Throne of Glass Book Review: Sarah J. Maas's First Series Is Still Her Best Argument for Her Own Talent

Rating: ★★★★★

"Throne of Glass" Book Review:

"Throne of Glass" Book Review:Throne of Glass is Sarah J. Maas's original series, eight books long, spanning about a decade of her writing career. It predates ACOTAR. It is also, in my opinion, the better series. If ACOTAR is where Maas figured out the romantasy formula that would break publishing, Throne of Glass is where she figured out that she could actually write epic fantasy. The Hulu TV adaptation currently in development is going to introduce a generation of readers to this book, and I think Maas's reputation will get a permanent upgrade when it happens.

Celaena Sardothien is an eighteen-year-old assassin. She has spent a year in the salt mines of Endovier, a death sentence for most prisoners, and she has survived. The Crown Prince of Adarlan pulls her out of the mines to compete in a tournament against twenty-three other killers. The winner becomes the King's Champion. The loser goes back to the mines. Celaena takes the deal because the alternative is worse, and because she has not stopped being the best assassin in the kingdom, and because some part of her wants to see what the prince is like.

The tournament structure is the book's engine and the book's smartest choice. Maas does not try to build a sprawling world in book one. She gives us a contained setting — the castle of Rifthold — and a limited cast, and she lets Celaena be a person inside of those confines. The training scenes are specific. The other competitors have distinct personalities. The first kill in the tournament is not Celaena's. When the deaths start piling up, and it becomes clear that someone else is hunting the contestants, the mystery is a real mystery. Maas plays fair.

The romance is two-tracked. Chaol Westfall, the captain of the guard, is the safe love interest. Dorian, the crown prince, is the charismatic one. Celaena is caught between them, and I am going to tell you upfront that the book resolves this in what some readers will find the wrong direction. The series as a whole does eventually tell you who Celaena ends up with, and it is not who book one would make you guess. Maas is playing a very long game.

The world building is the hidden strength of the first book. Magic has been banned in Adarlan. The fae have been hunted. The king who rules the empire has built his power on a foundation he does not fully understand. Every small detail in book one pays off two, three, five books later. Maas wrote this series when she was a teenager — she had the first draft done by the time she was eighteen — and you can feel the youthfulness of the prose. She will become a much better sentence-level writer by Heir of Fire, book three, which is where the series stops being a tournament novel and becomes epic fantasy.

What Throne of Glass gets right, and what ACOTAR gets a little less of, is friendship. Celaena's relationship with Nehemia — a princess from a colonized kingdom, the book's moral backbone — and her relationships with the court's women across eight books are the emotional spine of the whole series. Maas writes female friendship with more care than she writes romance. Readers who come for the romance stay for Aelin and Manon and Lysandra and Elide.

Five stars. The series that proves Maas has always been better than her critics have given her credit for.

If You Liked Throne of Glass, Try:

• A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas — Maas's later, romance-forward series. See my separate review.

• The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang — Darker, sharper military fantasy with a protagonist who is also an instrument the world built and cannot fully control.

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