Throne of Glass

By: Sarah J. Maas

Narrated by: Elizabeth Evans

Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's Summary

Bloomsbury presents Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas, read by Elizabeth Evans.

The book that started the phenomenon. Sarah J. Maas' global number one best-selling Throne of Glass series has taken the world by storm.

Meet Celaena Sardothien.

Beautiful. Deadly. Destined for greatness.

In the dark, filthy salt mines of Endovier, an 18-year-old girl is serving a life sentence. She is a trained assassin, the best of her kind, but she made a fatal mistake. She got caught.

Young Captain Westfall offers her a deal: her freedom in return for one huge sacrifice. Celaena must represent the prince in a to-the-death tournament - fighting the most gifted thieves and assassins in the land. Live or die, Celaena will be free. Win or lose, she is about to discover her true destiny. But will her assassin's heart be melted?

©2012 Sarah J. Maas (P)2021 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Critic Reviews

"One of the best fantasy book series of the past decade." (Time Magazine on the Throne of Glass series)

"Celaena is as much an epic hero as Frodo or Jon Snow!" (New York Times best-selling author Tamora Pierce on the Throne of Glass series)

"Epic fantasy gold." (USA Today on the Throne of Glass series) 

Is the narrator bored?

I’m only a few hours in but this is a struggle. The narrator has a cadence with awkward breaks and she sounds bored? Dismissive? The narrators voice for the main character sounds like someone who is constantly eye-rolling, and then every other character sounds like a snooty brat. I’m having a hard time getting into this based on the narration.

As far as the story goes, I’m not buying this nervous, unobservant girl is a hardcore assassin too.

If you’re not invested in Sarah J Maas in general, I suggest passing on this.

Young adult, sure

From some of the more critical reviews, I was expecting something more uncomfortably “YA”, yet I ended up being pleasantly surprised. I can understand the frustrations of the MC being a stone cold prodigy one moment, and then, you know...just acting her age the next, but it’s not a contradiction; it feels actually quite realistic, if you’ve ever known someone so incredibly talented but is still clearly growing into themselves. Add the trauma of the work camp in addition to simply being away from her craft for a year... of course she’s not formidable and invincible the moment we meet her. Her inconsistency makes even more sense the more her backstory unfolds in the subsequent books. I would recommend keeping an open mind and then simply enjoying the ride.

I tried...

I really tried, but had to stop halfway through.
it was in my recommended list and had good reviews, so I gave it a shot.
The MC is supposed to be this super renown assassin, but comes off as a jumpy rabbit with NO environmental awareness, and is always startled, or scared.by something.
The love triangle is forced, awkward, and makes no sense considering the involved characters roles. Oh, and like Oh Em Gee, Mc is like, soooo embarrased, so often.
The Narrator does a good job at giving characters different voices, but makes the MC sound like a little girl instead of this hardened super assassin shes supposed to be.
I just cant get into this, I kept hoping it would get better, but all the characters are written like freshmen teens in a 90s sitcom.

This book!

I love Sarah J. Maas and the relationship she builds between characters. She has a wonderful writing style! I read ACOTAR before reading this series and I just love the way she wrote!! It’s so easy to read and nothing ever gets boring with her!!

What in the misogyny?

I feel utterly duped into reading/listening to this!

I am (was?) a big ACOTAR fan, and so I finally sat down to listen to Throne of Glass. My god, I did not expect this degree of secondhand embarrassment and outrage at misogyny. I finally see why SJM has a devoted hoard of haters.

I genuinely loved ACOTAR and thought the love interest twist was ground-breaking, subversive, and exciting. This makes it feel tired, toxic, and boring. The love interests are utterly shallow and uninteresting.

The lead is incredibly sexist. This is strange to say about a young girl written by a female author, but, woof, everything about this lead feels crafted by misogyny. I mean that literally--it feels hateful of women. The lead regularly complains about how awful other women are, even down to consistently whining about how dreadful girls are for caring about fashion or whatever other "feminine" quality she is too superior to indulge in. In one scene, a foreign princess visits and our lead who is somehow fluent in this foreign princess's language (eyeroll because the lead is perfect at every helpful skill, apparently), and this foreign princess uses this opportunity to communicate in her native tongue to compliment our lead for being "not like other girls"--yes, that actually happens. There's really a "not like other girls" scene. What YA author hasn't unlearned this toxic misogyny by now? I know this is one of SJM's older works, but GEEZ.

To have a lead who's essentially a perfect "Mary Sue" (a term I generally avoid but find applicable here) is certainly annoying, but I enjoy "power fantasy" stories, so I don't feel bothered by it so much--but here it's used to put down other women, and there's just no need. Characters constantly praise her for being unlike other women, including herself, and this communicates that girls and women are not usually wonderful, skillful, clever like her--that women are usually just ordinary, dull, shallow things. I hate this. I hate that that the story implies women and girls are undeserving of recognition, love, power, and praise unless they're super-duper-ultra-rare assassins who hate "girl things" like fashion. It feels dirty to read this story, not in a fun sexy way, but in a way that feels like doing wrong by humankind.

It's just so unreadable. I had to actually stop near the end. I couldn't continue because of how toxic, woman-hating, and empty it is. I'm just so appalled and shocked, honestly. It puts all of SJM's work in a different light for me. Not good.

Excellent book - poor narration

I read all of this series, as did my daughter and husband. I decided to share the audio book with a friend on a road trip. I can not express how badly Evans seems to miss the nuances in the conversations. Wasnt Sarah j Maas consulted on her reading?? Dorian and Chaol Are portrayed always as snooty brats. That doesn’t feel accurate. Even Philippa is portrayed as a persnickety lady in waiting. No one I know who read the books feels that way about her. It’s absolutely so disappointing to hear how silly Evans makes all of these characters feel. This is a huge miss on the portrayal of this wonderful book.

Silly and doesn't make sense

I thought I would like this book but the dialog is just too cringy and the main characters personality doesn't make sense. She claims to not have been "broken" after living in one of the worlds toughest prisons but gets scared when being in front of the king or in high places?? She's also described as this amazing assassin that people cower in fear of but is easily beaten by the captain of the guards when sparring???

Everything just contradicts itself. I wouldn't recommend reading this, there are much better books out there.

Trap

Story is a trap when you read the summary to think it’s going to be this amazing story but when you actually read the story it’s terrible, the main character doesn’t make any sense she’s a assassin but acts like a teenage girl and there are no personality traits that scream “assassin” the story and the characters need work. I was looking forward to reading it since I read court of thorns and roses and the writing and plot was great. This was the complete opposite. I was not impressed, it sucks that I paid for this book now I’m stuck with it.

Great story, terrible voices.

I love these books and their story. The reader read well,but some of their voices for characters were not to well done. A squeaky British accent for a giant hulking tribesman from the mountains seems like an odd and distracting choice.

Not as good as ACOTAR, but still good!

I started this after ACOTAR and found it to be good, but not quite as good. I will definitely read the series though!