Throne of Glass [Hardcover]

Sarah J. Maas (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 7, 2012 | Series: Throne of Glass

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Teen Book of the Month, August 2012: Adarlan’s Assassin was the most feared killer in the world--until she was captured and sent to a prison labor camp to rot. But when the Prince needs a skilled fighter to battle in the royal court and become the King’s Champion, he pulls the assassin out of prison only to find she is a blonde 18-year-old girl. Celaena is as beautiful as she is deadly and she jumps at the chance to earn her freedom. Her mission seems straightforward: be the last (wo)man standing at the end of the competition. What she doesn’t expect is to develop feelings for the two men protecting her and to make an unlikely ally in a princess. Sarah J. Maas’ debut is stunning from beginning to end. Throne of Glass stands-out because of its memorable setting (there is actually a castle made of glass), strong characters, and continuous heart-stopping action sequences. Celaena is a heroine as memorable for her fighting abilities as she is for her quick wit and large heart and I can’t wait to see her grow and change throughout this exciting new series. --Caley Anderson

From School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up-Celaena Sardothien may be young in years, but she has seen more than most men twice her age. She was raised to be an assassin and until her capture and imprisonment in the salt mines of Endovier, she was known as the Assassin of Adarlan and feared the world over. No one lasts long in the mines, and when she is offered the possibility of release in exchange for a mandatory, four-year conscription as a hired assassin to the king who conquered and enslaved her people, she has no choice but to comply and play a brutal game to win back the chance at freedom. In order to succeed she needs to outfight, outplay, and outlast 23 men in a competition that many would not survive. There are other forces at work as well: an ancient and outlawed magic that she doesn't understand; fellow competitors turning up murdered; and the three very different men who are attracted to her and frightened by her. Maas has created a strong and sympathetic character in Celaena, who is able to best men in a fight but is laid low by the return of her monthly cycle. The world-building is complex, as is the political intrigue. Fans of Tamora Pierce will find a lot to love here and will wait eagerly for the next installment.-Genevieve Gallagher, Charlottesville High School, VAα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Product Details

• Age Range: 12 and up
  
• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens; 1 edition (August 7, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1599906953
• ISBN-13: 978-1599906959
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (307 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #48,885 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sarah J. Maas was born and raised in New York City, but after graduating from Hamilton College in 2008, she moved to Southern California. She's always been just a tad obsessed with fairy-tales and folklore, though she'd MUCH rather be the one slaying the dragon (instead of the damsel in distress). When she's not busy writing, she can be found geeking out over things like Han Solo, gaudy nail polish, and ballet.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

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#76 in Books > Teens

#76 in Books > Teens

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

217 of 245 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Meet Celaena Sardothien, Assassin Barbie August 7, 2012

By Madame X TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Kindle Edition

You know what the biggest problem with THRONE OF GLASS is? False advertising.

I was desperate to get my hands on this book thanks to Netgalley marketing copy that advertised it as "the teen girl version of Game of Thrones." The protagonist, Celaena, is a talented assassin and the blurb promised all kinds of intrigue and scheming with a dash of romance to lighten things up. And the book opens with the kind of dilemma I relish - Celaena gets the opportunity to escape the terrible death camp where she's been imprisoned, but only if she agrees to participate in a brutal competion, knowing that victory wins her the right to...use her deadly skills on behalf of the King, a brutal bully she loathes.

To me, the blurb, the storyline, the assassin protagonist, the comparison to Game of Thrones promised certain things. A book you'd describe, overall, as grim or dark or edgy. A rock-paper-scissors world with competing factions instead of a good-vs-evil conflict. A moral landscape all in gray, where nobody's black and nobody's white.

Buyer beware: THRONE OF GLASS does not contain any of those things.

If I were going to describe THRONE OF GLASS I'd use different terms. I'd say it's more like...Kristen Cashore's GRACELING meets EVER AFTER, that Cinderella movie with Drew Barrymore, or Turner's THIEF OF ATTOLIA put into a blender with the TWILIGHT books. Maybe THE HUNGER GAMES crossed with HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL. Because, yes, there's a scary medieval style fantasy world and a brutal king and political rebellion. The heroine really is an assassin and she's got all kinds of mad martial skills. There's a competition, and people die, and the final battle at the end of THRONE OF GLASS is seriously epic.

But there's also a tiresome, standard for YA at this point love triangle. There's a lot of flirting, and putting on pretty dresses, and hanging out with cute boys, and wanting to go to parties, and making friends. For every scene where Celaena creeps through a darkened corridor or examines a dead body, there are probably two where she hangs out in her room chatting with her love interests.

I didn't realize that this awesome "Game of Thrones" "assassin girl" "fight to the death" plot was going to be so heavily diluted with fluff. I'd have gone in with different expectations if I had - or just not requested the book at all. And I'd probably have liked THRONE OF GLASS anyhow if it weren't for the fact that the qualities that I most craved from it (in that list at the top) were absent.

There's also the fact that the characters didn't feel authentic to me. Take Celaena. Her backstory is gruesome. Her parents were murdered when she was very little, and she was tossed out into the streets. Then an assassin adopted her, trained her up, and sent her out to kill people. She killed and killed and killed...until she was captured and sent to a labor camp at the age of seventeen. That's a series of unfortunate events, right? That's a grim, grim, grim life. And yet Celaena is a chipper, cheery sort of girl. She's not troubled or wounded or broody or damaged. She thinks about murder in the bubbly, uncomplicated manner of a cheerleader practicing for the big game and her primary concern after leaving the labor camp is eating enough to be svelte and attractive again.

Celaena isn't the hard-edged assassin I was looking for, and THRONE OF GLASS isn't the book I was hoping to read. Hopefully my review will help steer the right sort of reader toward it, and deter the ones who are looking for the advertised teen-girl Game of Thrones.

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Strong Female Warrior. September 8, 2012

By Nicole @ Paperback Princess

Format:Hardcover

I was so pumped for Throne of Glass when I found out that it was going to be at BEA. I spend the preceding weeks talking to Maas on Twitter and just being excited in general for the book. When I first read about the book, what first got my interest was that it was being toted as Cinderella as an assassin. How cool does that sound?

The more I looked into it, the more I found out about it. Like the fact that there are some prequel novella's out there. Anyway, I was really excited for this book, and it didn't let me down. Not at all, I loved Celaena, but I think thats because I knew who she was from the novella's.

The whole time it seemed to be Westfall and Dorian going for her hand, but I wasn't partial to either one of them for her. That could also be because I read the novella's and I prefered the love interest in them. I liked her being alone, and a kick ass girlie girl. She had sass and she was okay with being alone. She was all about the high end dresses and high end weapons and that was my favorite.

I sort of expected it to be sort of like the Hunger Games when she talked about the challenges, which it did seem to be, but we didn't get to see all that many challenges. I'm hoping that the future books provide us with a more steady look into what Celaena is capable of and what more of her back story is.

Maas hinted at quite a few facts about Celeana's upbringing during the book, but we don't know precisely what happened, and I can't wait to find out more about what happened in her life to make her the way that she was. I loved that we also had details from the novella's mentioned within the book.

All in all, I can't wait for the rest of this series to be out and in my hands!

70 of 83 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars There are few beautiful things in this world, and this is one of them August 7, 2012

By Gretchen @ My Life is a Notebook

Format:Hardcover

There are few beautiful things in this world. This is one of them.

That right there was my ONLY Goodreads status update over more than 400 pages of reading. I read this in one day, in nearly one sitting. (It would have been one sitting if my dad hadn't interrupted with things supposedly more important. There is nothing more important than this.) This book was impossible to put down right from the get-go.

The main character of Celaena is initially very stiff. For the first few pages, I was wondering if I was going to like her at all. Then she opens her mouth to speak and the snark pours out and I decided I wanted to be her best friend. I found it wonderful how her character unfolds over the course of the novel, and you find out more and more about her as the pages go past. Even in the end of the book, you're finding out a few more things that add loads of depth to her character and yet add more questions that need to be answered. Despite having no idea what it would be like to live her life, I found myself connecting with her all the same.

Originally, I wasn't very excited by the idea of a love triangle forming between Celaena, Dorian and Chaol (or Captain Westfall, as the blurb names him). After all, you know how I feel about love triangles. (Hint: I hate them.) However, this one wasn't badly done. Celaena is absolutely NOT a air-headed girl, and the guys played it out nicely. There was no brooding testosterone match. Plus, the love triangle was hardly the focus of the book AND it ended interestingly. So yes, believe it or not, I have found a love triangle I approve of.

No, pigs are not flying. Yet.

I had heard this world likened to that of George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones, and I can certainly see why. For one, I'm pretty sure there is only a handful of names in either books that I am actually sure how to pronounce. Another is that you have to try to keep track of a lot of country and character names. (Throne of Glass, however, is nowhere near as bad as Game of Thrones in that regard.) Also, to mention layers again, there are SO MANY. In a time when YA world-building is sometimes circumspect at best, Maas blows it out of the water with rock solid skill and precision.

All and all, I basically have no idea why you haven't already pre-ordered this book. High fantasy seems to be an abandoned realm in YA fiction sometimes, yet Maas clearly shows that it is possible to have amazing world building, big character casts and countries and still keep it YA. The romance is wonderfully written, and it hardly takes over the novel. There's a little bit of magic, a lot of snark and a whole bunch of utterly fantastic fight scenes. There are few times that NetGalley makes me ridiculously upset because I don't own a print copy of this book, and this is one of them. I could lose myself in this world again and again and never get bored.