Review: ‘Throne of Glass’ Series by Sarah J Maas

As the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas draws to a close after 6 amazing years, I thought I would do a review of the series as a whole. Many people have at the very least heard about this story, of a young assassin who is entered in a deadly competition to become the king’s champion. Some loved the story and kept reading, some didn’t and stopped at the end of the first book. If you’re one of those people, I hope that this review might convince you to give this series another try. (I’ll be terribly honest: I ADORE this series, so I may be more than a little biased. Please feel free to take my review of the series with a grain of salt.) For the purposes of this review, I will not be including The Assassin’s Blade, as part of the main story, but it is excellent nonetheless and is definitely worth the read for some of Celaena’s adventures pre-Throne of Glass series.

Apologies if this review is a little short on details, but we’ve got quite a bit to get through!

To summarise the series to the best of my ability, the Throne of Glass series follows Celaena Sardothien, an assassin who’s thrown into a contest to win her freedom at the cost of becoming a cruel king’s champion. However, not everything is as it seems, and she begins to realise that there is a growing darkness in the kingdom, one that she’ll have to fight in order to save herself and those she loves most. In each book, Celaena discovers a bit more of herself, her past, and her role in all of the events unfolding. Readers will get to see Celaena transform before their very eyes, the assassin becoming something new altogether by the end of the series. Along the way, she’ll fall in love with a boy or two and make some incredibly tough choices. Lots of shipping to be had here!

To give away any more than this feels spoilery to me, so I’ll stop there. It’s been a long journey to be sure, but boy was it an amazing one to go on.

When I started this series I was a little sceptical. Throne of Glass was a good book to be sure, but I didn’t feel like it stirred up too many emotions within me. Adarlan as a setting for the story was really interesting, and I loved the world building aspect of Throne of Glass. There was plenty of action, and this was the first fantasy story I’d read after a period of reading only contemporary young adult novels. I wasn’t in love with the idea of a love triangle trope, but I accepted it and moved on. Things really started to get interesting for me when I picked up Crown of Midnight. I felt that Celaena’s character really starts to get delved into a little more, and we start seeing a little more involvement with some of the female characters. There’s still plenty of action to be had..romance too, but I felt that everything really started taking on in the third book, Heir of Fire.

In Heir of Fire, I feel like we start seeing Celaena’s character take on a lot more hardship and this is where we’re starting to see her make some nitty-gritty choices that will alter the course of her life. She is starting to find out that she’s not quite who and what she thought she was, and will have to go on a journey outside of Adarlan to find peace with herself, and strength to fight off the monsters that are threatening to enslave her world. It’s at this point that Celaena begins to become a major player in the world around her, and I loved it.

Queen of Shadows is where we start to see more of the female badassery that I admire Sarah J. Maas for. Although first introduced in Heir of Fire, Queen of Shadows is where we really start to see Manon Blackbeak, an ironteeth witch that seems to be allied on the dark side of what is turning out to be an inevitable clash of powers between our infamous assassin and quite a few enemies who wish to destroy her. There is some serious action that happens in this one, and so much chaos. It was a nail-biting and gripping read.

The tension only gets ramped up in Empire of Storms, as all enemies are making the move to strike our heroine and her supporters, and readers will get to see more action/badassery from the women. Not to say that the men aren’t also swoon worthy on their own, but there was something so empowering to me about all of these ladies kicking ass, taking names, and no prisoners. The ending of Empire of Storms was not so much of a cliff-hanger as much of a sucker-punch to readers, with a grim promise of what was to come.

Before readers could get to the final book, Tower of Dawn bridged a character gap for us. In this story, Chaol Westfall (one of our male interests at the beginning of this series) has been sent off to another part of the world in order to heal after injuries that occurred during Queen of Shadows. In order to heal, he has to face his own demons, as well as secure an alliance for the war that is brewing in his homeland. The timeline is at the same time as some events happening as Empire of Storms, and some readers might not loved this title. It was slow going for me at first, but once I delved in, I couldn’t put it down.

Kingdom of Ash is the culmination of the series, and a spectacular culmination it was. So many questions are wrapped up for readers, and it is just as heartbreaking and difficult as I was imagining as a reader. There are some incredibly difficult moments that I would love to share but I can’t because I don’t want to spoil it. There are some hilarious moments that I adored. I loved getting closure but hated getting to the end of the book.

Overall, I loved the characters. Of them all, I would honestly have to pick Dorian as my favourite. There was a hidden depth to him in the middle and end of the series that I felt I took for granted until I went back through and re-read the series to prepare myself for Kingdom of Ash. The world-building was phenomenal. I was sucked into the world of Erilea, and found myself wanting to know more about the world. If I had to give the whole series a rating, it would have to be 9/10. I take a point away begrudgingly, because of Throne of Glass and Tower of Dawn. These were the two that I had some troubles with because of trope/difficulty to get into, but I’m just nit-picking.

I own all of these books, and happily recommend them to anyone who loved epic fantasy. I’m already looking forward to Sarah J. Maas’ future release (hopefully in 2019), Crescent City! But tell me friends, what are your thoughts on this amazing series? I know that this review doesn’t touch on too many specifics (otherwise I’d be writing a book myself, ha), but tell me what your favourite characters and moments were!

The Throne of Glass series is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.

What do you think of the Throne of Glass series? Tell us in the comments below!