Meet Celaena Sardothien. Beautiful. Deadly. Destined for greatness.I came across Throne of Glass when I was in WHSmiths on my lunchbreak at work, I didn't think too much about picking it up as I hadn't heard anything about it or even heard of it before. I picked it up because it sounded quite interesting and that was that.
Celaena Sardothien is an assassin, she is the best of her kind, but she was caught. We start the story off in the Endovier salt mines were Celaena is serving a life sentence, someone had betrayed the eighteen year old assassin and that is why she ended up in this mess. She thought all looked dismal until the Captain of the Guard offers her a deal; to fight for the crown Prince Dorian in a battle for the title of 'Kings Champion' - an assassin to the King to do what he pleases. She, however, has to fight against a lot of other criminals like herself to earn this right.
When I first started reading this book I thought the idea behind the book was brilliant - other than Graceling (I'd say) I've never read an 'assassin' type book before and the thought of fight scenes and troubles really got me excited - if that's what you were expecting, please don't read this book. The most interesting fight scenes come towards the end of the book, and even those were quite confusing to read about.
When you think of an assassin, you think of someone hard as steel, no emotion, out to kill, hides everything under a facade - well not in this book. It really disappointed me when Celaena started thinking about the fact that she liked the way that the prince looked, it was ridiculously predictable after that notion that they were going to end up falling in love or such like. Why would an assassin fall in love or at least be so willing to fall into emotion so easily, surely her training and kills in general would have taught her to feel nothing for anyone. It wasn't even over a lengthy amount of time either I found, she found him attractive and then she wouldn't stop thinking about him.
I loved the Crown Prince Dorian in this book - I found his character to be quite charming and endearing and he had a lot of development throughout the book. I didn't love him in a fan girly way but more in a characterisation way, as he was just a brilliant character throughout the book. The other characters were quite stereotypical, you had the jealous lady, evil king, brutish thug and it just seemed all a little too planned like a fairytale throughout it all - I even found myself thinking of cinderella half way through as well.
If the love story that found its way into the book wasn't bad enough, they had to bring a magical element into the book in the middle as well - now this was the tipping point for me and that was when I decided that I didn't like this book a whole lot. It was alright up until that point and then it just went to pot and it was as if Maas decided that she couldn't be bothered to come up with an original plot twist and just went with the most obvious thing she could think of.
Through all of this negative there was an ounce of positive. It was a thrilling story even though it was predictable, it wasn't boring and it made me want to keep reading to finish the book and not give up half way through. It was fast paced and there was a little bit of suspicious but never too much. The emotions that it bought up, however, were one of a kind - the fact that although Celaena had endured tortures in the salt mines she was still strong and coule still smile. It made me think that although things may get tough, you've got to stay positive and that was such a wonderful thing to portray.
Overall, I was disappointed with this book and the potential it had to be great. It was ruined by stereotypical plot lines and the characters were as shallow as anything. Still an okay book, but I wouldn't be recommending this anytime soon.
★★★