I prefer to think of it as Throne of Stupid - Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas

This is a terrible book. Really, really terrible. It’s terrible is a similar way to Keira Cass’s The Selection. Both have terrible protagonists, both have that terrible fan-fiction-y wish-fulfilment thing going on and both have found a wide audience who can read them with the enthusiasm every book hopes for rather than a facial expression suggesting the reader is thinking “Wow, this is a seriously terrible book”. So, really, my opinion doesn’t really matter here. Lots of people love Throne of Glass. I did not.

Celaena Sardothian is the greatest Assassin in the world. Everybody knows her name, and that she was caught and sent to the mines of Endovia. What everybody doesn’t know is that she’s a 17 year-old blonde who absolutely adores candy.

I was listening to the audiobook. I can’t get the narrator’s “Ohhhhh, how she ADORED candy!!!! *tinkling laugh*” line out of my head. (And while we’re here, Elizabeth Evans who narrates is very good, her rhyming of shone with bone aside, and I would absolutely listen to her again).

Celaena is offered a chance to get out. The King of Endovia needs a champion and intends to hold a competition to find one. Dorian, the crown prince, will enter Celaena as his candidate. If she wins, after four years she is free; if she loses, she’s back to the mines.

So, one of the things I hate about terrible YA: logic has no place in our premise.

If I wanted a king’s champion, what I would not do is spend the best part of a year having a bunch of people show me they know how to use a bow and arrow, climb a tower, or other sedate things. This is, presumably, an open vacancy. Most people would want to fill it quickly. It seems terribly unfair to expect your champion to deal with a massive backlog of work because you were procrastinating.

And it’s more unforgivable because during the whole competition people don’t generally progress to the next round because they are rubbish at whatever boring test they’ve been given, they get there because their opponents get crunchily eaten by something mysterious which seems to be roaming the castle by night - and thank heavens for that storyline because I dread to think how long we would have been whittling it down to the final four otherwise. Kicking them out one at a time, as the official rules seem to play it, does not add to the non-existent tension. Mind you, neither does “person you’ve never heard of is messily dead! Let’s all not do anything about it!”.

I’m also not even sure what a King’s Champion is supposed to do in this world. Usually, your champion is your best warrior for one-to-one combat. You can send them out and decide the whole battle thing with a single fight against your enemy’s champion and avoid everybody having to get their armour sticky. But the suggestion is that an assassin is going to be a good candidate here, so let’s roll with it, just like we’re going to roll with the idea that Celaena is actually an assassin, and a good one. This review would be three times this length otherwise.

Then there are the names. They’re like normal names, but special, because this is terrible YA. Maas is particularly irritating in this regard. It’s like being stuck in an episode of Sesame Street where today’s letter is K.

We have Kale (or Chaol as the text has him), hunky guard captain and totally not candidate for a lurve triangle, Cain, named opponent for Celaena’s new job, and Kaltain, teh evuls scheming lady-bitch who insta-hates Celaena (which is at least pronounced with an Sss). I am not good with names at the best of times; even when I could remember what they were I couldn’t remember which belonged with which trope. Then we have Celaena and Elena because rhyming names are totally the next big thing.

Celaena herself is awful. We are told repeatedly how interesting she is - she even has a relatable hobby! - but she is not interesting. She lives up to precisely none of the promise her description offers. She doesn’t even have proper angst.

At first this was terrible but entertaining, and I did appreciate the presence of a period because I am British and the kind of person who instead of sleeping wonders if any of the Districts ever send oats to their lady tributes when food is scarce. I also thought the premise had potential.

But the longer it went on, the more boring it became. One of the challenges of these kinds of books is keeping it interesting even though everybody knows Celaena is going to win the competition. There need to be stakes and this doesn’t have any. There’s no real investment in any of the side characters - even when we’re in their POV they’re thinking and talking about Celaena. (“When Poochie is not around, the other characters should say things like, ‘Where’s Poochie’”)

If somebody told me this got better in the rest of the series I would believe them. There’s plenty of potential especially once you actually give Celaena something to do other than lounge around reading books and looking attractive. However, I’m not going to find out because I would rather eat my own head.

1 star.

I sympathise with your urge to leave Oxford - The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon

When it was released, The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon, was marketed as being the next big thing; the new Harry Potter, despite being nothing like Harry Potter. The second in the series is freshly available at a bookshop near yourselves, so it seemed like a good time to read it. It was... okay.

Paige Mahony is a clairvoyant in a future alt-England where such powers are illegal. More specifically, she’s a dreamwalker, one of the rarest types of voyant, who can separate her spirit from her body. Paige lives in London where she works for Fagin Jaxon Hall, her Mime Lord (Gangster boss), until she accidentally kills an Underguard. She’s captured, drugged, and sent to a place she and the rest of the populous didn’t know existed: Oxford. Okay, Sheol 1. Formerly Oxford.

There she learns the things which make this book and this review such a challenge: the extensive world building. It is confusing. For a start, there are the various types of voyants. I spent my youth with an orange dot energised by Yuri Geller himself so I came to this knowing terms like ‘cartomancer’ and when I didn’t know I word I could make an educated guess. Then there’s the world of Scion, the government, and its creation in the first place (Edward VII was the first voyant, and also Jack The Ripper, and apparently still Edward VII rather than Prince Albert Edward, despite people knowing this at the time of its occurrence). Then there’s the world of Sheol where the Rephaim – a race of beings from the Netherworld, as scholars of Hebrew mythology will remember – keep voyants as slaves and mobile larders, feeding on their auras. Those who embrace their new overlords can become Red Jackets, a necessary part of the attempt to stop the Emim from overrunning the city and the rest of the world. Then there’s a whole host of other stuff, sometimes with nicknames and a light smattering of Victorian slang in addition to the books own terms, and as a result the book proceeds in fits and starts, bogged down by its own exposition, not really getting into to gear until a good half-way through. It’s intermittently interesting until then but the first 20% is quite a slog requiring more than one consultation of the book’s glossary.

Because this is YA, it’s necessary for the MC to be imprisoned in some fashion. Paige becomes the property of a Rephaim who instructs her to call him Warden, even though that’s not his name, whose job it is to train her to earn her Red Jacket. If she doesn’t [world building stuff] but if she does [world building stuff] but there’s also the fact that [character] wants to [spoiler] because [spoiler]. Did I mention this gets a tad bogged down by itself?

Some aspects of the plotting are bland and predictable – Paige does something for Warden then repeatedly asks herself why she did it. Then it happens again and she repeatedly asks herself why she did it again. Other aspects give a nice spin to that predictability, setting up threads for coming tomes in the 7 book series. Others feel like they’re ripping off another YA series entirely.

The main story is ... merely okay. As is the trend in YA books, we have a female MC who gives the illusion of being active. Paige, like Katniss Everdeen, is at the mercy of her situation and can only act within its restrictions so much of the book involves Paige hoping to get out of her situation but having to go along with it. Your enjoyment will depend on your tolerance for reading about Paige being Paige. I was fairly meh. There are some good scenes – Shannon can write action when she wants to - but the final sequence, like much of the book, could have been a lot tighter.

I read this because it was an offensively low price on Amazon – 51 English pennies if I remember correctly – but I don’t think I’ll be picking up the sequel. I didn’t expect huge amounts from it and it gave me pretty much what I expected. The world building is going to be a huge plus several books down the line and this has got the potential to create internet communities in the way Harry Potter and Game of Thrones has but I, who can barely remember how to spell her own name sometimes, was left unengaged and frustrated. I suspect I may get more out of it on a reread, but right now I feel no compulsion to give it one, nor to continue with the series.

3 stars.

Thought I'd like this, did - Shadowplay by Laura Lam

NB Shadowplay is the sequel to Pantomime, so this review contains spoilers for that book; I'll put a page break on this review to keep you safe. You can find my review of Pantomime here. It is possible to read Shadowplay without having read Pantomime as the key information about events is reviewed as it is touched upon, but - even though this is better - I would recommend reading Pantomime first.

Also, this book was provided to me for no monies by the kind peoples at Angry Robot/Strange Chemistry, facilitated in this act of goodness/marketing by the mighty NetGalley. 

The short non-spoilery version of this review: Yeah. It was pretty good. If your tastes run to YA (which mine don't), make this 4 stars.

I wasn't expecting to like this, but I did - Pantomime by Laura Lam

I'm not entirely sure why I'm now pretending I write reviews because I don't write reviews; I prefer to just complain at length about the bits which disappointed me. However, me giving out about Pantomime would be like taking Jonathan Franzen to to task for the epic lack of velociraptors in Freedom. At least, I assume there aren't any velociraptors in Freedom; I only got to page 8 or so before I realised I wasn't going to get through another 604 pages. That's probably a little unkind, but as Mr Franzen is famous for regarding the internet as a blight upon humanity (that and writing books which don't have any velociraptors in them), I think I'll get away with it. If I don't, congratulations Jon! You were right about this place or all along. You're welcome. And don't worry about it, I may not even have been reading Freedom, I may have been reading The Corrections. Whichever one *doesn't* have the velociraptors in it, that's what I read 8 pages of. Try and hook me earlier next time.


Anyway.

I'm not Pantomime's audience. I'm in my thirties. That's so old, the closest things we had to YA as teenagers were Sweet Valley High and the Point Horror books. So, I expected to read a book which was slightly annoying because all YA is to some degree. If it wasn't annoying, it wouldn't be about an authentic 16-18 year-old. Yes, this is my backhanded compliment, YA fans. I wanted to read Pantomime though because Laura is a vague internet friend via AbsoluteWrite (and if she's reading this and wondering which one I am over there: naff off Lam, reviews are not for authors), but also because the main character is intersex.

Raised as a girl, Iphigenia Laurus joins the circus as the male Micah Gray. The narrative is split between Summer (as Micah at the circus) and Spring (as Iphigenia, struggling with being a noble's daughter). Not a great deal happens, but the tension in Iphigenia's sections as she prepares for her Débutante ball is well done, and Micah's parts are studded with the colour of the circus. I'd have criticisms of the language and the lightness (and convenience) with which some of the more logistical aspects are dealt with, but I feel they are down to the genre rather than the writing. I really liked how Micah's gender impacts the obligatory YA love triangle. My biggest criticism is for the plot which I felt lacked any real direction or urgency until the last 20% or so when the pace really picked up.

It's an interesting book, but it reads more like a prequel than the first of a series, especially as it's not as standalone as something like The Hunger Games is. Book 2 - Shadowplay - was out in January.

I am also incredibly frustrated with that blurb. It has virtually nothing to do with the plot and has very little to do with the book. Imagine the back cover of Harry Potter failing to mention [SPOILER ALERT] Harry is a wizard. That's how annoying this book's blurb is. Add to the fact it's a pretty unique topic and I do start wondering if somebody somewhere thought it would be off-putting. Maybe it will be for some because it's new and different, but I identified a heck of a lot more with Gene than I do with most female characters. I may be possessed of 100% ladybits, but I often feel I am failing at being a girl.


I'm giving this one three stars (with a mental 3.5 stars for that last 20%). It says a lot about that last 20% that I would have gone to check out the sequel straight away if it was already out. There aren't any velociraptors though, dammit.