I just started working at a bookstore yesterday and the highlight of my day was an older man returning Fourth Wing and Iron Flame and being very disdainful about them as stories. Like yes, I hate them too.
currently about 60 pages into "the spellshop" by sarah beth durst and i've got mixed feelings about it
people over on the cozy fantasy subreddit have been raving about it since it came out so i had high hopes for it
it's fun enough, so i'll probably finish it, but i don't know yet if i'll end up continuing the series
some criticisms i have so far:
kiela is being a total asshole to larran so far for no reason and like, i get it, i'm an introvert too, i'm socially awkward and can have a hard time talking to strangers, but there's no reason for her to be so rude to him when all he's done so far is
come to check on her family's house when he thought that someone had broken in
brought her food the next morning
came to check on her after he saw all the smoke coming out of her house and was worried she might be in trouble
fixed her roof for her
cooked a meal for her!!!
if kiela is really that annoyed at him intruding on her privacy or whatever, she needs to not accept his help. otherwise, play nice.
also, maybe i'm a boring spoilsport, but i feel like the "quirky companion" trope has gone a little far for my personal suspension of disbelief.
caz is fine enough i guess? but...a sentient spider plant feels like the author is trying too hard to be different
anyways, it's not all bad! i look forward to seeing her improve her family home and start her little spellshop and get to know the villagers. hopefully my opinion of the book will improve over time!
it's not necessarily bad, just a little...awkward?
man, this is why i don't usually read romantasy. this book shares a lot of the books i tend not to like from romantasy.
After serving out a year of hard labor in the salt mines of Endovier for her crimes, 18-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien is dragged before the Crown Prince. Prince Dorian offers her her freedom on one condition: she must act as his champion in a competition to find a new royal assassin.
Her opponents are men-thieves and assassins and warriors from across the empire, each sponsored by a member of the king's council. If she beats her opponents in a series of eliminations, she'll serve the kingdom for four years and then be granted her freedom. Celaena finds her training sessions with the captain of the guard, Westfall, challenging and exhilarating. But she's bored stiff by court life. Things get a little more interesting when the prince starts to show interest in her ... but it's the gruff Captain Westfall who seems to understand her best.
Then one of the other contestants turns up dead ... quickly followed by another. Can Celaena figure out who the killer is before she becomes a victim? As the young assassin investigates, her search leads her to discover a greater destiny than she could possibly have imagined.
Throne of Glass isn’t the worst book I’ve ever read, but it certainly was one of the most infuriating, which is why I was only able to read about 50% of it.
Since I didn’t finish it, I am only going to review the issues and things I disliked within the first half I read of it.
I also wanna note that I did read spoilers for the ending to confirm some thoughts I had and will be touching upon those.
Since this is my first DNF Review, I am gonna discuss why I picked up this book in the first place, the writing style (which is something that, for the most part, doesn’t really change from beginning to end), the premise (rather than the plot since I didn’t finish the book), the things I liked about the book, what I disliked about this book, and finally why I put it down.
Why I Picked Throne of Glass Up
So. A year or two ago I wanted to get back into reading. Due to a lot of issues and things in my personal life, I completely stopped reading for pleasure during my Sophomore year of high school, which meant I had stopped reading for... about 4 years? Which made me really upset as I had always been an avid reader! And since I was getting really passionate about writing, I figured I should get back into reading.
So I made a post on tumblr asking what YA books people recommended. I had been reading YA when I stopped reading (well... a mix of YA and MG, but mainly YA) so I figured that’d be the best place to start.
Numerous people recommended me different things, but one anon recced Throne of Glass to me. It was a fantasy (a genre I mentioned liking in my post) and they told me that though they hadn’t read it themselves, they had a friend who adored the series and that it was really popular so it was probably pretty good.
The. Really popular bit made me nervous, but nevertheless, I went onto Amazon. Bless me, actually, because I decided I’d try and read the little promo Amazon gives you before buying it.
I DNF’d it after half a page. I had never DNF’d a book so fast and so hard. The first time, what made me DNF this book was Celaena complaining about her looks while being in a prison. Like... girl...... priorities....
Months later, I started seeing people talking about this book a little as I got back into reading. Getting curious, I read some reviews, both bad and good, and decided to give this book another shot.
It was as bad as I thought it would be, if not worse.
The Premise (What was this?)
Honestly, I still don’t really know what I read. What even is Throne of Glass? What is life, in fact? What is the universe? I don’t know, but I feel like I’d figure out the latter two questions before I figured out the first.
So. The premise, or basic story idea of ToG is basically... Cinderella... mixed with Assassin’s Creed... mixed with the Hunger Games.... I dunno about anyone else but when people describe a piece of media to me as a mix of two or more random-ass things, I start getting nervous.
But honestly I have no idea how else to describe Throne of Glass. I couldn’t tell what this book wanted to be! And that was really what fucked me up. It wanted to be a big epic fantasy. It wanted to be a mystery. It wanted to be about girls in pretty dresses kissing pretty boys and having to choose between them. It wanted a princess aesthetic but with a character that has to be nasty to be an assassin. ToG, to me, is a long book of wants that didn’t deliver.
But said that, nothing was as poorly thought out as the plot. The plot is what confused me most, ground me to a halt, and said, “wait, what?”
Okay, the plot is basically Celaena joining this competition to win her freedom to become the king’s champion. Only issue is... a king’s champion is a real thing. And is something for mainly knights if I recall.
Back in the olden days of yore, when kings needed to fight against one another, or if someone wanted to challenge the king to a duel, they would have a champion to fight in their stead. If you’re a king, you don’t wanna fight your own duels, that’d be nuts! What if you died?! Then what would happen to your kingdom? That’s what a champion was for.
The champion is basically chosen/hired by the king. The thing is, what Celaena is... describing is well. Not a champion. Not really. I mean... I guess it’s kinda champion-like? It’s really vague in the book and it boils down to “you do dirty work for the king” so basically a hitman?
Thing is... the king is a king... why doesn’t he just hire an assassin? One who hasn’t been caught (looking at you, Celaena!). I mean, in the long run, that would be a lot cheaper than hosting a giant competition with a bunch of criminals who aren’t loyal to you, who will turn on you at any moment, and can’t be trusted? I mean, just ‘cause he has them swear to be loyal to him don’t mean jack shit, c’mon.
The entire plot of this novel falls directly apart as soon as you know what a king’s champion is! And honestly, the fix to this would be so easy. You could still have the competition, but instead make it between knights or wannabe knights or something. Have Celaena be a knight instead. She acts like it anyways; being all brash all the time and desiring the center of attention 24/7. Or if you really want her to be an assassin, fix her fugly personality and have her be an assassin pretending to be a knight.
And the king being “”crazy”” isn’t an excuse. Using crazy as an excuse is... one kinda insulting and gross and two, lazy. It means nothing and is a cop out at this point. Also, he did nothing in this book to seem crazy to me, really. He’s an asshole and abuses his kid but... besides that he’s basically nothing. He’s an evil king. He doesn’t even have an actual name. That’s how bland he is. There was no thought put into him at all. And again, this too could have had an easy fix. Rather than saying he’s crazy to excuse his nonsensical actions, all that had to be said was: he and his court want entertainment. That’s it. That would have given the competition the perfect excuse to exist in the first place. Sure, it’s not the most interesting of reasons or anything, but it’s better than the book being completely silent of why there’s a competition in the first place. Why does a king need a competition? Why between criminals who will stab him in the back? It’s never explained and it’s dumb.
God. There are SO many ways where ToG could’ve been better. Just. Better in general. There is so much lost potential here with the plot, which is where half my frustrations come from.
So. The premise falls apart after thinking about it for over .2 seconds. The second part of the actual plot of the novel (well, at least what’s described on the back of the book, not what I actually got) is a mystery. But... this mystery is really cliche. Someone taking out the competition. Wow. Never seen that before.
Also, I did spoil myself the ending to see if my guess of who it was was correct and welp. Winner winner, chicken dinner! It was indeed Cain. As soon as he swaggered on stage, and the narration hated him, and Celaena hated AND was a lil racist towards him, I knew it was him. His detailed magic ring and the fact he kept getting bigger apparently every time we saw him also clued us in. There was less foreshadowing in this book and more “beating you over the head with a Cain.”
Also, none of the other members of the competition really got... anything? Most were unnamed or Celaena dismissed them right away. Why even have these characters in the book if they aren’t even gonna be named? I get it’s a big cast, but still. Hunger Games was able to do the bare minimum of this, I mean at least all the tributes had names. Big casts are hard to write, so why not shrink it down a little? It won’t affect the story, in any case.
So instead of a cool mystery and badass competition, the premise of the competition fell apart, was mainly summarized and not seen from what I read, and in general the tasks were boring. No real fighting, nothing with a lot of tension or excitement. Just boredom. The mystery wasn’t even lukewarm. It was ice cold. I don’t even really know what the pages were filled up with... random bantering that told us nothing more about the characters than we already did. Celaena not knowing what guy to choose. Her wearing pretty dresses. Her reading and playing the piano. Her shittalking about girls with this other chick. Just. the most random stuff. It was fluff. Which is fine. I like fluff! I like pretty dresses and romance and all that!! But not in a book that promised me a MURDER MYSTERY and ACTION.
Maybe the action would’ve picked up if I kept reading. But something tells me... not so much. If excitement doesn’t happen before the rough halfway point of your book, something is wrong. At least, to me it is.
The Writing
A lot of people thought the writing was pretty it seemed. Numerous negative reviews praised the writing. I admit, there were some pretty quotes in there. But most of it was clunky and reminded me of Eragon (not good) or just. Laundry list. I can’t pull up the quote right now, I don’t have the book, but I remember when the library was shown to us, the narration just listed everything inside in a sentence with commas. The same was done in the king’s chamber besides a little extra detail on the fireplace. None of the descriptions of the settings were any good.... and neither were the pretty dresses! It was just “this dress is cut bad” “the fabric is ugly and feels bad” and such. What was the fabric made out of? What cut was the dress? There were so many little things like this that bothered me throughout the writing.
Lots of filler paragraphs that led to nothing were everywhere too. Sentences that danced around world building were common too. Again, don’t have the book, but at one point Chaol and Celaena were discussing books they liked and instead of name dropping some titles, giving us an idea of what sort of books these two like to read, it was just “Chaol listed some titles to Celaena. Celaena nodded approvingly” or something like that. Lazy. Boring. Pointless. Filler.
There was so much filler writing in this. And so much... passive writing. Especially when Celaena was traveling to the castle and beyond. “Celaena felt” was used so often that I nearly started counting how many sentences began with that. Sometimes, yes, telling is alright. But SHOW us how she feels! Don’t tell us she finds the castle breathtaking but daunting or whatever! Show us! What’s her expression look like? Her body language? What is she thinking? The moment she saw the castle was supposed to be powerful and tense but it wasn’t because the writing was passive when it shouldn’t have been. Passive writing isn’t the worst thing ever, but where the writing would’ve benefited from being active, it was passive instead, which also made the book a kinda bland read on a technical level. The writing stayed the same throughout. Sentence length wasn’t played around with much, sentence type didn’t change much. The only stand-out pieces were mainly dialogue.
I like active writing. I like an active writing style. Throne of Glass was passive. And you know what? I get it. I write in third person too. It’s hard.
But writing is hard. Publishing is even harder. This is a published book and I expected better, especially with how popular it is.
And yes, this is a debut novel. I kept telling myself that when I was reading this. But... I’ve read better debuts. I’ve read better fanfictions online. This is a New York Times best seller and a favorite of many. It should’ve been better.
The (little) Things I Liked
Gonna bullet point all this, hope none of you guys mind~
Celaena being feminine and proud of it. Haven’t really read a character like this yet and as someone who is writing several proud feminine characters, it was nice to see
Chaol. Just him in general. Best character and I loved him.
SOME of the banter was pretty fun.
That one scene with Celaena working out in her room was A Good TM
Some of the one-liner descriptions were pretty good and I enjoyed them.
I actually liked some of the traveling bits in the beginning. I thought it would skip straight to the castle but we got to savor a little in the journey there. It was nice (tho it went on too long and got annoying and boring to read)
The (many) Things I Disliked
A longer bullet point list, hope you all are ready! I’ll try and go in a somewhat chronological order
The plot made no fucking sense
Dorian. The only Dorian in my heart is Dorian Pavus and also he was so one-note that I almost cried.
The world building? The little world building that was like. Actually present was so bland... it read like Typical Fantasy. Listen. If I wanted Typical Fantasy I’d go play one of the many re-releases of Skyrim, okay??
Celaena was just unlikeable and her entire character was contradictory. She acted more like a mercenary for hire or a thug than an assassin. Assassins wouldn’t wanna be in the center of attention, people!
Also Celaena acted really dumb in parts and it made me cringe.
Chaol as the captain of the guard made no sense. He’s too young!
In fact, Celaena as the best assassin made no sense. She is also too young. Also, if she got captured and is KNOWN, she is hardly the best. The point of being an assassin is...... being unknown... c’mon.....
The tests. The back of the book made them sound really cool but they were just? Running around a track? Some softcore parkour? The archery contest actually made sense I guess but it would’ve been cooler if they were hitting like. Actual moving targets rather than just. Bulls-eyes.
Also most the tests were just kinda brushed over? At least The Hunger Games was.... well most the book took place DURING the Hunger Games so like.
The king had no fucking name what the shit who doesn’t name their fucking VILLAIN?!
Cain. Like. He was so stereotypical. I looked up to see if he would end up as the villain at the end and I was right, how disappointing. Also, naming your villain Cain is like.... idk... literally is there a single protagonist named Cain? Genuine question
The girl hate. Like, I get that girls are people and not all girls are gonna get along or anything but like. There were throwaway lines that just made me roll my eyes and scrunch up my nose.
THE FUCKING GLASS CASTLE MADE ME SO MAD OH MY GOD WHY WAS IT THERE. And if the castle looks the exact same on the inside in the glass part as the stone part, what’s the point then? How is this nation, which is at war, have a glass castle? That thing is gonna shatter. How did they make it? Why did the king make it? The most we get is the implication is that he’s crazy but that’s.... gross for one and two, lazy. You know what would’ve been cool tho? If the king was just a zealot who worshipped his human gods to the point where he wanted them to always see his victories and be able to see him wherever he went, so he created the glass portions of the castle so he could be seen by his gods the entire time. I thought of that idea in the span of 10 seconds. Sigh.
AND I AM STILL ON THE GLASS CASTLE SHIT listen. If this was a whimsical fantasy and everyone went with it, I wouldn’t have SUCH a huge problem with it, tho it would still be kinda dumb (mattering on context...) but legit. Having your characters point it out doesn’t make them look smart, it makes the author look silly. “It’s a dumb idea, I know it’s a dumb idea, but I am going to write it anyways. For The Aesthetic” listen. We’re past the age of aestheticism. Let’s get our heads outta the 1800s, k?
Honestly there were descriptions but I couldn’t ever get a good image on what was going on, which is weird. All the descriptions were for like. More finer details? But the overall look of the entire world was just blank in my mind. I dunno how else to explain it.
So. Much. Filler. Celaena! Get outta your room and let us explore some! I can sit alone in my room myself irl, I don’t wanna read some chick do the same!
Same with the book shit. Like we could’ve gotten some amazing world building just based on the books Celaena read but whatever that was brushed over too??
Honestly a lot of reading ToG was like reading a textbook where words go through my eyes and their meaning seeps from my ears and I find myself 20 pages in but no idea how I got there and don’t remember a single word of what I read.
The writing style for the fighting. When you write fight scenes or tense scenes, you want your writing to become choppier usually and sharp. It changes the mood and tone of the scene. The author just used the same flowing prose she had for the rest of the book, which was kinda dull.
I wish we had seen the murders. I mean, the book is in third person and does switch POV at times! I wanna read some good blood, guts, n gore!
L O V E T R I A N G L E O F H E L L
I thought Celaena was supposed to be sickly?? But like after a few chapters in the book that’s like, forgotten, besides her throwing up after running? Why only after running? Why doesn’t she worry about this or her health much? Seriously her physiology makes no sense.
Celaena’s mental health is also questionable. She’s completely fine after being tortured for a year and in a death camp and only has bad nightmares every once in a while?? That ain’t how PTSD works. Seriously what was going on in her head? What was the author trying to portray? You don’t do this shit half-assed. Either throw yourself into the research or go the Harry Potter route.
There is one character who is fat and he is ofc, a terrible person (I am talking about Dorian’s younger brother, ofc. Sigh. And yikes)
Celaena sometimes talked and acted like she was younger than what she actually was?? I think being childish was supposed to be part of her personality but it doesn’t mesh with her being an assassin. Unless she was doing it on purpose as an act. But she obv wasn’t so......
Yulemas. Honestly, I put the book down around when it was mentioned. It’s a dumb name and I can imagine what sort of celebration it is.
The timing and pacing of this book is weird. The king needs to learn what an itinerary is. I think it’d help him out.
Why I Put Throne of Glass Down
Mainly for two reasons: one I had just bought some books at the library and wanted to read those instead. I just wanted to read a good book again. The second reason is just as simple: I was incredibly bored.
There was just so much filler for me. Characters talking about random stuff, walking around, trying to figure out a mystery I figured out as soon as the first murder actually happened. It was all so boring to me.
And then... Celaena started suspecting Nehemia. Her only friend in the castle.
I dunno why that did it in for me. I think it’s because I didn’t wanna sit through at the very least 50 pages of one of the poorest red herrings I have ever stumbled across. I can (somewhat) deal with a book that promised me action and gave me bad romance with pretty girls and boys. I’ll complain a lot, give it a bad rating most likely, but I can finish books like those. What I can’t deal with is a clear waste of my fucking time. At that point, I was already 99.99% sure Cain was the bad guy. I was already tired of Celaena in general since she is such an unpleasant character for me to read. I did not wanna sit through a plot point that just insulted my intelligence and made the book all the more longer than it has to be. I have no idea how someone can make a book this bland and boring so long. I honestly cannot understand how I got pretty much 50% of the way in, and feel like I have moved nowhere when it comes to the characters and the plot. I don’t know how I could be pretty much halfway through this book and feel like not a SINGLE action scene has happened. (Yes, I know there have been actions scenes, but I didn’t like them or the way they were written. They weren’t exciting for me.)
All this realization just kinda came crashing down on me with Celaena suspecting Nehemia. And I was quite done with all of it.
Maybe the book would’ve picked up. Maybe the entire premise, story, characters, and writing style could’ve changed in a single page flip. But I seriously doubt that.
I’m tired of wasting my time with books I am not enjoying. If I’m gonna read a bad book, I at the very least want it to be entertaining.
And Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas wasn’t even that.
I’m a sucker for mystery novels, I’ll admit. When I saw the cool cover and interesting concept of the book “One Of Us Is Lying”, I had to buy it and read it.
I was not only disappointed, but appalled by the book.
I personally do not like books written in first person present, but I do believe good books, that are well written and have an interesting plot, can pull it off. One Of Us Is Lying, is not one of those books. The word choice was plain, and honestly, the story was slow enough for me that I wasn’t truly interested. The characters aren’t interesting twists on stereotypes like the summaries implied, they are simply stereotypes. The book changes points of view between the 4 main characters mid-chapter, and blatantly tells the reader the point of view, as if it was written by a 10-year-old fanfic writer on Wattpad. The twists weren’t that complicated; as soon as the “murder” (it wasn’t a murder), happened, I figured it out.
After the first few pages, I was reading it expecting it to be so bad it’s good. Since I owned a copy, and I didn’t much care about it, I mostly read the book while I was waiting for a bath to be ready to take, and even just reading it while taking a bath. I was having fun distracting myself from my real life while reading a silly book.
I wouldn’t be telling you not to read it if I just thought the writing was bad, however.
The book took a turn for the worse when it got to the tragic backstory of the main characters.
The tragic backstories are as follows:
1. The popular girl is being abused by her mother and boyfriend.
2. The smart girl’s little sister survived cancer. You are meant to sympathize with the smart girl, and the book portrays the real victims of cancer as the family of the people who have it.
3. The jock is the embodiment of “This is your dream, son!” “This isn’t my dream, dad. It’s your’s.”
4. The drug dealer has a deadbeat alcoholic dad who is disabled, and a bipolar mom who disappeared.
To this book, disabled people don’t want to try to take care of themselves the best they can, and mentally ill people are awful, horrible people.
It gets worse.
The “murder” was actually a suicide, assisted by the victim’s friends.
The victim of suicide is portrayed as an awful human being, who only wanted to make others suffer.
The victim of suicide is portrayed as as a horrible person.
The jock is gay, and the book portrays gay men as awful humans who string a girl along while dating a man.
Both of these are treated as shocking twists! Because it’s so shocking there’s a suicidal teenager in a normal high school. It’s so shocking there’s a gay guy at a normal high school.
Disabled people, mentally ill people, and LGBT people are nothing more than shocking props in this book.
The good reviews come for ignorant people who have never struggled with disability, mental illness, or being oppressed for being LGBT.
I’m a disabled, mentally ill lesbian. This book offended me to my core, as I saw the words on the page mock my very existence.
Do not read “One Of Us Is Lying”. Do not read books by Karen M. McManus.
PS. If you read this book and do not understand why it upset me, you’re a part of the problem.
