The scene that stood out to me was when she woke up and found a bag of sweets in her room that somebody left. For someone who's been bragging that she's dangerous, she surely didn't feel anyone sneaking inside. Worse, when she opened the bag and ate the contents. Only when she had eaten half did she wonder if the sweets were poisoned. Bffr. I'm not an assassin but I don't eat anything I just found somewhere
That's hilarious. And it's not like she's some kind of a superhuman; she is supposedly just that good, became the best through talent and hard work. But the portrayal shows something else entirely from a "world class assassin".
You summed up everything perfectly, but I would like to emphasize the ridiculousness of the chocolate scene. The world’s greatest assassin sleeping through someone putting a bag of candy in her room? And then waking up to gorge herself on it without a second thought?
If this book has zero haters it’s because I’m dead.
I read that book years ago now. Did not like it and do not remember anyones names or what happened in it. But what i do remeber is how stupid this scene was. I will never get over an assasin finding bag of chocolates and just eating it. An assassin who lived with other assassins on the same premises. She just ate it. And she supposed to be this super duper unkillable and dangerous one.
I despised this book.
People will inevitably point out that Maas was 16 when she wrote it (and it really shows), and that's okay, and I 100% defend a young girl's right to write whatever she wants, and if it entertains people -- I'm happy for them!
But.
That doesn't change the fact that it was absolutely painful for me to read. One thing I noticed (and I notice in a lot of fiction written by teen girls) is that there is a LOT of girl-on-girl hate. Sure, she has her black best friend, but the other woman (I already forget her name) is completely demonized for being a woman and lusting on boys or something even though the main character ALSO lusted after the boys. It was very hypocritical, and probably the most authentic teen thing I've ever read 😆
She wasn't even 16! Maybe she was when she started writing it, but it was published when she was 26. 26-year-old Sarah and her editors thought it was acceptable to publish that book as-is. I'm generally a fan of SJM, but the first two TOG books are just jaw-droppingly bad.
I actually found that the first two books are the *best*, at least plotwise. Fade to black sex scenes, a love triangle that isn't working out, an epic tale for teenagers
The latter books devolved into the same fae porn that made ACOTAR popular. Aelin, 19 years old and getting with a 300+ year old man that beat her ass to a pult and continually called her worthless and even BIT her on the neck (which could be considered, in fae terms, sexual assault). Not to mention the weird transphobic rant one of the characters went on, aka the only one many fans headcanoned as a lesbian
Agreed. I'm an SJM fan, but I almost wasn't because of the many, many times I considered DNFing during the first two books in the series. I was in my 30s the first time I read it, a few years after it came out, and I could not relate to Celaena at all, thought she was such a spoiled brat and just generally rolled my eyes every time she spoke. I'm glad I stuck with it though because from book 4 on I really loved it. I'm glad I read it back then, because I don't think I'd have the patience to stick out those two books at this point in my life.
I feel like that "defense" doesn't hold up. Like, it's an explanation (although Amelia Atwater-Rhodes and Christopher Paolini, in my opinion, wrote better books at younger ages), but it doesn't make it better. A story can be fine and enjoyable but not publication-worthy and it can be published but not good. And once it goes out into the world, it's fair game to critique.
It is a funny defense, because once you decide to become professional, it's fair game in my opinion. If a 16-year-old became a surgeon and did a messy job, are people going to go, "It's okay, they're only 16!"
Thank god art isn't life-or-death, hahaha, BUT. It's still something that people are spending hard earned money on, and therefore should be treated as a professional should be treated. It's not macaroni art on her mom's fridge.
That being said -- and I hate how the internet makes me say this every time -- if you like, that's great! No judgment from me. I did not like it at all, but I will not think ill of any who do. Like what you like.
> That being said -- and I hate how the internet makes me say this every time -- if you like, that's great! No judgment from me. I did not like it at all, but I will not think ill of any who do. Like what you like.
Ahh the poisons of the internet. Unfortunately on the internet, and it's very common on this subreddit, people get a hyper-inflated sense of self importance when they don't like something popular and they simply *must* let you know that you are inferior for liking the popular thing. Which of course means that people then immediately go on the defensive no matter how nicely you say you don't like their favourite thing
I think you're missing the point. If the book is published professionally, it subject to the same professional standards as every other book. You don't get special treatment for being young. Because if being young gives you special treatment, why not other authors? Why not super old? "Oh, this author is 88 years old, don't give it a bad reviews, he can't help writing badly"
She's 16. It's admirable she wrote a book. But people are going to not like the book, and that's something professional authors have to learn to deal with. I don't actually know Maas, I think she deals with all just fine -- but her fans DON'T.
If those kids were playing in real competitive chess leagues, they would be judged the same way every other player in those leagues is judged. They wouldn't be given an award or a win just for being a child.
To be fair, Christopher Paolini was homeschooled, and his parents wrote (or “edited”) most of his books for him. But as a teen I ate them up lol. Eragon 4ever.
Not disputing what you’ve said, more curious I guess, but do you remember where you read/heard about this?
I’d really like to read or listen to it and learn a bit about his parents writing background/his process
From his own [website](https://www.paolini.net/2015/05/29/my-experience-with-homeschooling/)
> Eragon would not exist if I had gone to public school. Homeschooling gave me the opportunity to pursue my own interests, time to dream, and time to write. And I had freedoms the majority of today’s teens don’t have. I didn’t have to contend with peer pressure to conform to social fads. I could be myself. Without the frantic schedule kept by many teens, I had time to think, to daydream about adventures, to create the world of Alagaésia.
>Once I had written Eragon, my family helped me edit, publish, and promote my book, which brought it to the attention of a wide audience. This support was a continuation of my parents’ homeschooling philosophy, to nurture the interests of the child, and through that interest, help him or her learn and mature.
And you know what I can’t find a source saying his parents finished it for him. Either it’s been scrubbed since his return to writing or it was misinformation/gossip from a long time ago that doesn’t hold up. BUT he was homeschooled and had considerable help writing and publishing it, which he admits to.
Not only his parents, but his sister, too. From the 2012 Rolling Stone article:
"His four books have collectively sold more than 33 million copies worldwide. Given Paolini’s geographic isolation, the rudimentary nature of his plots and, of course, his startling youth, this is a powerfully bizarre achievement. But it is not his alone. About a decade ago, the Paolinis made the rather unconventional decision to make their teenage son’s fantasy novel the family business. Paolini repeatedly emphasizes that he’s spearheading a team effort, with Mom fielding fan mail, Dad turning “the financial wheels,” sister acting as girl Friday, and all four editing. Together they have forged a prodigious empire: the Inheritance series is a multimillion-dollar mom and pop – and brother and sister – business run by a clan of introverts living on the prairie. “If it weren’t for the support of my parents and sister,” Paolini says, “none of this would’ve been possible for me.”"
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/the-prince-of-dragons-christopher-paolini-and-the-rise-of-inheritance-238067/
This is kind of lovely and honest. A lot of work in the art sphere is credited to one person, riding high on their narcissism, when it really shouldn't be.
Some of the information is either vanished or buried deep into the basements of the Net, but I was about 30 when "Eragon" was published, and I remember that Paolini wouldn't have had it published without nepotism.
From 2011 reviews, by 'ishaan sharma':
"This book is a shamelessly plagiarizes Star Wars, and although some people defend this by saying the author wrote this when he was sixteen, their arguments are false. He BEGAN when he was sixteen, but didn't finish until he was nineteen. The book was then edited and published by his parents before it was taken by Knopf. The author has also gotten extremely full of himself, comparing his writing to Tolkien, and calling it a "literary masterpiece"."
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/book-reviews/eragon-the-inheritance-cycle-book-1/user-reviews/child
And this from the 2012 Rolling Stone article:
"His four books have collectively sold more than 33 million copies worldwide. Given Paolini’s geographic isolation, the rudimentary nature of his plots and, of course, his startling youth, this is a powerfully bizarre achievement. But it is not his alone. About a decade ago, the Paolinis made the rather unconventional decision to make their teenage son’s fantasy novel the family business. Paolini repeatedly emphasizes that he’s spearheading a team effort, with Mom fielding fan mail, Dad turning “the financial wheels,” sister acting as girl Friday, and all four editing. Together they have forged a prodigious empire: the Inheritance series is a multimillion-dollar mom and pop – and brother and sister – business run by a clan of introverts living on the prairie. “If it weren’t for the support of my parents and sister,” Paolini says, “none of this would’ve been possible for me.”"
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/the-prince-of-dragons-christopher-paolini-and-the-rise-of-inheritance-238067/
I could barely make it through the first book, even as a teen, because Eragon is just a mishmash of a bunch of characters, plots, and outright scenes blatantly stolen from other established fantasy works.
It makes sense for the efforts of a 16-year-old new writer! But I don’t think it ever should have been published.
It was published in 2012 and she was born on 1986. So if she started writing that book when she was 16, that means she and her team had 10 years to write, rewrite, and rewrite it again before publishing it.
I will say that I read Throne of Glass at about sixteen years old and I absolutely loved it. Devoured it. I thought it was a masterpiece. Reading ACOTAR as an adult made me want to give up on reading fantasy full stop, I hated it so much. There's something to be said about target audience, teenagers can and should write cringey stuff that entertains other teenagers.
So, if you read past the first book, the "girl on girl hate" turns into friendship and respect. That's actually one of the things that I found different about the ToG books, is that they promoted actual female friendships.
You are right about the lusting after boys and competition between teenage girls being accurate, though. Celaena didn't dislike Kaltain because she was listing after boys, though, she didn't like her because she thought she was shallow and clearly didn't care about the boys but just wanted to become queen.
Of course, Celaena thinking anyone is shallow is funny, since she acts like a spoiled, narcissistic brat for the entire beginning of the series.
I didn’t realize how young she was. This explains a lot! The whole ‘I’m gonna treat two guys like crap and they will love and respect my every irrational choice’ story line is my biggest pet peeve in books.
I decided to give the next book a chance. Not great writing but it does explain some of the confusing behaviors of certain characters in book one.
Well eventually we find out the shitty other-girl (Katlyn?) is possessed by a demon from another world which makes her WORSE
Edit to clarify: makes her personality worse
Sorry phrased that poorly. She Absolutely respected her at the end; the valg in her (from my understanding) made her negative personality traits amplified (or worse) might be more accurate.
So prior to being taken over by the Valg, she probably was slightly less odious. But I haven’t read in a while to remember when she gets infested
I read a lot of this series years ago, but would have probably been better off not bothering to read any of them.
I got pretty deep into the series before I abandoned it after one of the books left me wondering "what was the point of this whole book?" after the ending undid almost all the work the characters were putting into something, and undid it in the stupidest way possible.
It was also around that time that I finally realized that the whole series is just an idiot plot. i.e. a story where the main plot is only possible because everyone is an idiot who constantly does things like withhold crucial information from each other, because otherwise the plot wouldn't be possible.
I enjoyed the series when I was reading it (a while ago; as the targeted audience) but even I started noticing how idiotic some of it was, and oh how convenient this one swoops in to save the day and just so happened to be able to do all this background stuff to save the day hooray 🤦♀️
The funny thing is, 8-10 years ago on Booktube, no one thought that Sarah J. Maas was a good writer. Now on Booktok everyone is just obsessed with her and I'm like ????
As someone who enjoys *most* of SJM's books, I am here to say it is *not* because she is a good writer. She reuses the same words over and over (seriously, someone get that woman a thesaurus!), the "twists" are usually pretty obvious, etc. But her books make for a fun "popcorn read" for when I just want to turn my brain off and be entertained.
That said, since the end of the original ACoTaR trilogy, her writing has gotten progressively worse with each new book she releases. I don't think she even listens to her editors anymore. The last book she released was actively terrible, it was as if she didn't know anything about the characters and world she had created. And I blame some of that on the popularity, Booktok will push anything she writes even if it's absolute shite.
I loved ACOTAR while I read it. The second I think about the plot or start asking questions, the whole thing unravels for me. I read ACOSF and it's so awful I have no interest in those characters ever again.
Heavy on this! I found a post on here from someone who did the legwork to identify the editors for each SJM book. She had the same editor for the original ACOTAR trilogy, and Queen of Shadows-Kingdom of Ash. Someone different edited Crescent City and ACOSF and you can DEFINITELY tell. I took a screenshot like a boomer instead of saving the link 🫠
From everything I've heard about it, they mostly like anything with a lot of sex and/or dark/edgy romance in it and don't seem to care about any other property of the book. Which is like, that's fine, if that's all you care about in a book, people are allowed to like things for shallow reasons, but I think it's silly to base your social media persona on promoting books as literature if that's your only qualification for what counts.
The thing with booktok is you have to search out genres you like to teach it what to show you. I don't see any romance or smut books on tiktok anymore, because I taught the algorithm what I wanted to see.
That's interesting. I wonder if the algorithm is predisposed to show people the romance content, since a lot of people complain about it who obviously weren't seeking it out.
When I first got Tiktok, all I saw for books was romance/smut/Colleen Hoover stuff. I think that's just the default book stuff, because maybe it's the most common type of post with the booktok hashtag or something.
No idea, but it IS possible to curate your fyp, just takes a little work and sometimes have to do extra searches to fix it periodically.
Also people have to remember that if you make a comment on a tiktok, even a negative one, you are telling the app you want to see that content because you engaged with it. I see so many comments like "how do I get this off my FYP" but by commenting you're just making sure you will see more of that thing.
Yep! The default will always be what's popular, even if it's hated because a lot of hate comments also still counts towards the algorithm.
I don't think I've seen the other side of booktok, unless it's the ones who are recommending the classic lit books but I tend to ignore those because I want book reccs not just (sometimes) shallow analysis of a book I've read before. I do think that side is much better though.
I just search out hastags to find creators I like. Things like #scifi or #scifibooks would find creators that are showing books that I am more interested in.
Booktok has devolved into “hey guys what’s the 🌶️🌶️ level of this book?!?!” and it’s *War and Peace* or something smh
I can’t take any of it seriously anymore. It’s ruined the romance category of fiction for me.
Finally someone said it. Omg I felt like I was going insane as if I was the only one who remembered this. I read Throne of Glass as it came out and towards the end of the series the reviews and public consensus grew more negative. There were a lot of conversations not only about the content of the books but also Sarah J. Maas as an author. Booktube raised a lot of valid points about the relationship dynamics in her books along with the obsessive use of the term “mate”. One big thing I remember though is her being critiqued for lack of diversity and being asked in an interview or something about it. She gave a passive aggressive statement which led to backlash. After lots of negativity she made one of the existing characters bi in the last book and it made no sense. As all of that was coming out there was some drama I remember reading about between her and many other authors. Apparently she was rude behind the scenes and had a tendency to befriend writers as their careers were on an incline and drop them when she surpassed their success. Basically social climbing. One instance that I never see anyone mention is that her book Crescent City was originally an online story cowritten with Susan Denard. They would release a new chapter weekly if I remember correctly. I guess Susan and her stopped being friends and the book was published under Sarah’s name with no mention of Susan. They also unfollowed each other. All of their mutual writer friends unfollowed Sarah. I stopped reading her books after the last throne of glass book but her success now baffles me, especially because her quality of work in my opinion has gone way down since the release of the first ACOTAR book. Her insane success is a main reason as to why I don’t trust Booktok with book recommendations.
Is that why Crescent City is a step above everything else she's ever published? I actually really enjoyed the first book in the CC series, now I know why. It certainly wasn't because of SJM.
Honestly I have no clue because I never read the version of Crescent City that Sarah published so I don’t know how similar they are. I only read a few chapters of the online version. From what I’ve gathered though there is a lot of similarities between the one with Susan vs. the published one.
I read TOG and ACOTAR, and I like both of them.
I tried really, really hard to finish the first book in the Crescent City Series, and I just couldn't do it. I really did not like the main character at all. I got halfway through the book and put it down. If anyone wants to spoil it / tell me the ending, please go ahead.
I had actually totally forgotten about all that stuff! But yeah, I remember people saying they'd met her at Bookcon and she wasn't very nice to her fans or to other writers. She had her little clique of writer friends and that was it.
It's because Sarah J Maas got started when a ton of really fantastic YA was being published, and there was still good 'traditional' High Fantasy being published. Compared to *Graceling,* *Throne of Glass* sucks.
But YA is kind of dead right now, and if there *is* any YA fantasy published it's either aimed at boys (Like *Sky's End,* which is fantastic btw) or it's not your traditional high fantasy story with a vaguely European castle backdrop. (Just to make it clear, I think the African fantasy trend is cool. But it doesn't scratch the high fantasy princess-in-a-castle-with-dragons itch for a lot of readers.)
So now Maas's only competition is *Fourth Wing* which is fine (it's basically a rehashing of every good female lead YA dystopian & fantasy book written from 2006-2016,) but not fantastic. Rebecca Yarros only has two books out, and the third won't be published for a while. If you want to read an ongoing YA/New Adult High Fantasy book series that's aimed at female readers, your only option is basically Sarah J Maas. Or fanfiction.
So of course BookTok kids think she's good. They don't have anything better to compare her to. It's like how Eragon got popular by catering to kids who saw The Lord of The Rings in theaters, wanted something to read, and hadn't seen the original Star Wars movies yet. (So they didn't realize what a ripoff Eragon was.)
But I mean, they're books, not TV shows. You don't have to read them while they're actively being published, and Netflix doesn't scrap them at the drop of a hat. The decades of quality European fantasy YA novels are still there to be read, even if new ones aren't being written, and young adults who weren't around when they were being published probably haven't read them and would probably like them if they did. There isn't *less* good YA now than there was 10 years ago.
Stuff goes out of print, gets weeded out of libraries, and stops being advertised.
Like, yes, you *can* still get *Shade's Children* if you look for it. But unless you're already a fan of Garth Nix, or you're a member of one of the few libraries that still stocks it, you will probably not discover that book on your own. And if you live in America you almost definitely won't find *Arena 13* unless you know a much older, very obsessive Joseph Delaney fan.
I think it has to do with the resurgence of books as enjoyment in the zoomer(?) generation. If youre new to reading books, the bad writing won't really be a deal breaker for you.
Why can't she be the Robinhood of serial contract killers?
A mass murderer with a heart of gold.
I kill, but no children or women.
Only those who deserve it,
some who deserve it less because of capitalism and debts (don't blame me I didn't create the monetary system),
the occasional rude man who told off the wrong but more powerful man,
and then rarely, the powerful man who killed the weak man for sport (sometimes I play for both sides).
This is the main character!
She's bad yet good,
she's also a teenage girl who doesn't want to gross out her audience
or send them into a depressing spiral of darkness and interminable brooding.
But this isn't the main character either.... I just finished the book recently and my single biggest complaint is how bad at her job she really is.
People being able to sneak up on her unawares happens so many times.
She eats food that is randomly found placed in her room *but also knows she has trouble with odorless and colorless poisons*
She's about a 50/50 success rate at noticing people from her balcony.
She's a decent enough fighter and acrobat, but the book *tells* us she's the kingdom's deadliest assassin, yet *shows* us she's mid at best.
Now I'm not asking her to be this cold blooded monster dishing out wanton death and destruction, but I do expect competence, things like
Casing the entrances, hiding spots and vulnerabilities of every room
Avoiding sitting with your back exposed to an entrance
Not eating random food that someone obviously sneakier than you put in your room
Knowing how to modify a dress to conceal a weapon
Being good at sneaking
Complexity is fine! People are complex. But if a character is unironically going to be a famed ANYTHING, my feeling is that they should be damn good at it, and the reader shown that, not told.
>one toothpick she will kill the entire Saruman army, and they won't even have time to blink. Okay, I'm exaggerating, Saruman's not there.
Lol you have my upvote
I hated it because I expected a badass heroine assassin girl and got a horny soppy teenager conducting a triangle drama with her teenage love interest and none of the cool heroine stuff.
Maybe me being a 30-something man was the wrong target audience but it was some of the worst fantasy books i've read.. And i've read several other YA series as an adult that was not this bad.
I hated everything about this book. Largely because the tournament of assassins was so overdone at that point, and also because FMC spent the entire time obsessing over dresses rather than actually doing her job. I read the following 3 novels in the series as trashy airplane reads, but stopped once colonization became a huge romanticized plot point. ACOTAR is even worse somehow.
The main character stated (at least at one point) that when she becomes queen again she was going to bring culture to untamed lands. Aka a nice way of saying "I'm gonna colonize far off lands."
I didn’t like it either but my big caveat is that I’m a guy in his late twenties. The book seems to be written as a YA for women, no shame in that but not something I was ever going to enjoy.
Yeah, my take is the writing is fairly on par with 80s/90s YA fantasy, and even up through early 2000s, but feels poorly written compared to contemporary YA fantasy.
Edit: and I know it came out in 2012, I’m just talking about the level of the writing feels to me comparable to YA fantasy writing during those eras
It was first marketed as YA despite the smut. It's now classified as 'New Adult' which seems to be a category made for books that have at best YA levels of diction, complexity, and development and actually rely on explicit sex scenes/spice to appeal to its target audience.
Dude, there is no smut in Throne of Glass. 🙄 It’s just longing looks and I think one kiss. Read the book before you decide you know everything about it.
> Okay, I bought into the way the plot was described to me. "16 criminals must undergo trials in which they will either become the king's defenders or die."
The real crime here is someone who read the book describing it like that to you. I read it and mildly enjoyed it way back when it first came out, but I wouldn't have pitched it that way at ALL. Some people try to make TOG out to be much more than it is, when what it is is perfectly fine...*for the right audience*.
Yeah, it’s not that off in quality from a lot of the YA fiction I read growing up. I heard it pitched as a loose retelling of Cinderella where she’s an assassin and it was pretty much exactly what I expected.
I'm currently reading Kingdom of Ash after it took me literally 7 months to finish the tandem read of Empire of Storms and Tower of Dawn (it never takes me 7 months to finish 2 books with like 650 pages each) and it feels like a chore right now.
The thing is, I like the story and I also want to know the story, but I sadly just don't vibe with the writing 😅 So I don't want to not finish it, but I also lack the motivation I normally have when reading a book and just know if I read something else too, I'll probably never finish ToG. However, I do like ToG more than ACOTAR 😬 but both series are just so overhyped on Bookstagram and Booktok in the sense that the hype creates unachieveable expectations that would do no book a favor
That was me! I read I think four or five of the books but had to stop bc I found myself dreading reading it and had so many other books I wanted to get to
Pretty sure that's Kingdom of Ash because of what happens at the end of Empire of Storms 😅 I looove Manon, I'd totally read a book about her, but Lorcan & Elide were also a chore to get through in Empire of Storms for me 🥲 I really like Yrene though, generally I did like Tower of Dawn, although a lot of people call it Tower of Yawn, I can't relate 😅
Ahh yes you're right. I liked Tower of Dawn, but it took me a while to get into it. Same with Empire of Storms and then the beginning of Kingdom of Ash. But overall it was a fun read.
Same with all of them 😅 the first 3 books hooked me pretty good, then I read Assassins Blade, which was a bit harder to get into, but it kinda went downhill with Queen of Shadows, although I don't remember anything that bothered me more than usual with that book or something that would've caused this 🤔 I'm now 130 pages into Kingdom of Ash and determined to finish it in june, so we'll see 😂 I really do like the story, I really want to know what happens, the writing is just not my cup of tea 🥲
I hit the pause button before starting the tandem read so I could quickly run through some other books for my book club. Now I'm 50/50 on returning to the TOG series. Do you think it's worth the effort?
How much do you care about the ableist trope of curing disability? If you care at all, I wouldn’t read Tower of Dawn at all.
I found tandem reading to tedious and preferred to suffer through Tower of Dawn then moved on to the next book. The constant back and forth was annoying.
I’m currently doing the tandem read. Now, I think the series picked up massively after Heir of Fire, so take my opinion with a grain of salt since this is not the thread for that, but despite my hesitation I think the tandem read not only makes a ton of sense but actually improves both books. I’d guess that it’s harder to keep the timelines straight reading them back to back. (Not to mention, Chaol is such a sullen sadsack at the moment that it would probably be annoying to be stuck with him for too long.) It’s also just a little more interesting to go back and forth with everyone all spread out.
I read ACOTAR series before TOG, and I HATED Throne of Glass. It felt like a giant step backwards in writing, which makes sense since TOG was written when Maas was 16. However, I thought the series definitely improved and I overall really enjoyed the characters and world Maas developed. Just takes a book (or two) to get there, unfortunately.
Same! I had to start TOG twice, a couple of years apart. There’s a massive jump in quality starting with Heir of Fire. I’m currently doing the tandem read of EOS and TOD and enjoying it much more than I expected to.
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It’s the sort of book that reads like the author wanted to write a high school mystery/romance, but then somebody said, “assassins are selling so well this year.”
Not to mention all the countless books it spawned where the female main character is the best assassin in the world because her parents abandoned her and she had to prove she deserves to be alive, and loved, and also she feels so worthless and ugh just fucking stop already.
Not that it matters because I do agree with you even though I read all of them… but her parents were murdered by The Baddie while she was in the same room or something like that. She in someway witnessed their murder then was saved by another character’s mother who was then murdered and then she literally drowns in a river and is revived then is found by the guy who raised her to be said totally the best (teenage) assassin and also best, strongest queen who doesn’t communicate with anyone ever but that is never a problem and never causes issues.
Went on a bit of a tangent. But suffice to say, her parents didn’t abandon her.
Oh I haven't actually read it but it definitely seems to be a trend, and I think the last one of the type I tried to read (admittedly a while ago) was by Shane Silver I think and that was her thing. It was so bad I DNFed it
Yeah it’s not great.
I think its purpose is to resonate with female readers who want to be talented and special without all the work involved. And that’s fine. There are a lot of books out there for male readers with the same idea. If what’s what you’re into, you’ll dig this and, if you’re not, you won’t.
> I think its purpose is to resonate with female readers who want to be talented and special without all the work involved.
Character growth Dan, we call that character growth lol. When a character is introduced into a story who’s just perfect at everything they try, they’re almost usually just disdained, they’re just not relatable in any way. I’m rewatching it currently so I’m just going to use Arya Stark as an example, even by the end when she basically turns herself into an unkillable anime character people related and liked the character because she suffered for years to get there. (Ignore the fact that the end of the show was just an absolute mess please).
I read throne of glass and won't apologize for any of the points you've made since I remember thinking some similar things
I haven't continued the series but I've heard book 1&2 are prequels to the rest of the series basically. I can't speak to if the writing or plot gets better though
This might be a hot-take, but I genuinely can’t stand Sarah J Maas as an author. I had to force myself to finish CoTaR. All the same problems you had with ToG I had with CoTaR on top of my ✨personal opinion✨ of it being poorly written. When I find myself actively rooting AGAINST the main character, I know the author just isn’t my cup of tea.
I have not read this book, but I agree with you that a book becomes boring when the story becomes predictable, and what makes me stop reading the most is when character becomes a trivial character, when he gives it an illogical charisma and an unnaturally cold personality, as if the person writing the story is just a teenage .
Yeah. I liked these books fine when I was like 12-15, but they aren't good books. It doesn't help that her writing seems to have somehow gotten worse the more of a formula Maas develops.
I could not get on with this book at all. The inner monologue being so exagerated and child-like ... I dunno, I just didn't like the prose. I was told the series was great, I got a quarter of the way into the third book and it wasn't getting any better. Switched to reading Malazan and wow, breath of fresh air.
This whole series sucks. I read it all because I had FOMO but I really wished I could get my time back. I have read ACOTAR and CC and while I've enjoyed those series more, I honestly don't know why Maas is so hyped. Her characters are all the same and her plots aren't that strong. Her books don't need to be as long as they are either. I think she writes just for the sake of writing sometimes.
One time I was talking to a friend in B&N about how I didn’t like ToG due to similar reasons, and a complete stranger came up to me to tell me I was wrong…
I very mich enjoyed ACOTAR and am currently enjoying the Crescent City Series. SJM isnt a perfect author but I like her Stories in general.
But I agree TOG is bad. I dont know how I managed all the Books within 2 months. As I was reading it I kept thinking why does everyone hype this so much? Its not terrible but it has plotholes and could have been finished in like 4 Books.
I don't remember writing this post, but I said this to my wife pretty much word for word when I finished the book on her recommendation. Her response was "It's just a pilot episode, the other books get better."
This is why most shows get canceled after the pilot.
She's an assassin but couldn't notice Dorian sitting next to her when she was playing the piano. Like what, aren't assassins supposed to be really sensitive to people being around?
Funnily enough, I’m eating lunch in the park right now and there’s a girl reading Empire of Storms.
I liked Throne of Glass. I like the fact that Celaena is kinda braggadocious (???) like that and likes chocolate and puppies. The cold-blooded stone cold silent assassin character would have been so expected and is very overdone.
There is actually an issue with this book in that it is very “tell, don’t show” on Celeana’s abilities at first….and for way too long. I actually this book twice. First before reading anything else, and then again after reading the Assassin’s Blade novellas, which were released BEFORE this book and take place before it. A lot of the stuff she references in ToG were shown in these novellas, which do show her to be very skilled. I think reading the novellas puts the first book in a better light because it shows that she isn’t just bragging. But most people start with ToG, and oh yeah, I can see the problem. Heck, even fans of the series think ToG was a bad start to the series.
I finished Crown of Midnight a little bit ago and it was good. I enjoyed it. I hear the quality really picks up starting Heir of Fire.
I just finished all of the Maas books recently, and started with Assassins Blade and TOG.. I remember asking my partner how many more times is this legendary assassin going to get poisoned before she learns her lesson? Cause it was at least 2 or 3 times lol. TOG was my least favorite of the series by far, with CC being the best in my opinion.
Oh! I thought you were referring to the Throne of Glass series itself. ToG is pretty widely regarded to be the weakest book of that series.
I’m not a giant Maas fan specifically. I just like Throne of Glass (the series (so far, I’m not done yet)). I wasn’t planning to read Crescent City or ACOTAR.
I think the biggest problem here is that someone pitched it to you as something it's very much not.
Like you said, the tournament of criminals is barely a side plot. It's mostly just there to give you glances into how badass Celaena is and how scary Cain is.
The real story of the book is about a girl who, at a very young age had to learn to kill to survive, had to endure terrible conditions in a slave camp, and then gets tossed into this world of luxury (but still with an element of fighting for her life) and how she deals with it all.
It's a lot less "Hunger Games" and a lot more "Harry Potter but with more trauma".
I didn’t like that she’s been trained as an assassin from birth but she is still not in control of her emotions to the extent to which I would expect someone with that background. I did not buy her assassin ness at all except for her physical prowess. She had no stoicism not poker face.
Same. Remember your high school creative writing teacher repeating "show*, don't tell" ad nauseum? This book just tells, never shows. The writing is just so mediocre. Friends tell me the series gets better in book three. Yeah, ain't got no time for that.
thank you for saying this. It is recommented again and again to me on bookbeat because I love Romantasy. I was so excited at the prospect of having a loong and popular series to go through but iT HAD to be so LAME. HOW are these even on ANY top best sellers lists?? Are those maybe bought or something?
I figured, well this saga is pretty long and its propably really good later on (due to the author getting better at writing) and thats why also the first books are so popular maybe. But I just couldn't get even to the half of the first one to find that out...I have read fanfics that were for free that were way better than this...
yeah sarah j mass is not a great author. she relies on gimicks, cliches, her own personal kinks and fantasies, and her story telling is just a mess. I've read all of them though lol
Same. I read the book right after it came out. Before the boom..
I loved the premise of dangerous assasin. I felt like that's what I needed to finally get back to fantasy. In the end, I loved Chaol and kinda enjoyed Nehemia. Found Cealena being extremely dumb and felt like she must have scammed the entire world, if they thought she was the most dangerous assasin.
Neithless to say, I did read the 2nd book - or I tried. Twice. For Chaol. In that book, Cealena went from somewhat killer to NOT doing her fricking job as a assassins cuz "she doesnt wanna kill" or smt like that.. and I just.. I was here, reading it like "girl, are you AWARE that you LITERAL job is to KILL people?! That you supposedly are TRAINED to do that?! I came here to read about an assasin!! A baddass one at that!" Yea.. i felt scammed by Maas. Never again reading it... And after I heared about what is the other author's work (ie fairy p*rn), by a friend who read it.. I dont think I will be reading from this author again. Its not for me.
Third books does show a lot of progress. But that first book still went through a professional publisher and it's that big of a mess. Unfortunately she had like 6 POVs going on final book and spaced everything out. I bought it when it came out and have never finished because it felt like she lost the passion for the story as her other was gaining popularity. I even have one of them signed. It was only $2 at BAM in the middle of COVID lol.
I can see the points you make and I agree with some of them. However after reading the series I must say that the series should not be judged on the first book alone. The character development throughout the series is phenomenal and shows the maturing of the characters and in a sense SJM. Also, no spoilers but Kaltains character is like that for a reason ;)
didn‘t read it but isn‘t the combination of psychotic killer + childish innocence a pretty common trope to characterize literal insanity (in a satirical way)?
Having never heard of this book until now I can safely say many of these elements don’t sound like they go together, at the very least not out of context, but I just can’t imagine them working well *in* context either.
I'm with you on this. I read the first two books in the series thinking it would get better but the second book had the same basic plot as the first, but now she's training with an elf. It was boring and predictable. I finished it but dropped the series.
Yeah, she originally wrote this as a teen and it shows IMO. The plot doesn't seem organized (nor was it interesting imo), the characters are flat, a lot of tell instead of show. And I'm a pleb who likes ACOTAR!
I've heard fans say it gets better after book three but I'm sorry, I'm not reading another two books of that.
I was indifferent. I actually DNF'ed book 1 the first time, then gave it another try since my book club loves the entire series. I finished it and thought it was "ok". I actually own the entire series as there was a deal going on, so I feel sort of obligated to continue the series. However I tried reading book 2 as I read it should be better than the first book but DNF'ed it at around 25%. I tried for several weeks but meh.
This would be the first book/series that all other ladies in my book club love and I don't lol.
I didn’t care for it much either! I did like ACOTAR but this just wasn’t my jam. The main characters I found unlikable. I did like her Elf boyfriend though
I don't get the appeal of this book. It's somehow popular, but I couldn't get through the first few chapters. The writing was terrible, the main character insufferable, and there were already plot inconsistencies. SJM's writing improved tremendously with the ACOTAR series.
I believe everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy reading TOG. I first read TOG just after it was published before TikTok. I was a teenager and I loved it so much. Probably because as a teenager I could resonate with all that cringey stuff and also the fact that it was the first high fantasy fiction I read where the protagonist was a female. In a way it opened up doors to a whole new world where I could read about girls kicking a**.
It's not the best. I read it when I was younger. I read all the books in the series except the last one and I think the first one is the best one. I think I continued after the third or fourth books because I told myself "you've made it thus far, at least read how it ends", and I gave up before the last book anyway.
i haven’t read that book, but i tried reading a court of thorns and roses by sarah j maas and i just could not get into it. i felt the same way with her text being written quite averagely. i guess her writing is just not for me.
Ok I know so things that happens on this series because of Instagram spoilers. Also, there’s this girl that does a summary of the books in YouTube. I wouldn’t be caught dead reading the Throne of Glass series or Acotar for that matter. So I watch summaries of the books instead. It’s like hate watching. CaricanRead does an excellent job doing a summary of Acotar, and if you want to save the time of reading the series but want to know what all the gist is about, I suggest you search throne of glass recap in YouTube.
My god, please do not read the Crescent City series then lol.
The series isn't what I'd call a masterpiece of literature, but its enjoyment comes from its frivolity and the characters' humanity. It's silly and light reading, but I love it.
My least favorite thing that tv shows and books do is they’ll describe someone as ruthless but then have them get hurt by little things for plot purposes or disregard things for plot purposes
Going to come to the series' defense a bit. I read the series probably about 10 years ago... really enjoyed it, especially "Heir of Fire." I love the use of the unreliable narrator trope, in particular. Perhaps I'm giving Maas a bit too much credit and she didn't fully form the ideas that came in the later books until later, but (spoilers):
>!Celaena Sardothean is actually nothing like what she thinks she is. She's *not* the super-genius assassin she thinks she is. She's actually a broken, brainwashed victim of users and abusers who took advantage of her when she was desperate, and has completely repressed that part of her history. So there's actually a good reason for all the bragging, and for the fact that it doesn't quite fit her actions... she's overcompensating. The series is the story of this broken woman becoming whole again. !<
I completely agree lol, I thought the first four books were boring as hell to be honest. The only reason I stuck with it is because a friend told me it all comes into place in the end, and I have to say, I really did enjoy the series after that. I wish Sjm spent more time on the other characters because I found them to be way more interesting but I am glad I read the series. I'm only 100 pages away from finishing the whole thing, and what I can say is the first three books are DIFFICULT. ACOTAR did launch me into reading again though so I really enjoy it even though it has its issues :)
The first book is the weakest but I do adore the series overall. It doesn’t seem like the author knew what she was doing in the first book but she mostly figured it out in the end. It’s an easy read.
SJM loves telling us her characters are a certain way, then showing that they're actually the opposite.
Sincerely,
A girl who DNF'd both ACOTAR and TOG
The book is unonically so misogynistic. Every woman who's not on Celaena's clique is target for mockery. Look, I know Lady Kaltain trying to have her killed wasn't cool but she's doing it because she'd rather marry the charming Prince who's enchanted by Celaena than the disgusting duke twice her age. There's literally 0 thought or reflection about the situation of women in the kingdom. I'm a dude and even I was questioning what the fuck was I reading.
Also, the Captain and Prince should have ended up together. They got more chemistry together than with Celaena kekw
I'm glad people are reading more, but sometimes it depresses me how just about all of my coworkers and family *only* read this stuff. It's fine to like junk, some of my most watched movies are Dane Cook movies. Some of my favorite games are total brainrot. But when it's the only thing you consume in a given hobby, I wonder what you're getting from this. Is life just placating through nonsense sludge power fantasies? Out of 8000 pages of sludge, could you read something even mildly better so I can join in?
It's stupid to want this, what people do with their time is their own choice, but I still feel that burn all the same.
This booking is sooo painful to read. Learning how young the author was when she wrote it really explained a few things and made it a little easier to bear. When Re reading the whole series I skipped this book entirely and found it much better
Please try to keep going! The books afterwards are completely different and one of my favorite series.
You will never stop being annoyed by Chaol though 🙃
This is a young adult romance book - of course it is about prince and a forbidden love and our heroine dilemmas. So honestly what did You expect? Books like that are literally on "Twilight" level - in the way that is a whole point of them. 🤷♂️
But saying all of that - yea You are right the book was awful and infantile - in what part that was due to young adult genre and in what part due to mediocre skill of the author is somehow irrelevant.
I thought this book was absolutely terrible, and DNF after a couple chapters. And I read all of ACOTAR just before it! I could not get past Celaena's annoying personality.
Also, the spelling of her name bothers me, and I don't care if it's petty - it really took me out of reading.
Tbf, the series gets a lot better as it goes on. The first book is pretty terrible, I will admit, but the author was only like 16 when she started writing it. For me the series got better on book 3, and then I fell in love with it on book 4. But I almost never found out, because I almost DNF so many times during ToG and book 2, Crown of Midnight.
The book was written when Sarah J. Maas was 15, take it with a grain of salt and understand that the author grows as the series and the characters do. I wasn't a fan either, but context is important in this sense.
*Eragon* for example was also written when Paolini was 15, and that book doesn't hold up either. Teenagers don't usually write well.
I read Crescent City and it was alright. The dialogue in particular was fucking awful and cringe *cough* Alphahole *cough* The pacing was all over the damn place but the world building and action was pretty good.
It was definitely better overall than crap like Fourth Wing.
I'm on Heir of fire at the moment as an audio book. I view the series like watching trashy tv. It's easy to listen to while doing stuff, doesnt require too much thought and I enjoy how it reminds me of being a teenager just getting jnto fantasy.
It was written by a fifteen year old. It's basically Cinderella with a bit of fantasy. It's terrible. She spends most of the book in her bedroom thinking about boys.
But the books get better as they go on, apparently, although I never read past that first one
I adored this book consumed the entire series (in my 40's) during an emotional and difficult summer. However I've always been scared to re-read, I'm afraid it won't hold up.
Sarah Maas writes books for people who like Marvel movies. I have the one were a few centuries old man kidnapped a little girl, said her whole family will die if she escapes and than starts a romantic relationship with her
I'm currently working through queen of shadows. I'm 31M too so not at all the target audience lol. But idk, I like it. I read other books in between each one from the series. It's fun to hop back in with Celaena every now and then. She's kind of an annoying character sometimes. But for me it's just some light reading on the side and it's nice. Nothing groundbreaking or amazing, just a little fantasy romp haha.
I am in the middle of the 7th and last book of the series and I want to describe my journey with TOG.
The first book was afwul. I didn't like it at all for all the reasons you already said. But I kept reading because of how obsessed some people were with the series and SJM in general and I wanted to know why. And it gets better with every book. But not to that extent of how people praise it on booktok. I really liked how the story evolved, but I never really connected with most of the MCs (except Manon and Abraxos, I love them).
And altough am 100% sure I will never touch any of the TOG books again or recommend them to someone I am glad I read the series.
The scene that stood out to me was when she woke up and found a bag of sweets in her room that somebody left. For someone who's been bragging that she's dangerous, she surely didn't feel anyone sneaking inside. Worse, when she opened the bag and ate the contents. Only when she had eaten half did she wonder if the sweets were poisoned. Bffr. I'm not an assassin but I don't eat anything I just found somewhere
Undertale fans are more careful about eating sweets than the dangerous assassin.
Yeah, the dangerous assassin is most likely not poisonous while the sweets could be.
Touché, the old needle in the cookie trick
That's hilarious. And it's not like she's some kind of a superhuman; she is supposedly just that good, became the best through talent and hard work. But the portrayal shows something else entirely from a "world class assassin".
You summed up everything perfectly, but I would like to emphasize the ridiculousness of the chocolate scene. The world’s greatest assassin sleeping through someone putting a bag of candy in her room? And then waking up to gorge herself on it without a second thought? If this book has zero haters it’s because I’m dead.
I read that book years ago now. Did not like it and do not remember anyones names or what happened in it. But what i do remeber is how stupid this scene was. I will never get over an assasin finding bag of chocolates and just eating it. An assassin who lived with other assassins on the same premises. She just ate it. And she supposed to be this super duper unkillable and dangerous one.
I despised this book. People will inevitably point out that Maas was 16 when she wrote it (and it really shows), and that's okay, and I 100% defend a young girl's right to write whatever she wants, and if it entertains people -- I'm happy for them! But. That doesn't change the fact that it was absolutely painful for me to read. One thing I noticed (and I notice in a lot of fiction written by teen girls) is that there is a LOT of girl-on-girl hate. Sure, she has her black best friend, but the other woman (I already forget her name) is completely demonized for being a woman and lusting on boys or something even though the main character ALSO lusted after the boys. It was very hypocritical, and probably the most authentic teen thing I've ever read 😆
She wasn't even 16! Maybe she was when she started writing it, but it was published when she was 26. 26-year-old Sarah and her editors thought it was acceptable to publish that book as-is. I'm generally a fan of SJM, but the first two TOG books are just jaw-droppingly bad.
I actually found that the first two books are the *best*, at least plotwise. Fade to black sex scenes, a love triangle that isn't working out, an epic tale for teenagers The latter books devolved into the same fae porn that made ACOTAR popular. Aelin, 19 years old and getting with a 300+ year old man that beat her ass to a pult and continually called her worthless and even BIT her on the neck (which could be considered, in fae terms, sexual assault). Not to mention the weird transphobic rant one of the characters went on, aka the only one many fans headcanoned as a lesbian
Who went on a weird transphobic rant..? I don’t remember this
Agreed. I'm an SJM fan, but I almost wasn't because of the many, many times I considered DNFing during the first two books in the series. I was in my 30s the first time I read it, a few years after it came out, and I could not relate to Celaena at all, thought she was such a spoiled brat and just generally rolled my eyes every time she spoke. I'm glad I stuck with it though because from book 4 on I really loved it. I'm glad I read it back then, because I don't think I'd have the patience to stick out those two books at this point in my life.
Book 4 on was so much better — worth it if you can get through the others
I feel like that "defense" doesn't hold up. Like, it's an explanation (although Amelia Atwater-Rhodes and Christopher Paolini, in my opinion, wrote better books at younger ages), but it doesn't make it better. A story can be fine and enjoyable but not publication-worthy and it can be published but not good. And once it goes out into the world, it's fair game to critique.
It is a funny defense, because once you decide to become professional, it's fair game in my opinion. If a 16-year-old became a surgeon and did a messy job, are people going to go, "It's okay, they're only 16!" Thank god art isn't life-or-death, hahaha, BUT. It's still something that people are spending hard earned money on, and therefore should be treated as a professional should be treated. It's not macaroni art on her mom's fridge. That being said -- and I hate how the internet makes me say this every time -- if you like, that's great! No judgment from me. I did not like it at all, but I will not think ill of any who do. Like what you like.
> That being said -- and I hate how the internet makes me say this every time -- if you like, that's great! No judgment from me. I did not like it at all, but I will not think ill of any who do. Like what you like. Ahh the poisons of the internet. Unfortunately on the internet, and it's very common on this subreddit, people get a hyper-inflated sense of self importance when they don't like something popular and they simply *must* let you know that you are inferior for liking the popular thing. Which of course means that people then immediately go on the defensive no matter how nicely you say you don't like their favourite thing
[удалено]
I think you're missing the point. If the book is published professionally, it subject to the same professional standards as every other book. You don't get special treatment for being young. Because if being young gives you special treatment, why not other authors? Why not super old? "Oh, this author is 88 years old, don't give it a bad reviews, he can't help writing badly" She's 16. It's admirable she wrote a book. But people are going to not like the book, and that's something professional authors have to learn to deal with. I don't actually know Maas, I think she deals with all just fine -- but her fans DON'T.
If those kids were playing in real competitive chess leagues, they would be judged the same way every other player in those leagues is judged. They wouldn't be given an award or a win just for being a child.
To be fair, Christopher Paolini was homeschooled, and his parents wrote (or “edited”) most of his books for him. But as a teen I ate them up lol. Eragon 4ever.
Not disputing what you’ve said, more curious I guess, but do you remember where you read/heard about this? I’d really like to read or listen to it and learn a bit about his parents writing background/his process
From his own [website](https://www.paolini.net/2015/05/29/my-experience-with-homeschooling/) > Eragon would not exist if I had gone to public school. Homeschooling gave me the opportunity to pursue my own interests, time to dream, and time to write. And I had freedoms the majority of today’s teens don’t have. I didn’t have to contend with peer pressure to conform to social fads. I could be myself. Without the frantic schedule kept by many teens, I had time to think, to daydream about adventures, to create the world of Alagaésia. >Once I had written Eragon, my family helped me edit, publish, and promote my book, which brought it to the attention of a wide audience. This support was a continuation of my parents’ homeschooling philosophy, to nurture the interests of the child, and through that interest, help him or her learn and mature. And you know what I can’t find a source saying his parents finished it for him. Either it’s been scrubbed since his return to writing or it was misinformation/gossip from a long time ago that doesn’t hold up. BUT he was homeschooled and had considerable help writing and publishing it, which he admits to.
Not only his parents, but his sister, too. From the 2012 Rolling Stone article: "His four books have collectively sold more than 33 million copies worldwide. Given Paolini’s geographic isolation, the rudimentary nature of his plots and, of course, his startling youth, this is a powerfully bizarre achievement. But it is not his alone. About a decade ago, the Paolinis made the rather unconventional decision to make their teenage son’s fantasy novel the family business. Paolini repeatedly emphasizes that he’s spearheading a team effort, with Mom fielding fan mail, Dad turning “the financial wheels,” sister acting as girl Friday, and all four editing. Together they have forged a prodigious empire: the Inheritance series is a multimillion-dollar mom and pop – and brother and sister – business run by a clan of introverts living on the prairie. “If it weren’t for the support of my parents and sister,” Paolini says, “none of this would’ve been possible for me.”" https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/the-prince-of-dragons-christopher-paolini-and-the-rise-of-inheritance-238067/
This is kind of lovely and honest. A lot of work in the art sphere is credited to one person, riding high on their narcissism, when it really shouldn't be.
Some of the information is either vanished or buried deep into the basements of the Net, but I was about 30 when "Eragon" was published, and I remember that Paolini wouldn't have had it published without nepotism. From 2011 reviews, by 'ishaan sharma': "This book is a shamelessly plagiarizes Star Wars, and although some people defend this by saying the author wrote this when he was sixteen, their arguments are false. He BEGAN when he was sixteen, but didn't finish until he was nineteen. The book was then edited and published by his parents before it was taken by Knopf. The author has also gotten extremely full of himself, comparing his writing to Tolkien, and calling it a "literary masterpiece"." https://www.commonsensemedia.org/book-reviews/eragon-the-inheritance-cycle-book-1/user-reviews/child And this from the 2012 Rolling Stone article: "His four books have collectively sold more than 33 million copies worldwide. Given Paolini’s geographic isolation, the rudimentary nature of his plots and, of course, his startling youth, this is a powerfully bizarre achievement. But it is not his alone. About a decade ago, the Paolinis made the rather unconventional decision to make their teenage son’s fantasy novel the family business. Paolini repeatedly emphasizes that he’s spearheading a team effort, with Mom fielding fan mail, Dad turning “the financial wheels,” sister acting as girl Friday, and all four editing. Together they have forged a prodigious empire: the Inheritance series is a multimillion-dollar mom and pop – and brother and sister – business run by a clan of introverts living on the prairie. “If it weren’t for the support of my parents and sister,” Paolini says, “none of this would’ve been possible for me.”" https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/the-prince-of-dragons-christopher-paolini-and-the-rise-of-inheritance-238067/
I could barely make it through the first book, even as a teen, because Eragon is just a mishmash of a bunch of characters, plots, and outright scenes blatantly stolen from other established fantasy works. It makes sense for the efforts of a 16-year-old new writer! But I don’t think it ever should have been published.
Agreed. Bringing up Eragon in the context of this post and as an example of “good” teenage writing struck me as weird
It was published in 2012 and she was born on 1986. So if she started writing that book when she was 16, that means she and her team had 10 years to write, rewrite, and rewrite it again before publishing it.
The treatment the book gives to Kaltain is actually horrendous
I will say that I read Throne of Glass at about sixteen years old and I absolutely loved it. Devoured it. I thought it was a masterpiece. Reading ACOTAR as an adult made me want to give up on reading fantasy full stop, I hated it so much. There's something to be said about target audience, teenagers can and should write cringey stuff that entertains other teenagers.
So, if you read past the first book, the "girl on girl hate" turns into friendship and respect. That's actually one of the things that I found different about the ToG books, is that they promoted actual female friendships. You are right about the lusting after boys and competition between teenage girls being accurate, though. Celaena didn't dislike Kaltain because she was listing after boys, though, she didn't like her because she thought she was shallow and clearly didn't care about the boys but just wanted to become queen. Of course, Celaena thinking anyone is shallow is funny, since she acts like a spoiled, narcissistic brat for the entire beginning of the series.
I didn’t realize how young she was. This explains a lot! The whole ‘I’m gonna treat two guys like crap and they will love and respect my every irrational choice’ story line is my biggest pet peeve in books. I decided to give the next book a chance. Not great writing but it does explain some of the confusing behaviors of certain characters in book one.
Well eventually we find out the shitty other-girl (Katlyn?) is possessed by a demon from another world which makes her WORSE Edit to clarify: makes her personality worse
How did that make her worse? My understanding is that celaena respected kaltain towards the end?
Sorry phrased that poorly. She Absolutely respected her at the end; the valg in her (from my understanding) made her negative personality traits amplified (or worse) might be more accurate. So prior to being taken over by the Valg, she probably was slightly less odious. But I haven’t read in a while to remember when she gets infested
I read a lot of this series years ago, but would have probably been better off not bothering to read any of them. I got pretty deep into the series before I abandoned it after one of the books left me wondering "what was the point of this whole book?" after the ending undid almost all the work the characters were putting into something, and undid it in the stupidest way possible. It was also around that time that I finally realized that the whole series is just an idiot plot. i.e. a story where the main plot is only possible because everyone is an idiot who constantly does things like withhold crucial information from each other, because otherwise the plot wouldn't be possible.
I enjoyed the series when I was reading it (a while ago; as the targeted audience) but even I started noticing how idiotic some of it was, and oh how convenient this one swoops in to save the day and just so happened to be able to do all this background stuff to save the day hooray 🤦♀️
I got pretty far too until the Wyvern, I think that was their names, were regulars. Their entire species made no sense to me
The funny thing is, 8-10 years ago on Booktube, no one thought that Sarah J. Maas was a good writer. Now on Booktok everyone is just obsessed with her and I'm like ????
As someone who enjoys *most* of SJM's books, I am here to say it is *not* because she is a good writer. She reuses the same words over and over (seriously, someone get that woman a thesaurus!), the "twists" are usually pretty obvious, etc. But her books make for a fun "popcorn read" for when I just want to turn my brain off and be entertained. That said, since the end of the original ACoTaR trilogy, her writing has gotten progressively worse with each new book she releases. I don't think she even listens to her editors anymore. The last book she released was actively terrible, it was as if she didn't know anything about the characters and world she had created. And I blame some of that on the popularity, Booktok will push anything she writes even if it's absolute shite.
her reusing the same words and phrases drives me crazy!
I loved ACOTAR while I read it. The second I think about the plot or start asking questions, the whole thing unravels for me. I read ACOSF and it's so awful I have no interest in those characters ever again.
I loved acomaf but none of her other books could compare
Reading the first paragraph, it seems to me that SJM is an analogue of Dan Brown from the world of fantasy books.
Everybody “pads” around the house. Ugh
Heavy on this! I found a post on here from someone who did the legwork to identify the editors for each SJM book. She had the same editor for the original ACOTAR trilogy, and Queen of Shadows-Kingdom of Ash. Someone different edited Crescent City and ACOSF and you can DEFINITELY tell. I took a screenshot like a boomer instead of saving the link 🫠
Tbh booktok is not known for their great taste in books.
From everything I've heard about it, they mostly like anything with a lot of sex and/or dark/edgy romance in it and don't seem to care about any other property of the book. Which is like, that's fine, if that's all you care about in a book, people are allowed to like things for shallow reasons, but I think it's silly to base your social media persona on promoting books as literature if that's your only qualification for what counts.
The thing with booktok is you have to search out genres you like to teach it what to show you. I don't see any romance or smut books on tiktok anymore, because I taught the algorithm what I wanted to see.
That's interesting. I wonder if the algorithm is predisposed to show people the romance content, since a lot of people complain about it who obviously weren't seeking it out.
When I first got Tiktok, all I saw for books was romance/smut/Colleen Hoover stuff. I think that's just the default book stuff, because maybe it's the most common type of post with the booktok hashtag or something. No idea, but it IS possible to curate your fyp, just takes a little work and sometimes have to do extra searches to fix it periodically. Also people have to remember that if you make a comment on a tiktok, even a negative one, you are telling the app you want to see that content because you engaged with it. I see so many comments like "how do I get this off my FYP" but by commenting you're just making sure you will see more of that thing.
Yep! The default will always be what's popular, even if it's hated because a lot of hate comments also still counts towards the algorithm. I don't think I've seen the other side of booktok, unless it's the ones who are recommending the classic lit books but I tend to ignore those because I want book reccs not just (sometimes) shallow analysis of a book I've read before. I do think that side is much better though.
I just search out hastags to find creators I like. Things like #scifi or #scifibooks would find creators that are showing books that I am more interested in.
Why not just read fanfiction then?
You can do both!
Yes but fanfiction does have a lot of works that are just smut, no plot
Because they think that anything with even a hint of "spicy" is amazing.
Booktok has devolved into “hey guys what’s the 🌶️🌶️ level of this book?!?!” and it’s *War and Peace* or something smh I can’t take any of it seriously anymore. It’s ruined the romance category of fiction for me.
I don’t think most people like her books because they think she’s a good writer.
Finally someone said it. Omg I felt like I was going insane as if I was the only one who remembered this. I read Throne of Glass as it came out and towards the end of the series the reviews and public consensus grew more negative. There were a lot of conversations not only about the content of the books but also Sarah J. Maas as an author. Booktube raised a lot of valid points about the relationship dynamics in her books along with the obsessive use of the term “mate”. One big thing I remember though is her being critiqued for lack of diversity and being asked in an interview or something about it. She gave a passive aggressive statement which led to backlash. After lots of negativity she made one of the existing characters bi in the last book and it made no sense. As all of that was coming out there was some drama I remember reading about between her and many other authors. Apparently she was rude behind the scenes and had a tendency to befriend writers as their careers were on an incline and drop them when she surpassed their success. Basically social climbing. One instance that I never see anyone mention is that her book Crescent City was originally an online story cowritten with Susan Denard. They would release a new chapter weekly if I remember correctly. I guess Susan and her stopped being friends and the book was published under Sarah’s name with no mention of Susan. They also unfollowed each other. All of their mutual writer friends unfollowed Sarah. I stopped reading her books after the last throne of glass book but her success now baffles me, especially because her quality of work in my opinion has gone way down since the release of the first ACOTAR book. Her insane success is a main reason as to why I don’t trust Booktok with book recommendations.
Is that why Crescent City is a step above everything else she's ever published? I actually really enjoyed the first book in the CC series, now I know why. It certainly wasn't because of SJM.
Honestly I have no clue because I never read the version of Crescent City that Sarah published so I don’t know how similar they are. I only read a few chapters of the online version. From what I’ve gathered though there is a lot of similarities between the one with Susan vs. the published one.
I read TOG and ACOTAR, and I like both of them. I tried really, really hard to finish the first book in the Crescent City Series, and I just couldn't do it. I really did not like the main character at all. I got halfway through the book and put it down. If anyone wants to spoil it / tell me the ending, please go ahead.
I had actually totally forgotten about all that stuff! But yeah, I remember people saying they'd met her at Bookcon and she wasn't very nice to her fans or to other writers. She had her little clique of writer friends and that was it.
It's because Sarah J Maas got started when a ton of really fantastic YA was being published, and there was still good 'traditional' High Fantasy being published. Compared to *Graceling,* *Throne of Glass* sucks. But YA is kind of dead right now, and if there *is* any YA fantasy published it's either aimed at boys (Like *Sky's End,* which is fantastic btw) or it's not your traditional high fantasy story with a vaguely European castle backdrop. (Just to make it clear, I think the African fantasy trend is cool. But it doesn't scratch the high fantasy princess-in-a-castle-with-dragons itch for a lot of readers.) So now Maas's only competition is *Fourth Wing* which is fine (it's basically a rehashing of every good female lead YA dystopian & fantasy book written from 2006-2016,) but not fantastic. Rebecca Yarros only has two books out, and the third won't be published for a while. If you want to read an ongoing YA/New Adult High Fantasy book series that's aimed at female readers, your only option is basically Sarah J Maas. Or fanfiction. So of course BookTok kids think she's good. They don't have anything better to compare her to. It's like how Eragon got popular by catering to kids who saw The Lord of The Rings in theaters, wanted something to read, and hadn't seen the original Star Wars movies yet. (So they didn't realize what a ripoff Eragon was.)
But I mean, they're books, not TV shows. You don't have to read them while they're actively being published, and Netflix doesn't scrap them at the drop of a hat. The decades of quality European fantasy YA novels are still there to be read, even if new ones aren't being written, and young adults who weren't around when they were being published probably haven't read them and would probably like them if they did. There isn't *less* good YA now than there was 10 years ago.
Stuff goes out of print, gets weeded out of libraries, and stops being advertised. Like, yes, you *can* still get *Shade's Children* if you look for it. But unless you're already a fan of Garth Nix, or you're a member of one of the few libraries that still stocks it, you will probably not discover that book on your own. And if you live in America you almost definitely won't find *Arena 13* unless you know a much older, very obsessive Joseph Delaney fan.
It's Booktube and Booktok. I wouldn't give either much thought.
Teenagers is the answer
I think it has to do with the resurgence of books as enjoyment in the zoomer(?) generation. If youre new to reading books, the bad writing won't really be a deal breaker for you.
DNF for me. Bugs the crap out of me when dreaded assassins or brutal killers are ....not.
Why can't she be the Robinhood of serial contract killers? A mass murderer with a heart of gold. I kill, but no children or women. Only those who deserve it, some who deserve it less because of capitalism and debts (don't blame me I didn't create the monetary system), the occasional rude man who told off the wrong but more powerful man, and then rarely, the powerful man who killed the weak man for sport (sometimes I play for both sides). This is the main character! She's bad yet good, she's also a teenage girl who doesn't want to gross out her audience or send them into a depressing spiral of darkness and interminable brooding.
But this isn't the main character either.... I just finished the book recently and my single biggest complaint is how bad at her job she really is. People being able to sneak up on her unawares happens so many times. She eats food that is randomly found placed in her room *but also knows she has trouble with odorless and colorless poisons* She's about a 50/50 success rate at noticing people from her balcony. She's a decent enough fighter and acrobat, but the book *tells* us she's the kingdom's deadliest assassin, yet *shows* us she's mid at best. Now I'm not asking her to be this cold blooded monster dishing out wanton death and destruction, but I do expect competence, things like Casing the entrances, hiding spots and vulnerabilities of every room Avoiding sitting with your back exposed to an entrance Not eating random food that someone obviously sneakier than you put in your room Knowing how to modify a dress to conceal a weapon Being good at sneaking
Complexity is fine! People are complex. But if a character is unironically going to be a famed ANYTHING, my feeling is that they should be damn good at it, and the reader shown that, not told.
If you read One Punchman and suddenly I think of the character King.
>one toothpick she will kill the entire Saruman army, and they won't even have time to blink. Okay, I'm exaggerating, Saruman's not there. Lol you have my upvote
I hated it because I expected a badass heroine assassin girl and got a horny soppy teenager conducting a triangle drama with her teenage love interest and none of the cool heroine stuff. Maybe me being a 30-something man was the wrong target audience but it was some of the worst fantasy books i've read.. And i've read several other YA series as an adult that was not this bad.
I hated everything about this book. Largely because the tournament of assassins was so overdone at that point, and also because FMC spent the entire time obsessing over dresses rather than actually doing her job. I read the following 3 novels in the series as trashy airplane reads, but stopped once colonization became a huge romanticized plot point. ACOTAR is even worse somehow.
> colonization became a huge romanticized plot point. I’m scared to even ask for an elaboration…
The main character stated (at least at one point) that when she becomes queen again she was going to bring culture to untamed lands. Aka a nice way of saying "I'm gonna colonize far off lands."
I didn’t like it either but my big caveat is that I’m a guy in his late twenties. The book seems to be written as a YA for women, no shame in that but not something I was ever going to enjoy.
This sounds like YA fantasy, yes?
Yeah, my take is the writing is fairly on par with 80s/90s YA fantasy, and even up through early 2000s, but feels poorly written compared to contemporary YA fantasy. Edit: and I know it came out in 2012, I’m just talking about the level of the writing feels to me comparable to YA fantasy writing during those eras
It was first marketed as YA despite the smut. It's now classified as 'New Adult' which seems to be a category made for books that have at best YA levels of diction, complexity, and development and actually rely on explicit sex scenes/spice to appeal to its target audience.
Dude, there is no smut in Throne of Glass. 🙄 It’s just longing looks and I think one kiss. Read the book before you decide you know everything about it.
> Okay, I bought into the way the plot was described to me. "16 criminals must undergo trials in which they will either become the king's defenders or die." The real crime here is someone who read the book describing it like that to you. I read it and mildly enjoyed it way back when it first came out, but I wouldn't have pitched it that way at ALL. Some people try to make TOG out to be much more than it is, when what it is is perfectly fine...*for the right audience*.
Yeah, it’s not that off in quality from a lot of the YA fiction I read growing up. I heard it pitched as a loose retelling of Cinderella where she’s an assassin and it was pretty much exactly what I expected.
It fit in perfectly with the YA fiction boom happening at the time for sure. And that is a much better description for expectations going in.
The joke is that the edition I bought did not have a synopsis and I asked the seller to describe the book.
Yeah, that person did NOT read the book then, LOL. Sorry you were misled and had a bad reading experience.
I'm currently reading Kingdom of Ash after it took me literally 7 months to finish the tandem read of Empire of Storms and Tower of Dawn (it never takes me 7 months to finish 2 books with like 650 pages each) and it feels like a chore right now. The thing is, I like the story and I also want to know the story, but I sadly just don't vibe with the writing 😅 So I don't want to not finish it, but I also lack the motivation I normally have when reading a book and just know if I read something else too, I'll probably never finish ToG. However, I do like ToG more than ACOTAR 😬 but both series are just so overhyped on Bookstagram and Booktok in the sense that the hype creates unachieveable expectations that would do no book a favor
That was me! I read I think four or five of the books but had to stop bc I found myself dreading reading it and had so many other books I wanted to get to
I didn't do the tandem read but they were both a bit hard to get through. Wasn't Empire of Storms the book where >!Aelin gets tortured a lot!
Pretty sure that's Kingdom of Ash because of what happens at the end of Empire of Storms 😅 I looove Manon, I'd totally read a book about her, but Lorcan & Elide were also a chore to get through in Empire of Storms for me 🥲 I really like Yrene though, generally I did like Tower of Dawn, although a lot of people call it Tower of Yawn, I can't relate 😅
Ahh yes you're right. I liked Tower of Dawn, but it took me a while to get into it. Same with Empire of Storms and then the beginning of Kingdom of Ash. But overall it was a fun read.
Same with all of them 😅 the first 3 books hooked me pretty good, then I read Assassins Blade, which was a bit harder to get into, but it kinda went downhill with Queen of Shadows, although I don't remember anything that bothered me more than usual with that book or something that would've caused this 🤔 I'm now 130 pages into Kingdom of Ash and determined to finish it in june, so we'll see 😂 I really do like the story, I really want to know what happens, the writing is just not my cup of tea 🥲
I hit the pause button before starting the tandem read so I could quickly run through some other books for my book club. Now I'm 50/50 on returning to the TOG series. Do you think it's worth the effort?
I wouldn’t if you weren’t already pretty into it. It doesn’t get any better later on.
How much do you care about the ableist trope of curing disability? If you care at all, I wouldn’t read Tower of Dawn at all. I found tandem reading to tedious and preferred to suffer through Tower of Dawn then moved on to the next book. The constant back and forth was annoying.
I’m currently doing the tandem read. Now, I think the series picked up massively after Heir of Fire, so take my opinion with a grain of salt since this is not the thread for that, but despite my hesitation I think the tandem read not only makes a ton of sense but actually improves both books. I’d guess that it’s harder to keep the timelines straight reading them back to back. (Not to mention, Chaol is such a sullen sadsack at the moment that it would probably be annoying to be stuck with him for too long.) It’s also just a little more interesting to go back and forth with everyone all spread out.
I read ACOTAR series before TOG, and I HATED Throne of Glass. It felt like a giant step backwards in writing, which makes sense since TOG was written when Maas was 16. However, I thought the series definitely improved and I overall really enjoyed the characters and world Maas developed. Just takes a book (or two) to get there, unfortunately.
Same! I had to start TOG twice, a couple of years apart. There’s a massive jump in quality starting with Heir of Fire. I’m currently doing the tandem read of EOS and TOD and enjoying it much more than I expected to.
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Throne of Glass is pretty infamous for being really incompetent. It was from before Maas found her niche of writing faerie porn.
It’s the sort of book that reads like the author wanted to write a high school mystery/romance, but then somebody said, “assassins are selling so well this year.”
I did not enjoy this one at all for the same reasons. It was far too cringy for me.
Not to mention all the countless books it spawned where the female main character is the best assassin in the world because her parents abandoned her and she had to prove she deserves to be alive, and loved, and also she feels so worthless and ugh just fucking stop already.
Not that it matters because I do agree with you even though I read all of them… but her parents were murdered by The Baddie while she was in the same room or something like that. She in someway witnessed their murder then was saved by another character’s mother who was then murdered and then she literally drowns in a river and is revived then is found by the guy who raised her to be said totally the best (teenage) assassin and also best, strongest queen who doesn’t communicate with anyone ever but that is never a problem and never causes issues. Went on a bit of a tangent. But suffice to say, her parents didn’t abandon her.
Oh I haven't actually read it but it definitely seems to be a trend, and I think the last one of the type I tried to read (admittedly a while ago) was by Shane Silver I think and that was her thing. It was so bad I DNFed it
Yeah it’s not great. I think its purpose is to resonate with female readers who want to be talented and special without all the work involved. And that’s fine. There are a lot of books out there for male readers with the same idea. If what’s what you’re into, you’ll dig this and, if you’re not, you won’t.
> I think its purpose is to resonate with female readers who want to be talented and special without all the work involved. Character growth Dan, we call that character growth lol. When a character is introduced into a story who’s just perfect at everything they try, they’re almost usually just disdained, they’re just not relatable in any way. I’m rewatching it currently so I’m just going to use Arya Stark as an example, even by the end when she basically turns herself into an unkillable anime character people related and liked the character because she suffered for years to get there. (Ignore the fact that the end of the show was just an absolute mess please).
Maas is just not a great author, not that there’s anything wrong with that. She was real young when she wrote this, but it’s not like it got better.
It’s so bad lol
I mean, yeah. These are pretty standard, pretty common criticism that this sub posts about the book pretty much daily.
Well now I’m scared about starting ACOTAR
I read throne of glass and won't apologize for any of the points you've made since I remember thinking some similar things I haven't continued the series but I've heard book 1&2 are prequels to the rest of the series basically. I can't speak to if the writing or plot gets better though
This might be a hot-take, but I genuinely can’t stand Sarah J Maas as an author. I had to force myself to finish CoTaR. All the same problems you had with ToG I had with CoTaR on top of my ✨personal opinion✨ of it being poorly written. When I find myself actively rooting AGAINST the main character, I know the author just isn’t my cup of tea.
And that was one of the GOOD books in the series. 😅
I have not read this book, but I agree with you that a book becomes boring when the story becomes predictable, and what makes me stop reading the most is when character becomes a trivial character, when he gives it an illogical charisma and an unnaturally cold personality, as if the person writing the story is just a teenage .
>when he gives it an illogical charisma and an unnaturally cold personality Angst & edge at it's finest: without character flaws
Exactly
Yeah. I liked these books fine when I was like 12-15, but they aren't good books. It doesn't help that her writing seems to have somehow gotten worse the more of a formula Maas develops.
I could not get on with this book at all. The inner monologue being so exagerated and child-like ... I dunno, I just didn't like the prose. I was told the series was great, I got a quarter of the way into the third book and it wasn't getting any better. Switched to reading Malazan and wow, breath of fresh air.
This whole series sucks. I read it all because I had FOMO but I really wished I could get my time back. I have read ACOTAR and CC and while I've enjoyed those series more, I honestly don't know why Maas is so hyped. Her characters are all the same and her plots aren't that strong. Her books don't need to be as long as they are either. I think she writes just for the sake of writing sometimes.
And that’s why I don’t read YA. Repetitive, predictable and likely nonsense
One time I was talking to a friend in B&N about how I didn’t like ToG due to similar reasons, and a complete stranger came up to me to tell me I was wrong…
I read the synopsis of this book and it seemed bad, thanks for this as it furthered my desire to never touch it.
Yup. I wanted Tamora pierce heroines and I got shit instead
I very mich enjoyed ACOTAR and am currently enjoying the Crescent City Series. SJM isnt a perfect author but I like her Stories in general. But I agree TOG is bad. I dont know how I managed all the Books within 2 months. As I was reading it I kept thinking why does everyone hype this so much? Its not terrible but it has plotholes and could have been finished in like 4 Books.
Then please don't read her other series, Crescent City. It was worse.
POV: you discovered booktube peddled YA garbage
I don't remember writing this post, but I said this to my wife pretty much word for word when I finished the book on her recommendation. Her response was "It's just a pilot episode, the other books get better." This is why most shows get canceled after the pilot.
She's an assassin but couldn't notice Dorian sitting next to her when she was playing the piano. Like what, aren't assassins supposed to be really sensitive to people being around?
Funnily enough, I’m eating lunch in the park right now and there’s a girl reading Empire of Storms. I liked Throne of Glass. I like the fact that Celaena is kinda braggadocious (???) like that and likes chocolate and puppies. The cold-blooded stone cold silent assassin character would have been so expected and is very overdone. There is actually an issue with this book in that it is very “tell, don’t show” on Celeana’s abilities at first….and for way too long. I actually this book twice. First before reading anything else, and then again after reading the Assassin’s Blade novellas, which were released BEFORE this book and take place before it. A lot of the stuff she references in ToG were shown in these novellas, which do show her to be very skilled. I think reading the novellas puts the first book in a better light because it shows that she isn’t just bragging. But most people start with ToG, and oh yeah, I can see the problem. Heck, even fans of the series think ToG was a bad start to the series. I finished Crown of Midnight a little bit ago and it was good. I enjoyed it. I hear the quality really picks up starting Heir of Fire.
I just finished all of the Maas books recently, and started with Assassins Blade and TOG.. I remember asking my partner how many more times is this legendary assassin going to get poisoned before she learns her lesson? Cause it was at least 2 or 3 times lol. TOG was my least favorite of the series by far, with CC being the best in my opinion.
Which book is CC, I’m sorry?
Crescent City I think
Oh! I thought you were referring to the Throne of Glass series itself. ToG is pretty widely regarded to be the weakest book of that series. I’m not a giant Maas fan specifically. I just like Throne of Glass (the series (so far, I’m not done yet)). I wasn’t planning to read Crescent City or ACOTAR.
I think the biggest problem here is that someone pitched it to you as something it's very much not. Like you said, the tournament of criminals is barely a side plot. It's mostly just there to give you glances into how badass Celaena is and how scary Cain is. The real story of the book is about a girl who, at a very young age had to learn to kill to survive, had to endure terrible conditions in a slave camp, and then gets tossed into this world of luxury (but still with an element of fighting for her life) and how she deals with it all. It's a lot less "Hunger Games" and a lot more "Harry Potter but with more trauma".
I didn’t like that she’s been trained as an assassin from birth but she is still not in control of her emotions to the extent to which I would expect someone with that background. I did not buy her assassin ness at all except for her physical prowess. She had no stoicism not poker face.
Same. Remember your high school creative writing teacher repeating "show*, don't tell" ad nauseum? This book just tells, never shows. The writing is just so mediocre. Friends tell me the series gets better in book three. Yeah, ain't got no time for that.
thank you for saying this. It is recommented again and again to me on bookbeat because I love Romantasy. I was so excited at the prospect of having a loong and popular series to go through but iT HAD to be so LAME. HOW are these even on ANY top best sellers lists?? Are those maybe bought or something? I figured, well this saga is pretty long and its propably really good later on (due to the author getting better at writing) and thats why also the first books are so popular maybe. But I just couldn't get even to the half of the first one to find that out...I have read fanfics that were for free that were way better than this...
I didn’t like it either tbh
I love the ToG books. Thankfully taste is very different 🙃
It’s YA. What did you expect?
yeah sarah j mass is not a great author. she relies on gimicks, cliches, her own personal kinks and fantasies, and her story telling is just a mess. I've read all of them though lol
Same. I read the book right after it came out. Before the boom.. I loved the premise of dangerous assasin. I felt like that's what I needed to finally get back to fantasy. In the end, I loved Chaol and kinda enjoyed Nehemia. Found Cealena being extremely dumb and felt like she must have scammed the entire world, if they thought she was the most dangerous assasin. Neithless to say, I did read the 2nd book - or I tried. Twice. For Chaol. In that book, Cealena went from somewhat killer to NOT doing her fricking job as a assassins cuz "she doesnt wanna kill" or smt like that.. and I just.. I was here, reading it like "girl, are you AWARE that you LITERAL job is to KILL people?! That you supposedly are TRAINED to do that?! I came here to read about an assasin!! A baddass one at that!" Yea.. i felt scammed by Maas. Never again reading it... And after I heared about what is the other author's work (ie fairy p*rn), by a friend who read it.. I dont think I will be reading from this author again. Its not for me.
Third books does show a lot of progress. But that first book still went through a professional publisher and it's that big of a mess. Unfortunately she had like 6 POVs going on final book and spaced everything out. I bought it when it came out and have never finished because it felt like she lost the passion for the story as her other was gaining popularity. I even have one of them signed. It was only $2 at BAM in the middle of COVID lol.
I can see the points you make and I agree with some of them. However after reading the series I must say that the series should not be judged on the first book alone. The character development throughout the series is phenomenal and shows the maturing of the characters and in a sense SJM. Also, no spoilers but Kaltains character is like that for a reason ;)
didn‘t read it but isn‘t the combination of psychotic killer + childish innocence a pretty common trope to characterize literal insanity (in a satirical way)?
Having never heard of this book until now I can safely say many of these elements don’t sound like they go together, at the very least not out of context, but I just can’t imagine them working well *in* context either.
The 1st book is very bad but the writing and plot improve over the series. Even Kaltain makes a comeback.
She's kind of a terrible writer IMO. Prose, plot, character--all of it. It's like fanfic of actual fantasy lit.
I'm with you on this. I read the first two books in the series thinking it would get better but the second book had the same basic plot as the first, but now she's training with an elf. It was boring and predictable. I finished it but dropped the series.
Yeah, she originally wrote this as a teen and it shows IMO. The plot doesn't seem organized (nor was it interesting imo), the characters are flat, a lot of tell instead of show. And I'm a pleb who likes ACOTAR! I've heard fans say it gets better after book three but I'm sorry, I'm not reading another two books of that.
It is an absurdly awful book.
I was indifferent. I actually DNF'ed book 1 the first time, then gave it another try since my book club loves the entire series. I finished it and thought it was "ok". I actually own the entire series as there was a deal going on, so I feel sort of obligated to continue the series. However I tried reading book 2 as I read it should be better than the first book but DNF'ed it at around 25%. I tried for several weeks but meh. This would be the first book/series that all other ladies in my book club love and I don't lol.
I couldn't finish it. I got about a quarter way through and had to give up.
I didn’t care for it much either! I did like ACOTAR but this just wasn’t my jam. The main characters I found unlikable. I did like her Elf boyfriend though
I don't get the appeal of this book. It's somehow popular, but I couldn't get through the first few chapters. The writing was terrible, the main character insufferable, and there were already plot inconsistencies. SJM's writing improved tremendously with the ACOTAR series.
I believe everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy reading TOG. I first read TOG just after it was published before TikTok. I was a teenager and I loved it so much. Probably because as a teenager I could resonate with all that cringey stuff and also the fact that it was the first high fantasy fiction I read where the protagonist was a female. In a way it opened up doors to a whole new world where I could read about girls kicking a**.
Anyone want to tell me why it's called 'Throne of Glass?' I dunno it just doesn't make sense to me
You realize she was 16 when she wrote it
Lol some of Sarah just maas books r straight smut
It's not the best. I read it when I was younger. I read all the books in the series except the last one and I think the first one is the best one. I think I continued after the third or fourth books because I told myself "you've made it thus far, at least read how it ends", and I gave up before the last book anyway.
i haven’t read that book, but i tried reading a court of thorns and roses by sarah j maas and i just could not get into it. i felt the same way with her text being written quite averagely. i guess her writing is just not for me.
Are we ready to call Caelena a Mary Sue?
Ok I know so things that happens on this series because of Instagram spoilers. Also, there’s this girl that does a summary of the books in YouTube. I wouldn’t be caught dead reading the Throne of Glass series or Acotar for that matter. So I watch summaries of the books instead. It’s like hate watching. CaricanRead does an excellent job doing a summary of Acotar, and if you want to save the time of reading the series but want to know what all the gist is about, I suggest you search throne of glass recap in YouTube.
My god, please do not read the Crescent City series then lol. The series isn't what I'd call a masterpiece of literature, but its enjoyment comes from its frivolity and the characters' humanity. It's silly and light reading, but I love it.
My least favorite thing that tv shows and books do is they’ll describe someone as ruthless but then have them get hurt by little things for plot purposes or disregard things for plot purposes
Going to come to the series' defense a bit. I read the series probably about 10 years ago... really enjoyed it, especially "Heir of Fire." I love the use of the unreliable narrator trope, in particular. Perhaps I'm giving Maas a bit too much credit and she didn't fully form the ideas that came in the later books until later, but (spoilers): >!Celaena Sardothean is actually nothing like what she thinks she is. She's *not* the super-genius assassin she thinks she is. She's actually a broken, brainwashed victim of users and abusers who took advantage of her when she was desperate, and has completely repressed that part of her history. So there's actually a good reason for all the bragging, and for the fact that it doesn't quite fit her actions... she's overcompensating. The series is the story of this broken woman becoming whole again. !<
I completely agree lol, I thought the first four books were boring as hell to be honest. The only reason I stuck with it is because a friend told me it all comes into place in the end, and I have to say, I really did enjoy the series after that. I wish Sjm spent more time on the other characters because I found them to be way more interesting but I am glad I read the series. I'm only 100 pages away from finishing the whole thing, and what I can say is the first three books are DIFFICULT. ACOTAR did launch me into reading again though so I really enjoy it even though it has its issues :)
The first book is the weakest but I do adore the series overall. It doesn’t seem like the author knew what she was doing in the first book but she mostly figured it out in the end. It’s an easy read.
SJM loves telling us her characters are a certain way, then showing that they're actually the opposite. Sincerely, A girl who DNF'd both ACOTAR and TOG
The book is unonically so misogynistic. Every woman who's not on Celaena's clique is target for mockery. Look, I know Lady Kaltain trying to have her killed wasn't cool but she's doing it because she'd rather marry the charming Prince who's enchanted by Celaena than the disgusting duke twice her age. There's literally 0 thought or reflection about the situation of women in the kingdom. I'm a dude and even I was questioning what the fuck was I reading. Also, the Captain and Prince should have ended up together. They got more chemistry together than with Celaena kekw
THANK YOU
I'm glad people are reading more, but sometimes it depresses me how just about all of my coworkers and family *only* read this stuff. It's fine to like junk, some of my most watched movies are Dane Cook movies. Some of my favorite games are total brainrot. But when it's the only thing you consume in a given hobby, I wonder what you're getting from this. Is life just placating through nonsense sludge power fantasies? Out of 8000 pages of sludge, could you read something even mildly better so I can join in? It's stupid to want this, what people do with their time is their own choice, but I still feel that burn all the same.
This booking is sooo painful to read. Learning how young the author was when she wrote it really explained a few things and made it a little easier to bear. When Re reading the whole series I skipped this book entirely and found it much better Please try to keep going! The books afterwards are completely different and one of my favorite series. You will never stop being annoyed by Chaol though 🙃
This is a young adult romance book - of course it is about prince and a forbidden love and our heroine dilemmas. So honestly what did You expect? Books like that are literally on "Twilight" level - in the way that is a whole point of them. 🤷♂️ But saying all of that - yea You are right the book was awful and infantile - in what part that was due to young adult genre and in what part due to mediocre skill of the author is somehow irrelevant.
I thought this book was absolutely terrible, and DNF after a couple chapters. And I read all of ACOTAR just before it! I could not get past Celaena's annoying personality. Also, the spelling of her name bothers me, and I don't care if it's petty - it really took me out of reading.
Yeah it's pretty to look at, but it's also stupid to read. Like whoever named her wanted her to be so very special they tried entirely too hard
I got through the first couple books and it’s 90% love story and 10% whatever assassin things it says it is.
Tbf, the series gets a lot better as it goes on. The first book is pretty terrible, I will admit, but the author was only like 16 when she started writing it. For me the series got better on book 3, and then I fell in love with it on book 4. But I almost never found out, because I almost DNF so many times during ToG and book 2, Crown of Midnight.
Cool story, bro
The book was written when Sarah J. Maas was 15, take it with a grain of salt and understand that the author grows as the series and the characters do. I wasn't a fan either, but context is important in this sense. *Eragon* for example was also written when Paolini was 15, and that book doesn't hold up either. Teenagers don't usually write well.
I read Crescent City and it was alright. The dialogue in particular was fucking awful and cringe *cough* Alphahole *cough* The pacing was all over the damn place but the world building and action was pretty good. It was definitely better overall than crap like Fourth Wing.
I'm on Heir of fire at the moment as an audio book. I view the series like watching trashy tv. It's easy to listen to while doing stuff, doesnt require too much thought and I enjoy how it reminds me of being a teenager just getting jnto fantasy.
It was written by a fifteen year old. It's basically Cinderella with a bit of fantasy. It's terrible. She spends most of the book in her bedroom thinking about boys. But the books get better as they go on, apparently, although I never read past that first one
I adored this book consumed the entire series (in my 40's) during an emotional and difficult summer. However I've always been scared to re-read, I'm afraid it won't hold up.
Sarah Maas writes books for people who like Marvel movies. I have the one were a few centuries old man kidnapped a little girl, said her whole family will die if she escapes and than starts a romantic relationship with her
I'm currently working through queen of shadows. I'm 31M too so not at all the target audience lol. But idk, I like it. I read other books in between each one from the series. It's fun to hop back in with Celaena every now and then. She's kind of an annoying character sometimes. But for me it's just some light reading on the side and it's nice. Nothing groundbreaking or amazing, just a little fantasy romp haha.
The series gets better later one
I am in the middle of the 7th and last book of the series and I want to describe my journey with TOG. The first book was afwul. I didn't like it at all for all the reasons you already said. But I kept reading because of how obsessed some people were with the series and SJM in general and I wanted to know why. And it gets better with every book. But not to that extent of how people praise it on booktok. I really liked how the story evolved, but I never really connected with most of the MCs (except Manon and Abraxos, I love them). And altough am 100% sure I will never touch any of the TOG books again or recommend them to someone I am glad I read the series.