Review: Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Mass

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Pages: 416

Received: Borrowed from Christa over at Hooked on Books

Release Date: August 7, 2012
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Goodreads 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 kings 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.

My Review:

I really love historical fiction novels, add in fantasy elements and I have found a new favourite book for sure! The concept drew me in because it seemed a little like GRAVE MERCY, one of my favourites of the year so far. The trained assassin going to court, and that's about the only similarities between these two books.

Celaena was a very interesting character, she had a few similarities to Ismae from GRAVE MERCY, they both had very hard lives but Celaena and Ismae deal with that differently. I found Celaena to have a great amount of sarcasm throughout the story, and she always has this attitude about her, which is understandable (I mean I wouldn't want to be there either).

I am also a huge mystery fan and this book had some great mystery to it with the contestants continually falling victim to murders. Sarah does a beautiful job bringing in twists to this story. With everything happening I really was expecting the book to focus mainly on the competition, but there is so much more to the story. There was a huge political aspect to this book as well which is always interesting.

I am still a little unsure of how I feel on the love triangle throughout the book. I really enjoyed the budding romance that is written and could see the other romantic partner coming up but it seemed that for the most part there was nothing there until the very end. This was really the only issue I had, I really enjoyed this story and everything happened so fast but yet the story was drawn out perfectly.

I definitely suggest picking this up if you are a fan of historical fantasy books. But if you do have an interest in this I would also suggest checking out the novella ebooks before reading this book. I felt like I was missing a little of Celaena's story because I haven't read these (though I don't think it's absolutely necessary to read them).

Here are the links to the ebook novellas that tell Celaena's story before Endovier.
The Assassin and the Pirate Lord
The Assassin and the Desert
The Assassin and the Underworld