Bryce Quinlan lives a charmed life in Crescent City, despite her dubious status as a half-human citizen of the Empire. But all that changes when her best friend is murdered viciously. Now, two years later, she discovers that most everything she believed about that murder may be a lie.
I will go on record about this; I am eating my words. A few years ago, on the recommendation of my sister, I started reading the Throne of Glass series. I thought the first book was just fine, but really disliked the second one and quit reading there. Since then, I have stayed away from this author – but considering how much I enjoyed this book, I was apparently doing myself a disservice.
I really enjoyed this. The world-building is complex, the mystery compelling, and Bryce is an excellent, distinct heroine who you can’t help root for. The way she uses her ‘party girl’ appearance to cover her intelligence and power made for a lot of interesting situations that surprise both other characters and the reader. And this book wrenched emotions and tears out of me, which is a tough task generally.
It really bugs me that I’ve seen this book dismissed as fantasy with smut. I have nothing against that genre – but this goes beyond that a lot in scope, with an intricate plot, and I don’t know if I was reading a different book but there was very little smut in this! I have seen more sex in far more seriously taken fantasy novels.
Of course it’s not a perfect book. Some of my complaints with Maas’s work still remain, mainly that her love interests are a little bland and that she sometimes executes plot twists clumsily. But the way she played on my emotions, which was a thing I noticed was her strength even in her previous books, more than made up for it.
TL;DR: This was great, I have preordered the next book, and I am glad it comes out in two days. I also plan to give Throne of Glass another chance.