Extra Nate: Throne of Glass Book Review

It’s Extra Nate!

This time I’m talking about Throne of Glass, the thing I read instead of reading A Court of Mist and Fury. Because Ben put up a poll on Patreon. And the Patrons made their voices heard. And they wanted us to only read one book. And that book was ToG. Not ACoMaF. Thanks.

So here we are, a book that was written before ACoMaF and how did it pan out? It was a solid okay book. It was fine, I guess. It wasn’t A Court of Thorns and Roses, it was more the prototype to that book. ACoTaR was a WABie winner last year. Yes, the prestigious WABie. It won one of those. I had high hopes for Throne of Glass and… okay. Not bad.

Alright let’s be real. The first third of the book our main character assassin won’t shut up about how she could totally move forward, kill 10 men, and escape no problem. At some point I want her to either shut up OR do it. Pick one. Stop thinking about it though because it’s annoying.

Once we get more into the meat of the book it’s alright if not a little predictable. Predictability isn’t necessarily a bad thing but this is the case of knowing exactly what is going to happen about 100 pages into the book. I wouldn’t dock points for that necessarily.

No the biggest issue is that this book feels like a side quest book? Let’s compare this with ACoTaR. In that book the main villain was a Big Deal. She had placed a curse on our heroes and made everyone miserable for the last 50 years. She was rotten to the core and needed to be taken down. However, she was the servant of an even greater evil. Perfect set-up. You have a Big Bad and their Big Bad Boss. If you want me to compare that to other pop culture it’s Loki and Thanos. We brought the Avengers together to beat the big threat but there’s foreshadowing to the End Game Big Bad later on.

This book? The Big Bad is a soldier who is in a competition. Yeah he was kind of a bad guy who dabbled in evil magic but he wasn’t the mastermind of some evil plot. He was just a tool the bad guys were using and not a very important one at that. His defeat doesn’t seem to shift the balance of power or have a lot of weight, he’s just a dead jerk. The true bad guys: The Duke and The King are alluded to needing to be taken care of but… stay tuned for the next episode of Throne of Glass. Or the next episode. Or the episode after that.

That’s the biggest criticism I have with this book. It’s not bad but it feels unnecessary outside of introducing the major characters. I wonder if I read the rest of the series if I would look at this book as more of like a prequel or a side story? Because that’s what it feels like. It feels like it’s filler for a much more important and larger story and it absolutely shouldn’t feel that way.

Alright let me just get to the rubric.

RUBRIC

CONTENT AND IDEAS 11/20

It feels like a prequel book to the actual series. It introduces the characters of the series but otherwise doesn’t have much in the way of stakes. It feels like there’s something here that’s waiting to be explored, but not in this book.

ORGANIZATION 11/20

The beginning takes a bit of time to get going. There’s a lot of “I could kill these people with my bare hands no problem… but like I’m not gonna” and it’s so obvious where everything is going. I just want to skip to the end. There aren’t a lto fo twists and turns to keep things from getting stale in the middle. It’s not out-and-out bad but it’s just a touch too slow.

WORD CHOICE 11/20

Nothing fantastic, nothing bad either.

PERSONAL PREFERENCE 15/20

Despite it all I did still enjoy this book. There are flaws and as I said before, it feels like it’s a spinoff book or a prequel book to a much more interesting story. But I did have a good time reading it (after the initial “I could kill everyone here rawr” thing wears off). Solid fun time despite its flaws.