Sarah J. Maas

Throne of Glass, by Sarah J. Maas

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An eighteen year old girl, a trained assassin, has been imprisoned for a year and is given a shot at freedom. This first book Sarah J. Mass’ series isn’t what I expected.

13519397Celaena Sardothien has toiled for a year in Endovier, a salt mine and prison so harsh that few survive more than a few months. Even at her tender age, though, her name was known and feared as the greatest assassin in the country of Adarlan before she was captured. Now she’s been given an offer; be Crown Prince Dorian’s entrant in a contest devised by his father, the king. Thirteen weeks, twenty-four contestants sponsored by nobles of the court. The winner will become the King’s Champion – or rather, his assassin. If she wins and serves for four years, she’ll have her freedom.

Celaena, (pronounced Sell-lay-nah, according to Maas’s website), naturally takes the offer, though she’s no supporter of the king. He invaded her country when she was small, and continued to conquer surrounding lands, committing atrocities with abandon. However, she has little choice; she must compete, or go back to Endovier to die.

A lot of the interest in the book is on the growing relationships Celaena has with Prince Dorian and the Captain of the Guard, Chaol, who first took her out of the mine to meet the prince and continues to serve him. They are both attracted to her, and she to them, though she is drawn more obviously to Dorian. She also develops a friendship with a visiting princess from a neighbouring country that has been subdued, and a there is a subplot of a jealous courtier who wants Dorian for herself.

This book has some great fantasy elements, and Celaena is an engaging heroine. There is a system of Wyrd magic which delivers some great moments and which promises more in the subsequent books. Maas has created a court of complexity and intrigue, and I particularly like the disparate attitudes of the king and prince

A couple of things surprised me about this book. One was how the contest was handled. The first test (one per week) didn’t occur until about a quarter of the way into the book, and I found myself impatient for it. It wasn’t that the rest was boring, because it wasn’t. I was just eager to get to the meat of it. The reader also doesn’t get to see all of the tests, as quite a few of them were skipped over in one sentence and I was a little disappointed with that. I understand that thirteen might be too many to write, but then maybe it would be better to have fewer tests, and maybe even fewer contestants? I just hate to miss out on the action.

The other thing that surprised me was Celaena herself. To have spent a year in what was essentially a death camp (including severe whipping), already the most famous assassin in the country by seventeen having been trained from the age of eight, I expected there to be some hardness in this character. I thought there would be defensiveness, emotional walls, evidence of trauma. Instead, the prince and his captain could have been picking her up from soccer camp.

A lot of the book is written from Celaena’s perspective, and it reflects the emotional and psychological tone of a young athlete rather than a trained killer who’d recently suffered torture and deprivation. There are a few references to the trauma she suffered when her parents were killed, and a couple of anecdotes of her training, but it doesn’t play out in her present psyche. When there’s a killer stalking the halls at night, she’s terrified and can’t sleep. She reads romances, wants to socialize, and gushes over puppies. I couldn’t buy it.

That said, though, I decided to put that aside. If you can accept the non-emotionally scarred, non-hardened, non-traumatized, sweet teenage super-assassin, it’s a good book. Once I entered into it, it’s a good read and I finished it quickly. I’m even looking forward to the next books, Crown of Midnight and Heir of Fire.

Throne of Glass is a good read. Just don’t believe the ‘A heart of ice, a will of steel’ tagline. She looks badass on the cover (great cover!) and her fighting skills are without parallel, but she isn’t a cold-hearted killer. She’s the assassin with compassion.

Details
Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
Bloomsbury
ISBN:9781408832349
Published: Aug, 2012

Links: Sarah J. Maas Website
ACOTARoriginalReview of Court of Thorns and Roses
by Sarah J. Maas

The Court of Thorns and Roses

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When my Practical Bloke wanted gift suggestions this year (i.e. “What books do you want?”), Sarah J. Maas was at the top of the list – not her exactly, that would be illegal – but her Throne of Glass trilogy. I’d wanted to read it for ages, but he also bought me the first of her new series, The Court of Thorns and Roses.

ACOTARoriginalI was intrigued, and opened The Court first.

It begins with the young heroine, Feyre (Fay-ruh), hunting in a forest in deep winter. As she stalks a doe, a wolf also pursues her prey. It’s no ordinary wolf,  but one of the hated fae from over the northern border. She kills it with an arrow of ash wood then bring down the doe, relieved her father and older sisters won’t go hungry for a few days. The wolf is skinned to sell.

A day after returning home, she faces the consequences of the kill. A faerie lord arrives in the form of a great beast, declaring her life is forfeit for the crime of murdering one of the fae. But there is an alternative; the Treaty between humans and the faerie lords stipulates if she is not executed she must return to his lands in the north, never to see to her home or family again. Feyre is hauled off to the estate of the faerie lord, Tamsin.

When I opened this book I was soon chapters into it, though I’d intended to read the Throne of Glass trilogy first. Feyre is capable and resourceful, rising to the challenge of providing for her family since they fell on hard times. It’s refreshing that she is the youngest of the family, as usually in hardship stories it’s the oldest siblings that look after the younger ones. She’s no paragon, though, as she nurses a streak of resentment against her sisters for not shouldering their share of the burden, her father for losing their money, and even her dead mother for neglecting them.

The Court of Thorns and Roses has been described as a Beauty and the Beast tale, but it’s not as simple as that. It’s closer to a re-imagining of the Eros and Psyche story from Greek mythology, including the main character being the youngest of three sisters. It’s a fantasy love story, but is at its best in the sections where the romance is not the focus.

After Feyre settles into Tamsin’s estate, slowly letting go of her plots to return home and dealing with a growing attraction to Tamsin, I found the narrative gradually loses impetus. As it’s written in first person in Feyre’s viewpoint, we know there’s something bigger going on, but it’s so vague there’s a lack of real threat, no overarching goal or deadline to push the narrative forward. There’s a shadow, but no ticking clock. The growing romance didn’t really captivate me, perhaps because it seems to be the whole point at that stage, without a sense of where it’s all leading. Maybe the singular viewpoint in this case was a handicap, as if we saw the situation from Tamsin’s side the stakes and tension would flow naturally.

Feyre had caught me in the first few chapters, though, and it’s not too long until she’s back in action with grit and determination, ramped up to new levels. The rest was page-turning, with lethal threats, shifting alliances and inhuman determination.

ACOTAR

My page-turner rating through ‘The Court of Thorns and Roses’

I tend to be a visual thinker, so on the right is my graph of the page-turner rating level through The Court of Thorns and Roses (not exactly to scale). Obviously I liked the latter part of the book best. It bodes well for when I get to the Throne of Glass trilogy, because Sarah J. Maas can definitely write bad-ass women in action.

Links: Sarah J. Maas website