Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

YA Fantasy

About Throne of Glass from Goodreads:  

  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.

I received a eARC of Throne of Glass from Netgalley.  There has been a lot of hype about this YA novel.  Sarah Mass started writing the novel on Fictionpress as a serial and took it down in 2008. Broomburg Childrens released three novellas that  tell part of the backstory in January, March and May of 2012.  A forth will be released in July.  Throne of Glass will be released in August of 2012.

I had some mixed feeling about the book.  I liked the characters but felt that the only thing that made it YA was making the characters teenagers.  They did not feel that young as I read the story.  The main characters were interesting and some of the side characters added to the story in a good way.  I hope some of them return in future books. 

 The plot was interesting but I would have liked a little more about the different trials.  They were more of a side issue until the very end of the book.  The story required quite a bit of world building.  Because so much of the back-story is in the novellas it was like I was dropped into the world and I had to find my own way.  Some things were never explained but it looks like they were in the novellas.  It worked but if I had known about the novellas I probably would have read them first. 

All in all it was a good story. It is listed on the authors web site as a epic fantasy and while one thing is solved in the book there are a lot of problems left to solve. In fact most of the main problems are still there for future stories.

Bloomburg Childrens published Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas in 2012.