Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½
I've always loved the idea of book clubs and besides my fourth grade advanced reading group, I've never technically been apart of one. That is, until I was invited to be apart of the GroupReads group on Goodreads. It seemed like the perfect group for me, someone who is a novice at group discussions, to come out of my shell while reading Throne of Glass.
Magic has been outlawed in the land and the king rules with an iron hand, but an assassin is summoned to the castle. However, she isn't there to kill the king, she is there to win her freedom. For a few years she has been forced to work in the salt mine prison after being captured. Usually people die in the mines so she will take her chances in the castle if it means she doesn't die. But winning her freedom might not be as easy as she thought; She is up against twenty-three killers, thieves, and warriors in a competition to become the king's champion. But she is one of the best known assassins, she is Celaena Sardothien. The Crown Prince will provoke her and The Captain of the Guard will protect her, but they might not be able to protect her from the evil that dwells in the castle made of glass and this this is there to kill. When her competitors star dying one after the other, Celaena's fight for freedom becomes a fight for survival and a desperate quest to root out the evil before it destroys her world.
This is one of those books (it seems) that people either love or hate. I definitely lean more towards the love side although there were somethings I didn't enjoy too.
Personally, I really enjoyed the characters in this book. Chaol and Dorian were quick favorites to me, so much so that I didn't want anything bad to happen to either one of them. Nehemia was another that I felt attached to and, of course, Fleetfoot! Celaena was (and still is) difficult to like, but that is what made me enjoy her. She wasn't the main character you love, she is the main character that annoys you and all the other characters but she is essential to the story and that's what makes me like her. Also I really enjoyed the plot of this story, the competition aspect was especially interesting to me and I wish we could've seen more of the tests that the competitors participated in. The mystery behind the wyrdmarks was especially intriguing and I loved learning little tid-bits about them throughout the book until it's discovered what they are and what they are being used for. Also despite it being outlawed, magic has a presence in this book and that's something I enjoy in any book I read. Magic is something I've always been interested in and I think Celeana has some magic of her own... but that's just my prediction.
This book did have slow pacing, which is something I don't enjoy at all. It just took so long to get somewhere and I think that's what turns people off of this book so quickly. I found that if you stick around through the slowness it picks up, but I think including more about the tests would've kept me and others more hooked. It didn't help that I was also very confused for the first 50-75 pages of this book. It didn't click for me until then what was actually going on and I don't know if it's just me or if it's the writing but I still didn't like that.
Overall, there were definitely more things that I liked than I didn't and the book got a lot better, in my opinion, as it went on. I'm excited to read the next book with my group, GroupReads, on Goodreads.