Title: THRONE OF GLASS (Throne of Glass, #1)
SYNOPSIS
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.
Ramblings. I stumbled across this book ever since I created my account here on Goodreads and the reason why I haven’t read/added this thing earlier is because I already have a crazy amount of book series in my to read pile. And adding this thing down will already make my list and me weep. Then Crown of Midnight was released, while I’m still busy trying to tear down my tbr pile. Months flew by and January came in, one of my favourite booktubers, Christine of PolandBananasBooks, posted her booktalk about it (which I just watched the non-spoilery section)! I was tempted to put down the book I’m reading that time but I CANNOT just do that for it’ll ruin my mental tbr list. Then just this February, I was talking to a friend of mine wherein she mentioned Christine’s ToG booktalk and she said that Christine made this ToG-Reign parallels AND I WAS JUST LIKE, *jumping up and down* I NEED TO READ THIS BOOK ALREADY! Come on, one of my favourite shows is Reign so I need to read it and know what similarities does it have with this book. I also checked Goodreads on what my friends feel about this book and all of them gave it like 4 or 5 stars, so all good! Yeah, that’s pretty much it on how I ended up reading it earlier than the other book series staying in my list for forever.
Immediate thought after reading this book. Aaaaaah I NEED Crown of Midnight already (but I still don’t have the time to read it, sad)! Anyways, I can really feel it that Sarah J. Maas will definitely step it up a notch in Book 2 in terms of action, deaths, craziness, weirdness, and conflict with everything - even concerning the heart of our female lead. It’s kind of expected for that book to be a lot more awesome because of how Throne of Glass ended.
My thoughts. Throne of Glass follows the story of an eighteen year-old girl named Celaena Sardothien, known as the world’s most notorious assassin. She’s currently under lock down in the salt mines of Endovier because she believed that someone amongst her enemies betrayed her and had a hand of her being captured. After a year of servitude in Endovier, she finds herself in the company of the Captain of the Guards, Chaol Westfall, being dragged along to meet … to her surprise was the Crown Prince of Adarlan Dorian Havillian. That’s where Dorian springs to her the opportunity to regain her freedom. All she has to do is to represent Dorian for the King’s quest to find his Champion. Battle it out with twenty three other criminals and come out as the winner will assure her of her life and freedom. Though, winning the contest also means being the King’s champion for four years … but it’s definitely way better than rotting in Endovier.
“If she beats her opponents in a series of eliminations, she'll serve the kingdom for three years and then be granted her freedom”, yeah yeah I think from that part of the blurb we can already guess what’ll happen and where the story’s heading to BUT do not just brush it off like of that. There’s more to it than to her trainings, the Tests and of her winning the title of the King’s Champion because half-way through the book Maas thrown in some surprising elements that I think will be the MAIN plot and be the thing that will stir conflict in the entire series.
Throne of Glass is certainly a remarkable way to start a six-book series. The book has a great and rich detailed world building stuff going on, add these highly entertaining characters namely Celaena, Dorian and Chaol, some conflicting feels, tension, solving a mystery, introduction to a some sort of banned but existent magic and a little bit of creep-tastic goodness. I like how Maas writes, she describes things beautifully and vividly – even those not so good errr creepy stuff/moments in the book.
One of the things that I love the most about our main characters is that all of them got their own personality/attitude thing going on. I think all of them are sassy characters, LOL! AAAAH oh wait, another thing that I love about them is THAT THEY READ BOOKS! Yay, they are just like us guys! Cool booknerds, we are wohoops!
Celaena Sardothien. Her name itself is pure awesomeness and full of bad-assery already, it truly suits her character. I myself love it and think that it’s a very beautiful name – Celaena Sardothien, shizz I’m kind of obsessed about it. She’s such an arrogant girl, though I get why she is like that. It’s because she really kicks ass in everything. She outwits every single person in the competition, chooses the not so obvious weapons/materials, she’s clever and her reflexes are fast. It’s fascinating to read how her mind works, how she deduces and comes up with a theory or an answer to some stuff.
Prince of Adarlan Dorian Havillian. I love Dorian. I love every scene he is in. I love every Celaena-Dorian moments. At first, I thought that he’ll just like his father but I was totally wrong on that note … He is the complete opposite of his father. Dorian is definitely a very swoon worthy character, especially when it was revealed that he won’t marry just for the sake of marrying someone and for the crown. But he truly believes in love and will only marry someone out of love. *SWOONS* Wait oh my gosh, I love that scene during the morning of Yulemas where he gave those candies to Celaena and the PUPPY! *dabs a hanky on my eyes* that’s just soooo sweet of him to do that gesture for her.
Captain of the Guards, Chaol Westfall. We don’t get to know much of Chaol’s character here in this book because of the fact that he’s so professional and pretty much closed off to Celaena err to everyone. Though, we can see his defenses crumbling down and him feeling these feels towards her. But I may or may not have been annoyed towards Chaol at some point because of him like shooing Dorian away from Celaena just so he gets a chance to be with her or give her something. Smh. Though, I think I still like him. I like how he keeps Celaena in line. I like that he cares and protects her. I love those moments wherein he pinches or nudges her, *sigh* those are cute moments and scenes where we see a glimpse of Chaol loosening up.
Princess Nehemia, her character is another bad-ass character. Not only she helps the rebels but she KNOWS and secretly practices magic! I’m curious if she'll still be around in the next book and if she will be the one to help Celaena in learning more about magic. And 'cause I really love having her character around.
The King of Adarlan and Duke Perrington, I’m keeping my eyes on you guys. I know that there’s some evil plan brewing inside of their minds. And that scene at the end part, we learn that they are totally not clueless concerning the magical stuff so tsk tsk. I’m scared. But I’m hoping that we get to explore a lot more about this magic and the connections with the Fae more in Crown of Midnight.
ToG-Reign Similarities. I really can’t avoid myself from picking out these parallels of Throne of Glass with the US TV show, Reign. It’s silly, I know but *shrugs* I’m having fun with both of these two. Okay, here are some that I noticed: 1) The castle as its setting and their dresses, eeeep! I can just imagine Celaena wearing those kinds of gowns Mary is wearing in the show. Oh so pretty! 2) The secret passages in the castle. 3) The religion ordeal – Pagan and here in ToG we have the magic thing. 4) It’s shaping up to be a love triangle already. I know in my heart that I ship and loooooove Dorian-Celaena so much but I’m just afraid that Crown of Midnight will show a lot more moments with Chaol and Chaol then will stop being this professional/closed-off/mysterious character that he is aaaaand yeah. I’m quite scared though, that Maas will have give me this “Reign-ish shipping problems” wherein I will have a difficulty on who to ship Celaena with. Ha! But still I’m hoping that my ship will continue sailing, Maas please don’t sink it.
I hope and pray to get my hands to Crown of Midnight soon!!!
Bye x
PS: Now, I can watch the full video of Christine's booktalk! LOL!
Mark and add this book in your "to read" list on Goodreads, here.
This review is also posted on my Goodreads account.
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