-Guest book review contributed by Caffeine and Books-

Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas – Book #1

Individual book rating: 4 out of 5

“Meet Celaena Sardothien. Beautiful. Deadly. Destined for greatness.

In the dark, filthy salt mines of Endovier, an eighteen-year-old girl is serving a life sentence. She is a trained assassin, the best of her kind, but she made a fatal mistake. She got caught.

Young Captain Westfall offers her a deal: her freedom in return for one huge sacrifice. Celaena must represent the prince in a to-the-death tournament–fighting the most gifted thieves and assassins in the land. Live or die, Celaena will be free. Win or lose, she is about to discover her true destiny. But will her assassin’s heart be melted?”

This book was a great start to the series. It introduced us to the character of Celaena, and we got to know her personality and her talents. Maas left out a lot about Celaena’s past, but I didn’t really question it because I was too caught up in the great plot. We are also introduced to Chaol and Prince Dorian, two characters who will continue to be at the centre of the plot.

While the tournament is one of the main focuses in the first book, there are subplots which you must pay attention to more as they will mean a lot more. One of these is the introduction to magic, well the loss of magic, and the King’s umm… evilness? Basically the King got rid of all magic, and now is trying to take over the world. This is obviously the main plot that carries over into all the other books.

The only things about this book I wasn’t a big fan of were the introduction to magic–the whole secret passages in the wall of Celaena’s bedroom thing–and the love triangle. Luckily the love triangle wasn’t that big of a deal, and it ended by the end of the book. And the introduction only happens once and from there on it doesn’t happen, so overall they were both easily overlooked.

This was definitely a great start to the series.

This guest review was contributed by Caffeine and Books. This blog contains book reviews, book hauls, book tags…basically a lot of bookish things, all fueled by caffeine.