Where Genres Collide Traci Dowe YA Author

Book Talk 3/12/2020: Sarah J. Maas’s The Throne of Glass

Traci Kenworth

The Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas. Bloomsbury YA. Aug. 7, 2012.

Amazon blurb: 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.

My Review: Celaena is taken from one of the worst criminal caves imaginable by Prince Dorian and his head of security, Chaol Westfall. In return, for fighting in the matches given her, she’ll become the King’s Champion for four years and the afterwards, be free. Some of the fights are to the death. Malnourished and weak, Celaena struggles to hold on in a world that wants to drown her. As she struggles to recover, a tomb beneath her rooms is revealed to her and the Lady appears to her, explaining there is an evil in the castle and she’s the only one who can uncover and destroy it. By day, she fights her battles, befriending a princess from Ellwye, who may or may not have ulterior motives for being there when five hundred of her people are massacred. And what of the King? Who put her in the Endovier mines and the welts on her back? She trembles every time she sees him, knowing he has the power to return her from the hell she escaped. Can she unroot the plots against her, the throne, and the competitors? Or will she become another footnote for the royal’s history. My scorecard: A+