Throne of Glass, Sarah J. Maas

 

Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

Started: August 21, 2025
Completed: August 26, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended for Young Adults
Recommended by: My niece who insists this is not smut and she really enjoyed the story.

Review:

I am not particularly a fan of anti-heroes (one big exception is Covenant in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson) and the protagonist, Celaena Sardothien, in this book is such an anti-hero.  She is untrustworthy, abusive of relationships (both romantic and non-romantic), quick to insult (she would see it as being snappy, I guess), and quick to be insulted (she wears her feelings on her sleeve).  The context does matter.  Celaena is 17 and somehow renowned throughout the world as a first class assassin.  How this happens in the age of the horse is not described and she somehow has years of experience becoming an assassin and even more years to become famous.  So, OK, grant all of this.  Her inner dialog has her as a virtually unstoppable force, yet when it comes down to it, she is not quite all of that.  She, also, somehow has survived a year in a brutal mine known to be a death sentence, so she does have something.

Meanwhile, the captain of the guard and the crown prince are both hot for her.  In fairness, it seems like everyone who can get close enough to look her up and down is hot for her.  So, OK, grant all of this.  She had a secret boyfriend who died and that's about all you know.  She is also a piano virtuoso in case you thought she was one-sided.

The plot is not challenging and the characters are all flat.  For a young person, however, who is looking to model after a brash person who unexpectedly finds herself at the center of many levels of power, well this is your thing.

My niece is very up on this series, so I am likely to continue reading and the rest of the series.

House of Earth and Blood, Sarah J. Maas

 

House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas is the first book in the Crescent City series.

Started: 1/12/2023
Completed: 4/20/2023
Recommendation: Not Recommended
Recommended By: Kobo

Review:

I have not read any soft porn and I have only read a couple of romances.  This seems to jump into the soft porn area to me.  That aside, this story is more revelatory than developing.  Oh, look, here is another thing that you had no way of knowing, but that is fundamental to the book.  I'm OK with surprises (and there are some of those as well), but those are things you could conceivably have known if you thought long and hard about it in the difficult cases.  Those are actually a little fun.  There are so many things, though, that are kept from the reader at virtually every turn that the reveal becomes tiresome.  There is also a batman-esque quality to dilemmas that face darn near everyone and the degree to which the "bad guys" make an effort to hide what doesn't need to be hidden is also pretty ridiculous.  Finally, there are a few surprises that are a surprise only because the person to whom the surprise is revealed should surely have known by virtue of details that are simply omitted for the reader.  I don't like that.  Overall, I did not enjoy the book and won't read the series.