After she has served a year of hard labor in the salt mines of Endovier for her crimes, Crown Prince Dorian offers eighteen-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien her freedom on the condition that she act as his champion in a competition to find a new royal assassin.
Ich hatte das Buch hier im Discover-Stream auf Bookywrm gesehen und spontan auf die Leseliste gepackt. Ich kann ja nicht ständig nur immer dieselben paar Fantasy Autoren lesen (zumal von Tolkien, Jordan, Pratchett und Goodkind nichts Neues mehr kommen wird und Martin anscheinend nicht mehr aus dem Quark kommt). :-D
Mir war bewusst, dass es sich um ein Young Adult Buch handelt und ich damit eigentlich gar nicht die Zielgruppe darstelle. Macht aber nichts. Sehr stark aufgefallen ist es mir ehrlich gesagt nur in den "Nicht-Sex-Szenen", die sowas von jugendfrei ausgefallen sind, dass es hierzulande auch "ab 6" durchgehen würde, und somit sehr offensichtlich zurückgehalten wirkten im Vergleich zum ansonsten stattfindenden Monster, Mord und Totschlag.
Dieser erste Band hat mich auf jeden Fall überzeugt, die Reihe weiterzuverfolgen.
A good, fast-paced read, but not quite as good as Maas's later work; certainly feels the Y in YA. Can be read as a standalone but is probably better if you continue on to read the whole series (I assume).
To summarize it briefly: Celaena, a proficient assassin, has been in the salt mines for a year when she is taken out by Prince Dorian and his guard captain Chaol to be the prince's candidate in a competition to find the next King's Champion. But someone, or something, is picking off candidates even outside of the competitions designed to winnow out the unworthy. Celaena's heart is also pulled into two directions, between the overtly romantic Dorian and the steadfast Chaol.
The major drawback to the book is that it's so clearly written to be part of a series. For instance, from very early on, I started to suspect that Maas …
A good, fast-paced read, but not quite as good as Maas's later work; certainly feels the Y in YA. Can be read as a standalone but is probably better if you continue on to read the whole series (I assume).
To summarize it briefly: Celaena, a proficient assassin, has been in the salt mines for a year when she is taken out by Prince Dorian and his guard captain Chaol to be the prince's candidate in a competition to find the next King's Champion. But someone, or something, is picking off candidates even outside of the competitions designed to winnow out the unworthy. Celaena's heart is also pulled into two directions, between the overtly romantic Dorian and the steadfast Chaol.
The major drawback to the book is that it's so clearly written to be part of a series. For instance, from very early on, I started to suspect that Maas was pulling a Megan Whalen Turner and Celaena was more than she seemed. I think Maas was fairly clever about this, and if I hadn't read The Thief multiple times I might not have caught all of the clues. (And then later on there was a kind of stone maze and supernatural elements that also recall The Thief.) I had to check the description of later books in the series to confirm it, as it isn't resolved in this one, which was moderately frustrating. But on the opposite side, the love triangle appeared to be gearing up to be an even bigger part of a larger storyline - while Dorian is clearly the "winner" of the triangle through the book (I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say this) given his active romance with Celaena, Chaol's feelings for her were pretty much unresolved. But in checking Wikipedia to find out the other thing, I saw that this triangle is completely abandoned in favor of a totally different love interest who doesn't appear in the book! That was frustrating to find out, as I was getting pretty invested in the romantic tension (and I do not usually like love triangles much). I don't really understand why Maas did this and it retroactively make the book go down a lot in my estimation.
There is a strong female friendship, which I loved! Princess Nehemia is a kind of hostage at the court and she has her own secrets, but she is a genuine friend and equal of Celaena and I'm very interested in her as an individual and in her future plotline. The Strong Female Friendship thing often feels pasted in in a lot of books, but not here - it's organic and I love it.
The mystery plotline is ... I don't think it's something to pick up the book for. The person doing the killing is pretty obvious, although there is a twist at the end that was worth reading!
