After she has served a year of hard labor in the salt mines of Endovier for her crimes, Crown Prince Dorian offers eighteen-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien her freedom on the condition that she act as his champion in a competition to find a new royal assassin.
There are a lot of problems with the books. The characters are paper thin, the "mystery" is as easy to solve as a mystery in a child's book. Celaena frankly, isn't that good of an assassin if people can keep sneaking into her room at night, etc. Those are just the more egregious problems that kept nagging at me. But, despite the problems, I enjoyed this book. It's nothing great, in fact, I would say at best, it's mediocre. It's enjoyable, though. I had fun reading it, and at the end of the day, that's good enough.
Celaena Sardothien spent years in the Endovier death camps, where she would spend the rest of her life. Until, crown prince Dorian appoints her to enter a competition for the title of King’s Champion, who will tasked to do the King’s secret bidding. But when one by one, the competitors turn up dead, Celaena knows that something evil lurks in the castle.
This was a huge letdown for me. It mainly involves the writing and the major lead.
For someone who’s supposed to be a deadly assassin, ’s pretty weak. I get it. She's a girl who likes to be pretty and wear nice clothes and date popular boys (I actually love when female characters are both girly and badass at once). The problem is that she is so narcissistic and stubborn that you can't help but focus on the tooth-cringing parts of her personality. She never (or rarely) speaks …
Celaena Sardothien spent years in the Endovier death camps, where she would spend the rest of her life. Until, crown prince Dorian appoints her to enter a competition for the title of King’s Champion, who will tasked to do the King’s secret bidding. But when one by one, the competitors turn up dead, Celaena knows that something evil lurks in the castle.
This was a huge letdown for me. It mainly involves the writing and the major lead.
For someone who’s supposed to be a deadly assassin, ’s pretty weak. I get it. She's a girl who likes to be pretty and wear nice clothes and date popular boys (I actually love when female characters are both girly and badass at once). The problem is that she is so narcissistic and stubborn that you can't help but focus on the tooth-cringing parts of her personality. She never (or rarely) speaks without thinking first. Sometimes, she really lacks tact, not to mention good manners.
While none of the other characters got on my nerves quite as much as Miss Celaena , I felt like there could have been more work behind the scenes. This is because the entire story didn’t really engage me from start to finish for this reason.
You can tell someone didn’t really do their part of research. The setting and the way all characters behave could have been a bit more authentic. However, holy cow, the out of character moments are too much, even for a mediocre book.
In short, Celaena Sardothien is a Mary Sue. But even worse — she is an unlikable, vain, shallow, self-centered Mary Sue. And if you expect me to believe she’s a deadly killer, then you better think again.
Next, I will discuss how the competition itself was a let-down rather than a fight-to-the-death (or similar) scenario. We had a race, an archery competition, and wall climbing. And a lot of other things that happened off-screen.
Amidst all these competitions and training programs, the plot scattered into flirting banter, gatecrashing parties, and some girl-on-girl hating; as if the author wasn’t sure whether she wanted her novel to be the story of a ruthless assassin, or the romance of a ruthless assassin princess-wannabe.
So, no. The plot didn’t appeal to me. I didn’t like the characters. I don’t see myself continuing this series.
You can also find this review on my blog: Click Here
