Throne of Glass (not to be confused with Game of Thrones) is the first full-length novel to feature the fantasy world of Celaena Sardothien. I read the second, Crown of Midnight, first, and wanted to read this novel to fill in some of the gaps.
It was interesting to see how Celaena met the characters I'd grown accustomed to, and how different they they were at first before Celaena got to know them. For example Dorian, the crown prince, started off as "a pompous, selfish idiot", or a "spoilt young prince", far removed from the character he was to become as she even "kissed him - greedily at that."
Anyway Celaena's reputation precedes her. She was a renowned assassin, the best. Then she was betrayed and sent to a salt mine, to work as a badly-treated slave, at Endovier where the slaves were lucky to last a year. Prince Dorian, along with captain of the guard Chaol, pull her out of there for the sake of a competition. The king wants a new assassin, "a right-hand sword in a world brimming with enemies", and is holding a competition for entertainment to determine the winner. For her she has no choice but to accept.
The oppressive king is responsible for the loss of many lives in his pursuit of power from his throne of glass, and has "outlawed it all - magic, fae, faeries - and removed any trace so thoroughly that even those who had magic in their blood almost believed it had never existed", so the mysterious magic-related things she discovers in the castle surprise her. This includes her meeting with the long-dead queen Elena, who tells her "Nothing is a coincidence. Everything has a purpose. You were meant to come to this castle, just as you were meant to be an assassin, to learn the skills necessary for survival."
As well as the mystery elements she comes across, and the fantasy, the book also has a simmering of romance, or not, between her and the young prince, or maybe the captain of the guard?
All-in-all a good book with many elements that should interest many a reader.
(I got this book through Amazon Vine UK. It is available HERE.)
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