Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas

YA Fantasy, 2012 by Publisher, 406 Pages 

What I Didn’t Like:

• Character development is not original. The characters all feel like cliche characters I’ve seen before in this genre.
• The secret room seemed a bit unrealistic, considering no one seemed to be aware of it. Can’t really say more than that without spoiling things. 
• The romance didn’t work. Was it supposed to? I mean, I can only hope not. I can only hope the budding love triangle introduced in this book collapses into some kind of chaos for book 2 because it just felt clunky to me.
• The assassin doesn’t feel capable of … assassinating anything. We’re told she’s a gifted assassin but her actions leave me thinking she may be pretending? I don’t know.

What I Did Like:

• Word marks were a cool touch of Magic I wanted explored a bit more. Of course this is book 1 so I’m assuming they’ll be played with more in later books.
• I’m intrigued by the Magic and the Fae Queen. I’m assuming we’d get more of those in the sequel so we’re set up to have a better book there. 

Who Should Read This One:

• Readers who like dropping into a fantasy world and have the time commitment for the entire series in one go (I’ve heard from multiple readers that this is the “worst book” in the series and you cannot fully appreciate the humble beginnings of this one without continuing the series). 

My Rating: 2 Stars

• Honestly, this one is meh. It’s trying to set up what could be a great book 2, but I’m bored by the characters and nothing in the writing or language sucked me in.