Throne of Glass

Throne of Glass Book Review by Sarah J. Maas 

I feel like I’m throwing myself to the wolves with this one. 

I’ve avoided reading anything by Sarah J. Maas for years. There wasn’t a particular reason. 

Have you ever just avoided something because it’s so huge and popular and everyone tells you to read it? It’s not even that I don’t like hopping on the hype train because I do. 

I love BTS, Harry Styles, Cassandra Clare, Maggie Stiefvater, etc. I’m not against popular things. 

Usually, things are popular because they’re well done. Sometimes this isn't the case, but most popular things are popular for a reason. 

That being said, I can’t even tell you why I avoided Sarah J. Maas. It wasn’t that I knew what her books were about and didn’t find the premise interesting. I had no idea what stories Maas was telling. None. 

So in the summer of 2022 I finally decided to bite the bullet and crack open Throne of Glass. From my understanding, people prefer A Court of Thorns and Roses series more than the Throne of Glass series, but correct me if I’m wrong. 

My thought process was that if I was going to unravel the Maas universe I needed to start from the beginning (I also thought the series were related and A Court of Thorns and Roses was a spin-off series Cassandra-Clare-style, but I don’t think they are—once again, please correct me if I’m wrong).

So I sat down with some Trader Joe’s iced Mango Black Tea and started reading. And found that…it’s a very typical fantasy novel. It’s not bad per se, but I also don’t understand why it’s as huge and popular as it is. 

To me, it’s akin to every other generic fantasy novel out there. Nothing about it really seemed to pop or make it different. Now, perhaps I’m biased (a very real possibility). Perhaps you could make the argument that this was Maas’ first novel and it drastically improves from there. 

That could very well be the case. 

However, I finished the book yesterday and feel no need to go out and purchase the sequel, Crown of Midnight. 

First, I thought Throne of Glass was very much a book of its time. Published in 2012 but put on fictionpress.com before that, there were myriad things that pointed to its age: the characters having super unique names, everyone being the hottest stuff around, the love triangle dynamic, the badass female protagonist with zero flaws other than her righteous anger, court life, the long descriptions about fashion, and the Hunger Games-style competition. 

Now, nothing is inherently wrong with any of these things. Honestly, if I read Throne of Glass back in 2012 when it was originally published I probably would have enjoyed it. But, I’m reading it in 2022 and most of the tropes I listed above I found really annoying and aged. 

Celaena came across as mary-sue-like to me because nothing was wrong with her. Sure, she gets angry from time to time, but it was justified anger based on the fact that she had dead parents, was a slave in a salt mine for a year, and is an oppressed citizen under a tyrannical monarchy. 

If anything, everyone around her, especially the two love interests, Dorian, the crown prince, and Chaol, the Royal Guard Captain, found her fury charming. 

Celaena is literally the best assassin in the world, is otherworldly beautiful, is intelligent, kind, witty, confident, and every other positive trait you can think of. 

Despite her being an assassin and literally having murdered multiple people, she’s described as pure of heart and kind by other characters, including the prince and an old Queen who’s ghost comes back from the dead just to speak with her. How does this make sense? It’s a mystery. 

Not to mention, Celaena dislikes and distrusts other women on principle, spends paragraphs discussing what kind of dress she’s wearing (nothing wrong with this, but I personally didn’t care and skipped over it), and goes through the whole I-couldn’t-possibly-love-the-prince-his-regime-has-killed-so-many-people thought process and yet proceeds to kiss him silly a few paragraphs later. 

Dorian and Chaol were just as uninteresting. 

Dorian, despite being the crown prince, disagrees with what his evil father is doing and feels bad for the literal genocide that has occurred and yet has done nothing to stand up to his dad or even speak up. 

Chaol was probably my favorite out of the three, but that’s just because I have a soft spot for prickly characters who are actually mushy on the inside. Despite this, Chaol lacked any real characterization other than being stoic, being an amazing fighter, and getting jealous of Dorian and Celaena’s relationship every other page. 

There are other characters, but they’re honestly not worth mentioning. Nehemia, a visiting princess, adds some not-needed mystery and Kaltain is your typical power-hungry girl willing to do literally anything to win the prince’s heart. 

There are the other competitors that Celaena has to fight in order to be crowned the King’s Champion and win her freedom, but they don’t matter except for Cain, a big, beefy dude who is laughably evil and strong. 

The premise itself I actually didn’t mind. Celaena being an assassin was fine and interesting, but it lost all traction when others justify her past murders, call her innocent, and she quickly becomes the savior of the kingdom and the oppressed people. 

It would have been so much more interesting if she struggled with her morals, if she was tormented by her past, and yet didn’t regret it. Who knows, maybe that happens in future books, but I honestly don’t know why Maas didn’t make her the best underground street fighter or something instead of an assassin. 

The assassin bit didn’t work with the character Maas was trying to present Celaena to be. 

I did like the competition to be the King’s Champion, that Celaena had to win her freedom, the mystery of the murdered champions, and the mystery of the wyrd marks, but eventually Maas added too many mysteries and they all got tangled together. 

I think Maas bit off more than she could chew and eventually things were just summarized. I wanted to see all of the tests and trials the champions had to go through, but instead we’re just given basic run downs of what happened in short paragraphs towards the end. 

The same thing happens with the murders and certain characters leaving, like Nox. 

It felt incredibly underwhelming to have these really interesting mysteries presented and then tossed away like they didn’t matter near the end of the book. 

You might wonder, why did Maas do that? Why summarize these really tantalizing tidbits? Instead of getting action and character development while advancing the plot, several chapters from the middle to the end were just about Celaena and whomever hanging out. 

I kid you not. 

It felt like there was a span of a hundred pages where literally nothing significant happened and where Celaena would play billiards with Dorian, would go for a walk with Chaol, would chat with Nehemia, blah, blah, blah. 

Excruciating. 

That being said, it wasn’t all negative. Maas’ world-building, the mention of other countries and geographical landmarks were really fun and well done. Unfortunately, we don’t get to see anything except for the Glass Castle. 

Overall, I think I missed out on a Throne of Glass. 

I don’t think it’s a poorly done series, but I do think that YA as a genre has changed and shifted a lot since 2012 and a book that was popular back then does not necessarily equate to a book that is popular now. 

If you like this series, I don’t blame you and can see why it was initially as beloved as it was. If you read this book in 2012, fell in love, and have stuck with it ever since, I totally understand. 

However, the choppy pacing, the banal characters, the rudimentary plot near the end, the plethora of tropes, the lack of representation, and the lack of originality don’t do it for me ten years later. 

Recommendation: If you’ve been following Maas since her fictionpress.com days and have kept up with every book she’s published since, that’s awesome. I love that for you. 

However, in 2022, there are so many better books and better series and nothing about Throne of Glass makes me want to read more. I’m willing to try A Court of Thorns and Roses, considering it’s marked as adult fiction, was published later, and a different series all together, but we’ll have to see.

 Let me know if you think A Court of Thorns and Roses is worth reading. Otherwise, Sarah J. Maas just isn’t the writer for me and I’m okay with that. 

Score: 5/10