Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas Review
What's this series about?
Celeana Sardothien is a ruthless assassin and reminds me of the Assassins Creed video game. She knows how to kill. However, her past shines the light on her real identity — finds this out in book three - and how this will shape the next five books in the series.
There's eight book in the series. Here they are in order:
- Assassin's Blade (Five short stories)
- Throne of Glass (1)
- Crown of Midnight (2)
- Heir of Fire (3)
- Queen of Shadows (4)
- Empire of Storms (5)
- Tower of Dawn (6)
- Kingdom of Ash (7)
Similar to the Harry Potter series, each book gets longer and longer. However, the big difference is that the last Harry Potter book (7) is far better than Kingdom of Ash.
Sarah J. Maas just confirmed that all the series she has written (Throne of Glass, Court of Thorn and Roses, and House of Sky and Breath) are in the same universe. The worlds haven't converged yet, but it's pretty cool that each series is in it's own world within the same universe. This means each world could connect, but we'll see.
Who is Sarah J. Maas:
- One of the top sci-fi writers out there.
- Wrote the Throne of Glass series, Court of Thorn and Roses, and House of Breath and Sky.
- She wrote the Throne of Glass series when she was in high school
- She’s getting a lot of traction from Booktok, which has revolutionized the way people read.
Booktok is the hashtag that has been watched over 190 billion times for the social media platform Tik Tok. This platform helped sell millions of copies of books from 2020- now.
The cool thing about Booktok is that it’s bringing a lot of self-published authors out into the spotlight like Colleen Hoover, Lucy Score, and Rilzy Adams. All romance authors, but that’s majority of what Booktokers have posted. Now, people are branching out more into sci-fi, young adult, fiction, and classics.
How should I read this series?
You can go multiple ways:
1) Read the first seven books then finish with Assassin's blade
- Assassin's Blade (Five short stories)
- Throne of Glass (1)
- Crown of Midnight (2)
- Heir of Fire (3)
- Queen of Shadows (4)
- Empire of Storms (5)
- Tower of Dawn (6)
- Kingdom of Ash (7)
- Assassin’s Blade
2) Read all eight in order
- Assassin's Blade (Five short stories)
- Throne of Glass (1)
- Crown of Midnight (2)
- Heir of Fire (3)
- Queen of Shadows (4)
- Empire of Storms (5)
- Tower of Dawn (6)
- Kingdom of Ash (7)
3) Read all the books in order besides the fifth (Empire of Storms) and sixth (Tower of Dawn) book. You read the sixth book first then read the fifth book. It would look like this:
- Assassin's Blade (Five short stories)
- Throne of Glass (1)
- Crown of Midnight (2)
- Heir of Fire (3)
- Queen of Shadows (4)
- Tower of Dawn (5)
- Empire of Storms (6)
- Kingdom of Ash (7)
4) Read 1–4 in order then read Assassin’s Blade then read Tower of Dawn, Empire of Storms, and Kingdom of Ash. It would look like this:
- Throne of Glass (1)
- Crown of Midnight (2)
- Heir of Fire (3)
- Queen of Shadows (4)
- Assassin’s Blade (Five short stories)
- Tower of Dawn (6)
- Empire of Storms (7)
- Kingdom of Ash (8)
What way did I read it?
I chose three because the fifth book, Empire of Storms, has a big cliff hanger. With this cliff hanger, you'll want to keep reading and skip the sixth book, Tower of Dawn, all together. I didn't want this to happen, so I went with the third option.
The fourth option is one I thought of after I read the entire series. This option would be great too because you’ll get information about key characters who don’t make an appearance until Tower of Dawn.
Tower of Dawn is a separate book that goes over a major character in the story called Chaol Westfall. This book goes over the story of how he’s recovering from an injury that got him paralyzed. You get information about another town, which is pretty cool.
If I read the series again, I would go with the fourth option.
My review:
I gave six books a five out of five rating on Goodreads. These were:
- Assassin’s Blade (Five short stories)
- Throne of Glass (1)
- Crown of Midnight (2)
- Heir of Fire (3)
- Empire of Storms (5)
- Tower of Dawn (6)
The books I didn't do give a good rating for are:
- Queen of Shadows (4)
- Kingdom of Ash (7)
I gave Queen of Shadows a four out of five while I gave Kingdom of Ash a two out of five. The reason I didn’t give these ones a solid rating was because both were slow. Also, Kingdom of Ash was the final battle. It sucked. After all of these books, you end the series with a piss poor battle scene. Come on.
I’m not going to review all the books. If you want my review of each book, check out my Goodreads page.
Overall review:
The series was decent. This was the first time I read sci-fi, and it was a totally different genre that I'm used to. This pushed my comfort levels to the max, but I enjoyed it. I got hooked on the novellas, which are Assassin's blade. Every book after that, I felt like it wasn't the same. It was slow, too much detail, and not getting to the point. The books could have been reduced besides Heir of Fire and Tower of Dawn. I think these books were the right length to covey the haters to lovers trope and develop more of the characters.
I’ll give the entire series a 3.5/5. A series has to start well and finish well, and this series didn’t do that for me. This is extremely difficult with sci-fi, and Maas didn’t do a good job with it. Because of that, I probably won’t read another Maas book.
One series that did well was the Amulet series by Kazu Kibuishi. A graphic novel series based on a kid who has to save the world. It started well and finished well. There’s a final ninth book, so we’ll see how he finishes the series.
What did I like?
1. Everything besides the eigth book
All of the seven books were great. Queen of Shadows was a little slow, but it was a solid book. My favorite books were Heir of Fire, Assassin’s Blade, and Tower of Dawn. Those were great books. Why? Because of the romance, character development with Caleanea and other characters, and touching up on different countries. Maas did a fabulous job with those books, but it dropped off with book eight.
What did I not like?
1. The eigth book
I liked everything about this series besides the eigth book. If the eigth book didn’t suck, I would be rating this series high. I didn’t like how it built up to this big battle, and the battle only lasted 30 pgs. if that. I’m not sure how many pages actually because I skimmed the book after pg. 800.
The eighth book was a big dissappointment for me. It was like getting hyped for the Games of Thrones battle scene, but when it comes, it underperforms by a large margin. Sadly, I probably won’t continue her other book series because of how Kingdom of Ash ended. We’ll see, but it’s very unlikely.
That’s the review of this series. Have you read it? If not, will you?
