Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
If the actual writing was just a little bit stronger, this would have received a 5 star from me. As it is I have to drop it to a 4 even though I’d normally give it a 4.5.
Let’s address the writing. There is nothing glaringly wrong with the writing. Nothing that made me wonder how this was ever published. It was minor issues with the writing on the technical level. And again it was nothing that was outright one, however it made me notice the writing in not a good way. For example, I noticed a couple spans where the same word started roughly six paragraphs in a row. This sort of thing continually happened.
Despite noticing the writing in a not good way, I couldn’t stop reading it. The flow of words rarely made me double back and the story was always being pushed forward. It was fantastic and I really enjoyed the way the story was developed and the characters were explored. There is always something to be said when I am so gripped by the story I literally don’t want it to end.
The characters felt rich and fleshed out. However, some of the characters could have stood to have been fleshed out a bit more. Chaol in particular. Yes, it is only the first in a series and all background and storylines couldn’t be revealed and explored.
One of the things I enjoyed most about the book was how it followed a simple plot. Celaena wants her freedom and she can regain it by winning a competition to become the king’s champion. Other events pop up throughout, not many though and we focus on her achieving that goal. That is one of the things that I love about stories, that fewer and fewer do it.
Speaking of the story, there was an ending. A truly satisfying ending that I’ve also been seeing less and less of. It played out over a nice chunk of pages, rather than the abrupt endings I’ve been encountering lately. Throne of Glass takes it’s time to sort our the results of the ending. It didn’t clump everything together to be solved at once, but let each string come to a close on their own, while also opening things up for the future events in further books.
At the end of the day, I loved the book and less than 24 hours after finishing, I rushed out to purchase the next book in the series. I don’t do that with a whole lot of books, but everything about the world and the characters made me long for more. That is a successful book for me.
So, I pondered... 