Throne of Glass, Sarah J. Maas, 2012
(Spoilers)
Sarah J. Maas’s other series, ACOTAR, is my all-time favorite, making Throne of Glass quite the anticipated read, being Sarah J.Maas’s first! To start, I was somehow more impressed with Maas’s writing in this debut over in ACOTAR. It was also awesome to see what people say about ACOTAR being the more girlish, romantic fairytale world and more character/relationship based, where Throne of Glass (at least this first one) on the other hand is definitely giving more politics, adventure (and even murder mystery?) with some fantasy elements being woven throughout.
In the Throne of Glass universe, the territories of Terrasen, Adarlan, and Eyllwe (and some more which aren’t spoken of) are all equal territories in the world of Erilea until Adarlan, ruled by a power hungry king, begins to usurp his neighbors.
Our main character, Celaena is known as Adarlan’s notorious assassin. She was captured a year prior to the start of the novel and sent to Endovier, a deadly slave camp. She’s originally from Terrasen—where her parents were murdered by Adarlan’s army—and was found at 8 years old on a frozen lake by Arobynn Hamel, king of the Assassins. Since then, she’s been trained and given the reputation of being the most ruthless assassin in Andarlan.
Chaol Westfall, Adarlan’s Captain of the Guards, grudgingly retrieves her from Endovier, and —to Celaena’s surprise—instead of being brought to her death, she is brought to face the king’s son, Crown Prince Dorian Havilliard. Dorian proposes she be his chosen “champion” candidate in a challenge held at the king’s Glass Castle in Rifthold (a town in Adarlan), between her and 23 other criminals. If she wins the spot as King’s Champion, she will serve as his Assassin for 4 years and then be given her freedom outside of Endovier. If she loses, she will be sent back to the death camp where she’ll likely lose her life.
I think it’s hysterical, btw, the many times she mentions how idiotic the idea of a Castle made of glass is. There are a few things that Maas ridicules like this—in fact, although Celaena seems fearful of the Adarlan King, it seems Maas intends him to be some silly power hungry man who’s only real power comes from his title, not from his person. Really, he’s a p-ssy, and this is backed by the fact that he’s outlawed all magic (because he can’t control magic) when he came to power. This includes all faeries and creatures.
In the king’s challenges for a champion, Celaena undergoes an internal battle between fighting to be a subject of the king—who has destroyed her land and most of Erilea—and fighting against him.
While at the castle, she meets and befriends the Princess of Eyllwe, Nehemia, who is rumored to be a rebel sympathizer. She says she is here to learn the Adarlan customs and language in order to appropriate Eyllwe accordingly; however, Celaena and Nehemia vibe so well together that Celaena suspects there’s got to be something deeper.
As the competition begins, she uses a pseudonym (Lillian) and displays only half her strengths so she can throw off her opponents, who she quickly realizes are less skilled than she is—that is, all except Cain, a scary brute and ruthless soldier from the White Fang Mountains.
The challenges, which are a thirteen week series with one elimination test weekly, begin, and almost simultaneously, there are also vicious murders happening among the champions. At first, the murders are excused as unfortunate animal attacks, but the abundance of them eventually makes it clear that someone is taking it upon themselves to eliminate the candidates.
Amidst all this, Celaena finds her heart going pitter patter around both Dorian AND Chaol. Where Dorian is giving flirty back, Chaol stays diplomatic for the most part except for the few heartfelt moments where he just can’t help it, big mush that he is.
There’s also the “villain” characters—Duke Perrington and his Lady Kaltain. Kaltain has pretty much promised her loyalty and coerced Perrington into bringing her to the castle, but, in her POV (TOG’s third person narration switches between POVs), we see that she is using Perrington to reach Dorian’s crown. She is incredibly jealous of Celaena (who she knows as Lillian) and seeks to get her out of the castle when she finds that Dorian is falling for her.
The magic/fantasy elements begin as a spiritual apparition around chapter 24. On the night of Samhuinn, the day of the dead festival, she sees her bedroom tapestry moving—with no wind—and finds behind it a door to a long passageway that goes through the castle. In her dream that night, she goes through a spooky door she’d avoided initially during her first walk-through, and finds the Sarcophagi of the Adarlan’s first royalty, the ancient King Gavin and Fae Queen Elena. Elena then manifests physically in front of her to say Celaena must destroy some evil within the castle and it is imperative she win the championship. Celaena quickly realizes the murders and the “evil” Elena talks about are one and the same.
Celaena starts noticing weird symbols, called Wyrdmarks, all throughout the castle, as well as painted in chalk under her bed. She feels a bit of imposter syndrome, questioning why it’s her sent on this noble quest, but spends hours in the library researching these marks anyhow. When she asks Nehemia, Nehemia is quick to dismiss them, and says she knows nothing of what they mean.
Cain becomes increasingly suspicious, even calling Lillian’s bluff, indicating he somehow knows she is Celaena, Adarlan’s Assassin, and not Lillian, as he’d been told.
As Dorian and Celaena get closer, Kaltain and Perrington plan how to remove her. They decide to put poison in her wine on the day of the final duel—not to kill her, but to weaken her enough to lose the final duel and be sent back to Endovier.
As her Wyrdmarks studies continue, she finds out about a deathly creature, the ridderak, and she deduces that if the ridderak is what is killing all the champions, it must be hidden somewhere in the castle—the spooky passageway behind her tapestry being the only viable hiding place. When she goes, she finds Cain with an unexplained evil, dark mist surrounding him. Cain then sets the ridderak on her, and she is saved by the ancient king’s sword in the tomb with he and Elena’s sarcophagi. She now knows Cain has been the one orchestrating the murders, and he is using the Wyrdmarks to somehow summon magic.
Before the final duel, she accepts Nehemia’s staff to fight with (symbolizing the strength of Erilea against Adarlan), and takes a sip of wine, at the king’s request, served by Kaltain, as a thanks offering to the gods. She becomes weak and dizzy, the world blurry, and is utterly DESTROYED by Cain, who breaks her physically, again and again and again, despite her persistence to keep getting up.
In her struggle, Chaol kneels down at her broken body in the ring, and tells her to keep going.
She sees Nehemia making symbols with her hands. She realizes she was drugged, and starts hallucinating an evil army force coming at her. The queen Elena emerges from her hallucinations, and fends them off, telling her she can remove the poison but she can’t yet heal her body. Without the poison, Celaena regains her strength and beats Cain. Cain and the King give each other an assenting nod, and as Cain raises a sword to murder her, Chaol slices him with his own.
Kaltain is PISSED at how Celaena will now be Dorian’s buddy for the next 4 years. The Duke, seeing the scene Kaltain is making, accuses her of poisoning Celaena all on her own. She is escorted out, and then the Duke and the King talk about the “power,” which was proved successful on both Cain, who demonstrated it’s physical addendum, and Kaltain, who demonstrated it’s mental. I suspect this “power” will be the malevolent force in at least the next sequel (there are 7 more).
In the aftermath, Nehemia and Celaena have a heart to heart about Nehemia’s real purposes here, which are to spy and help her people. She admits she did in fact know about the Wyrdmarks, which, with the poison given to Celaena, opened a door between worlds where the Evil forces and Elena were able to come through.
Dorian,after realizing how helpless he’d been as Celaena was almost beaten to her death, and becoming envious of Chaol for having the brazenness to step in to encourage her, decides he is in love with her. Despite their undeniable sexual tension, Celaena tells him that as his father’s champion, they can’t be together. She reminds him that after 4 years, she’ll be free. He’s a trooper about it, heartbroken but congratulating her anyway.
The king’s contract is devised, saying she is required to do all that is asked of her, with no questions or hesitation, for the 4 years she is in service. If she runs away earlier than the end of her term—or allows herself to die—he will kill Chaol, Nehemia, and all else who matter to her. She signs the contract, and though she is still torn at working for the king instead of against him, she and Chaol raise a glass to her eventual freedom.
AHH. I love it.
To cover some of my own basics, I must say I’m a major Chaol stan, not Dorian—though I do appreciate how Maas made them both likable characters, because I can imagine this is truly a debate in the TOG world.
That is to say, I didn’t actually dislike Dorian, and I thought it was respectable that although he had, just a chapter before, fervently decided he’s in love with Celaena, he accepted her decision to keep a friendship instead of a relationship with him. Dorian is characterized as feeling lonely and misunderstood, being a reader instead of a fighter, and he addresses when he’s acting like a coward and can’t stick up against his father.
Chaol, who is also characterized as a reader (this is like, crucial for me, gals), is incredibly stoic and much more humble, I’d say, than Dorian. He’s also much more of a mystery, so already he’s the winner amongst us toxic girlies.
I also will say I loved how this ended on a positive note—yes, she’s going to be a slave to the king for the next 4 years (which sets up perfectly the rest of the series), but it ended with her and Chaol rejoicing in her victory.
Spice level in this is 0, which may turn off some girlies but the book was so well written that even as a spice girlie myself, I didn’t mind it!
4/5.
Sarah you slay.
Quotes:
Still, the image haunted his dreams throughout the night: a lovely girl gazing at the stars, and the stars who gazed back.
He looked remarkably lonely.
As he left, he wondered why she suddenly looked so sad, and why she’d pronounced his name not with tenderness, but with resignation.
He held her closer. Everyone transformed into mere shadows on the wall.
There was a darkness in his eyes that felt cold and foreign, like the gaps between the stars.
Celaena rested her cheek against her knee, listening to the clock tick-tick-tick long into the night.
Outside, the wind bellowed and raged against the glass spire, but it could do nothing to shatter the walls.
