can go all out without fear of spoiling the series for anyone.

I enjoy assassins, the stealth, the cunning and the needed darkness in the world alongside the pretty awesome physical abilities makes me very giddy inside. So when I chose this instead of her other series I thought that I’ll be in for the ride of a life time, which I haven’t really gotten just yet. It’s not that the premise in itself is bad, it’s not 100% unique that’s for sure but that will never stop me from giving a work the chance it deserves. The issues in this book lies in the execution of its events and the bigger issues lies with the characters and the characterization. I for one always love to see a competition, and I hoped for something as blood thirsty as the Hunger Games given the “Champion’s” supposed future duties, but I was disappointed to see that the competition was practically child’s play in that regard.

Furthermore, almost all of the characters that she focused on were unlikable one way or another, save for one; which to someone like me who needs characters to care about to care about the plot line was a con no matter how I look at it. Like I said earlier, I will be discussing this in further details in the comment section below to hide the spoilers, but as a small preview of how that is going to go, I can only say that SJM seemingly forgot who she was writing about and under what premise. The eventual romance that has to come in YA was ehhh to say the least, reminded me a lot of the romance in the Grisha series which was also not a fun thing to read about. I could say that the one in the Grisha verse had some basis if I squint, but in this one, it’s just because. Even more so when it has my second absolutely loathed romance trope ever in the romance genre.

That being said, I definitely enjoyed the mystery that she brought on in the series. The complexity of it didn’t make it impossible to solve on my own (there were only ever two possible culprits in my opinion), but the way she brought it on was actually pretty fun for me, even more so when the signs and such became a big thing in the series. I truly hoped for some more exploration of those, but that’s surely to come later on. Thing is, I’m not sure I actually want to continue this series. I finished this book with a so so opinion, but once I started thinking about it and the issues I had with it, I’m not really in the mood to go through something like that again. Maybe I should wait for the TV series? If it was good, I don’t see how that wouldn’t rekindle the interest if it was good enough.

Final rating: 2.5/5