Paperback, 404 pages
Published August 2nd 2012 by Bloomsbury
Source: PurchasedSynopsis:
Meet Celaena Sardothien.
Beautiful. Deadly. Destined for greatness.In the dark, filthy salt mines of Endovier, an eighteen-year-old girl is serving a life sentence. She is a trained assassin, the best of her kind, but she made a fatal mistake: she got caught.
Young Captain Westfall offers her a deal: her freedom in return for one huge sacrifice. Celaena must represent the prince in a to-the-death tournament—fighting the most gifted thieves and assassins in the land. Live or die, Celaena will be free. Win or lose, she is about to discover her true destiny. But will her assassin’s heart be melted?
Review:
This one has gotten so many mixed reviews I was a little wary about starting it. Once I did, I let out a sigh of relief because although Celaena (I’m pronouncing it Selina) is not my favourite character, she is not as horrible as I had been led to believe. Oh sure, she has a love for clothes but I reckon spending a year doing slave labor in a mine gives her the right to demand and want some pretty things. You don’t begrudge a girl her sparklies!
I liked the action sequences. They were fast, thrilling and liberally sprinkled in the narrative. I didn’t buy too much into substituting Celaena’s name with “the assassin” as there were other assassins around and there was nothing special about Celaena to warrant her being the only “Assassin.” I mean, if she was the only assassin around, yeah, I’d understand it but she isn’t…I’m being picky? Well okay. I liked the female friendship though the mean girl wasn’t entirely missing. Yes I’m talking about you Katlin (did I kill the name? Something with a K, then.)
I liked this book a whole lot until we got to the end. Okay, fine, I was bothered by the romance, the very large love triangle, I mean. However, and here be spoilers so stop reading and don’t whine to me if you get spoiled because I need to speak out my feelings cuz I has them!
Anyway, Celaena is pashing the prince dude quite happily, lying in bed beside him, snuggling, has stars in her eyes and does not notice (much) the love struck guard dude (who is not trained to fight in a war? Seriously? What’s different about fighting otherwise and fighting in wars? They both require killing, right? I mean, seriously?) and then all of a sudden she’s like, “welp, sorry buddy, I know you may love me and whatnot, but guess what, I ain’t loving you back, I just used you for the smooches, now I have freeeedom to think of.” Right. Okay. And then less than a minute later, she’s with the soldier/guard who is a very horrible best friend because he’s happy the prince got dumped. SERIOUSLY. How do you expect me to like a girl who is so callous of other people’s feelings? So now that I think about it, all those reviews that talked about the superficiality of the main character? Yeah I get it now.
Do I recommend this to you? I don’t know. Do you want to read it?
I’m kind of glad to read your sort of “meh” review. I have read completely raving reviews of it, so much so that, when it arrived home on release day, I was scared of reading it. Then the negative reviews started to appear in my feed reader, and I just decided I would wait a little before reading it. I’m glad to hear about the action sequences though, that’s something that I haven’t seen achieved well a lot in YA novels, sadly!
It flowed pretty well but the ending just sucked the flavor out (for me). I’m curious to know what you’ll think about it.