Amazon Synopsis: 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?
This book has been sitting on one of my book shelves for a few months alongside its sequel and I was so excited to read it. The covers make the book seem action packed and bad ass with swords and death stares but when I did pick it up, I had to put it down again. Is this because it was a bad book? NO! This book was amazing and I was really enjoying it but I was not in the mood for a solid fantasy book and put it down in favour of something lighter. This weekend, however, I spent the weekend at my dads which meant no computer and finally picked it up again. Once I did though I could not stop.
The story follows Celaena Sardothien, an assassin who was caught and sent to the salt mines of Endovier as her punishment. This place is considered a death camp and it is surprising she survived as long as she did. When the chance to get out arises, Celaena jumps at it but to do so she has to compete in a series of tests to gain the position as the King's Champion and after 4 years she is free to go with a clean slate. Unfortunately some of the contestants keep getting brutally killed and Celaena could be next.
The character of Celaena was incredibly refreshing. She is a young woman living in an unequal world but she knows how to take care of herself in a way that doesn't take too long or a man to figure out. She is a really tough female protagonist who was able to keep her mouth shut and fists to herself if she needed to which a lot of protagonists struggle to do. Celaena was also incredibly funny with witty comebacks and a bit of an inner nerd that came out every once in a while. I am really curious about her back story though and really want to read the novellas to find out more about her. It is obvious she went through some heartache before going to Endovier but in this book she is still shut off about it. Since this series is going to get a few more books I don't think I will be getting any answers soon.
Other characters were also incredibly interesting. There was a wide variety of personalities including two very different perspective love interests, sullen captain of the guard Chaol (pronounced Kay-ell) and cheeky prince Dorian. I love both of them and cannot decide who I like more to go with Celaena. Each relationship within the book was not rushed, it was always a gradual process, so you fall in love with the characters along side the main character, which just makes things harder when deciding a favourite side. There were also a lot of characters that were written so well you learn to hate them at different times and with different amounts of passion.
Other characters were also incredibly interesting. There was a wide variety of personalities including two very different perspective love interests, sullen captain of the guard Chaol (pronounced Kay-ell) and cheeky prince Dorian. I love both of them and cannot decide who I like more to go with Celaena. Each relationship within the book was not rushed, it was always a gradual process, so you fall in love with the characters along side the main character, which just makes things harder when deciding a favourite side. There were also a lot of characters that were written so well you learn to hate them at different times and with different amounts of passion.
The plot line itself was incredibly interesting. I did kind of worry that it would be based solely on the tests she had to do and that this would mean it ended up like a fantasy Hunger Games but I was totally wrong. There was a really strong mystery element to it and even though the actual ending was a bit predictable the journey to get to the answer was really fast paced and interesting.
I cannot wait to get stuck into Crown of Midnight which is staring at me from my shelf but my reading list is so high at the minute and school is back in my life so it will have to wait until I am done with a whole load of others.
Rating: 4.8/5
Rating: 4.8/5
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