**A Mixed Feelings Review: A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas**

After re-reading A Court of Thorns and Roses for the third time, I found myself with mixed feelings about this book. The first time I read it, I described it as "completely average" and "boring," but that was only after having a closer look at my Goodreads review. Upon reflection, I still stand by those words, but this time around, I noticed more aspects of the story that left me underwhelmed.

One of the main issues I have with this book is its lack of completion. It feels like a setup for the other books in the series rather than a standalone novel. The trial aspect of the story could have been a well-rounded way to make the book feel satisfying, but it was ultimately underwhelming. Additionally, Selena's journey as the king's champion felt too easy and unimpactful. As an assassin, she should have overcome more challenges to reach her position, but the trials didn't feel impressive or difficult enough to be convincing.

I also found the love and trust between the characters to be weak compared to other Sarah J. Maas books. Tamlin had more personality in A Court of Mist and Fury than Dorian or Kale, which is saying a lot since Tamlin didn't have much flavor in any of those books. The relationships in this book felt rushed and lacked substance.

The book also left me with many unanswered questions at the end. I wanted to feel like there was some resolution or closure, but instead, I was left with more questions than answers. This is not uncommon in fantasy series, where keeping readers invested in the story's progress is crucial, but it doesn't make this particular case any easier to swallow.

That being said, I do think that A Court of Thorns and Roses laid some good groundwork for the rest of the series. The world-building, characters, and plot threads all contribute to a larger narrative that will likely become more complex and engaging as the series progresses. Having read the first three books in the series (and potentially four), I can see how this one sets the stage for what's to come.

For example, the fact that this book is a setup for the next installment means that some of the plot threads and character developments feel incomplete or rushed. The ending feels more like a teaser than a satisfying conclusion, leaving me wondering what will happen next in Crown of Midnight (the second book in the series). While I'm excited to continue reading, my experience with this book has left me with a mixed feeling – it's not terrible, but it also didn't feel particularly remarkable.

Ultimately, if you're new to Sarah J. Maas' work or haven't read A Court of Thorns and Roses before, I'd recommend approaching this series with an open mind. While the first book may not be the most compelling read on its own, the world-building and characters are certainly engaging, and the story has plenty of room for growth and development in the subsequent books.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello welcome back to my channel today is the start of a 24 hour reading vlog wherein i am going to read throne of glass all in 24 hours honestly more likely it's gonna be 12 hours but today just felt like the perfect time to do this it's kind of ugly outside and hayden is going to be gone tonight so i figured me and you could cozy up with throne of glass and get into all the spoilery thoughts all of my feelings about this book if you didn't know i am rereading the entire throne of glass series over this next year of 2021 doing live shows over on instagram but my hope is with this video series i can give y'all all of my thoughts so if you're ever curious like what a chandler think of that series you can come back and revisit these videos or if you just want some delightful background noise i'm here for that hoping that this one is going to be more of a success than the assassin's blade was i feel like i didn't have any like super fun juicy thoughts but i think with the first real book in the series i'm gonna have a lot to say especially about kale and dorian is that his name the other male love interest uh and selena the whole like love triangle situation also selena's dumb mastery in the little like you know competition i don't i'm very i'm very excited we're gonna stay up we're gonna finish this book and it's gonna be a good time did i change out of my fancy dress you bet your ass i did 21 pages into this book and the first thing that is just astounding to me is that selena is getting out of a situation where she was in slavery she was like in salt mines how do you mine salt anyway she's been asked by dorian the crown prince to enter a competition to become an assassin or like handle the king's business you know what i mean like you win and oh my god you get to be an assassin and instead of um having to be assault slave assault slave a slave in the assault minds she can help the king and then she'll have her freedom in four to six business years or something like that but what's interesting to me is that she is brought out of slavery and instead of being like grateful she's just like and mad and like i get it i totally get it but also i just think it's funny that her like first thought whenever she is brought into these nice rooms and bathed and given food she's just sad that she doesn't have boobies anymore so already off to a great start also kind of stupid but i was trying to read some of the like place names in this book in my head the salt mines are indovie because it's an ier ending but when i looked it up it's an endovir and dovir the word that looks like early is aurelia i'm having a hard time trying to read these in my head kind of like when i was little and i thought the name carlisle was pronounced carlisle i'm just i'm struggling at the moment i never had any issues the first time i read this book with with the names like the names of the people like kale like that was like easy for me but for some reason the place names are kind of me up anyway i'm not having the worst time so that's encouraging it is you know what let's keep track of the time as we do this because that could be fun it's 3 30. i would like to get to page 100 sometime so 100 pages in the throne of glass it is 7 59 p.m and respectfully nothing's happened selena is not pissing me off as much as she did the first time that i read this book i think i've only read this book one time to be frank i can't remember a lot of the first part of this book i for some reason thought it started like very quickly after she got offered this like deal i didn't really remember them actually traveling to rifthold so where i'm at right now selena has you know taken on this quest to become the champion of aderlin i want to say aderlon but it's aderlin apparently she is trying to keep her head down she has made a new friend in this princess who is named nahimia i did know that i do like the relationship i will say that's probably been the most interesting thing so far other than that not like vibing super hard with any of the characters i feel like they have dorian in this book be this like kind of player interesting type when to be honest he's just like sad boy like that is who dorian is as a character so i'm kind of just like the characterization is just strange i guess it's weird seeing him here when that's like not how i think of him and then kale is just being who he is you know what i mean just very bland very lackluster giving me nothing not to on people with brown hair and brown eyes because i have those he's described like so blandly and i feel like it really kind of sums up his personality too because he's boring as i am surprised at how little has happened in these first hundred pages we haven't even had the first like challenge yet and i kind of forgot that the king isn't even at any of these trials so that's interesting i will say i'm pretty sure i mentioned like a couple seconds ago because you know that is who i am i forget everything i say that selena is pissing me off less this time around than she did previously and that actually is true because i feel like we are getting some seeds planted that she isn't a terrible assassin she did you know scope out her room when she first got to the castle and was like yo i don't see any weapons let me break these hairpins into jagged shards that i could stab someone with so you know i appreciate that i appreciate that that groundwork has been set um laid whatever and then on top of that i like that she noticed a word w y r d do you ever like picture letters in your head but you like can't verbalize anyway she found a word a rune type you know thing and she was asking kale what they were he said he didn't know and i just didn't remember that being something that was like at play so early on in the book nothing has really been explored but besides her just saying like hey what is that but i know that that's going to be playing a part as we as we continue so that is where i'm at to be frank i want a bowl of lucky charms and then i want to get into this like even deeper i'll give you all the juicy gossip all the juicy facts about this book or opinions there's no facts really it's all opinions but i did kind of myself to be honest starting this late and then like taking a three-hour break to i mean to be fair i was like budgeting so like we love financial fiscal responsibility but i need to get back into it because i wanna i wanna post this video tomorrow and we'll see if that happens but i'm gonna i'm sort of starting to remember why selena's such a dumb ass i think we've had three trials so far and in each one selena just hasn't been that intelligent but that being said i feel like had she been more intelligent the story would have been less interesting so i think the first trial is like a marksmanship thing they have to fire arrows into bull's-eyes kayle tells selena if she wants to win this competition she should stay low and just you know be in the middle of the pack until the very end until she can like kill the the main boss the last boss the final boss kane or whatever like the biggest competitor and selena in theory is like fine with this but obviously in practice she's not because like that's boring so during the marksmanship competition she ends up hitting the bullseye so impressively that everybody is just like in awe and shock and awe but it's not satisfying to her at the end of the day because she doesn't really feel like she won anything so that was like the first red flag right like the first time that she's being kind of stupid and like it's kind of worrisome i'm gonna put this down so i can gesticulate then we have the competition where they're supposed to be scaling the walls of the castle and whoever gets to the flag first is the winner whoever ends up being the last person down the the building or whatever loses and someone that selena has just barely become acquaintances with ends up trying to like slip not trying ends up forcibly slipping down the building and is going to meet an untimely death but of course selena saves the day make sure that this person doesn't die and in doing so she ends up coming in second to last place in this competition so i guess in that way it's kind of good because she's sort of listening to kale but at the same time she didn't really keep her head down for that one because she brought attention to herself by saving this guy obviously i think the main criticism of this book that i've seen over and over again is that selena is someone who is kind of dumb and doesn't really listen doesn't make the best decisions and i would agree with that but again i feel like if she had just kept her head down for all of these competitions like how interesting would that be to read about right so i can't really fault sarah j maas for doing it the way she's done it and it's clear that she is trying to make selena someone who does have skill so at least that's like kind of fun and interesting to watch and i do think that the skill selena exhibits seems to be greater than that of the people around her so like i do believe i guess that she is this famed assassin in other news we have gotten more hints as to kind of what the words maybe mean and by words i mean w-y-r-d-s we find out that they are part of like an ancient magic or religion and nahimia says that you should just stay away from those and selena is obviously very curious she also at one point discovers a secret tunnel in her bedchamber and while she doesn't find anything like particularly interesting in the tunnel that night she ends up having a dream about the tunnel and someone that might be residing there so there's some old ass way in the past monarch named elena and elena is telling selena that there are evils afoot ancient evils and that she needs to be careful and try to eliminate them at all costs so kind of interesting and i think it's bringing a slightly more zesty take to the story is it inventive no is it groundbreaking absolutely not but i do think it's adding just a little bit something more than just like a typical trials type fantasy because i feel like that's very common in fantasy and like had it just been that i feel like we would have all been bored this is at least bringing in a little bit of flavor and spice and it is setting the tone and the mood for the other books which i think is important because i feel like it would have come out of complete left field if the whole like magic component of the books didn't come in in this one so it's not bad like i'm i'm enjoying it so far i think my main disappointment at this point in the book also did i say i'm 200 pages into this did i say that it's 9 56 p.m it is those things also my forehead's deliciously shiny back to the topic at hand i think the only thing at this point that is kind of irritating me is kale and dorian neither of them seem to be real contenders as love interests and i just i'm not loving either of them like dorian kind of a pompous but like not even in a very convincing or interesting way like he doesn't have this damaged past that we know about so far at least to make him like have any sort of depth like he's just surface level kind of bland and then kale we found out a little bit about his backstory like he gave up his title so he could be part of the kingsguard or whatever but so what i don't really understand him and i also don't understand why he's such an to selena for no reason i don't know like i can do like a grumpy sunshine trope thing but there needs to be a reason behind it and so far kale's not very convincing he's just annoying that's where i'm at that's where i'm at with this book i think what i'm gonna do is sketch page 300 tonight i'll update y'all tomorrow on that and then i'll finish the final 100 pages tomorrow and we will finish out the vlog it'll still be 24 hours in fact it'll be less than that so pretty impressed with my progress don't know about you all also did y'all like that little like lucky terms montage i'm trying to get like slightly more creative with my vlogs i feel like they're kind of boring just like me sitting here and talking at you though i don't know if that really added anything but i'll be back tomorrow morning bright and early if we can hear any construction noise too damn bad because it's been going on for two damn hours and i have not been able to talk to y'all about throne of glass i'm like 300 pages in as i told y'all that i would be this morning i can't say that much has happened since we last spoke although i did leave out some crucial information last time we spoke so a lot of people are just dying winding up dead and their bodies are gruesomely teared apart and they're just kind of found around the castle and we find out that everybody that has died so far is a competitor during this competition and if anything that is making selena's life easier so that's just adding like some additional tension i think to the story like obviously these people are winding up dead and that is good for the competition but obviously like bad because selena is also a competitor so she's like a little suspicious a little worrisome so she's kind of trying to figure out that mystery she's trying to figure out what queen elena the deceased queen meant by there's danger of foot she's assuming that it has something to do with the people winding up dead and then things are also kind of mysterious surrounding princess nahimia so under selena's bed she finds a ton of word marks in kind of like a swirl pattern and then she's walking in the hallway one day and i believe nahimia gives her a piece of paper with a word mark and selena's like oh my god is nehemiah does she have something to do with the deaths of these people because a lot of the people that have been found have word marks like written in blood i think could be wrong here i could be just like making up at this point there's word marks found by the dead bodies so things are things are heating up things are getting more interesting and things are kind of coming together we have the word marks but they're not just this like random thing anymore they definitely are something that has power in this world and selena needs to figure out what that is but that being said not much has happened in the past hundred pages we basically just have selena going to this yule ball you'll miss ball she ends up kind of sneaking in because she's not allowed to go there because for some reason kale won't let her go even though all of the other competitors for the trials are allowed to go to these balls so she ends up kind of showing up in a mask because it's a basketball and she's like oh i can get away with that dance is with dorian she kind of pisses kale off but he is kind of sweet to her at the end of it i don't know i feel like sarah j maas is trying to build this tension between dorian and kale and selena and i'm just not really buying it i kind of understand the character dynamics here and i feel like this happens sometimes in books like you have two guy friends one is a little bit more gruff and mysterious and other ones kind of like the playboy fun type and they're both kind of competing for the affections of the same girl which is kind of what we have here but i just don't feel like either of the characters kale or dorian are very convincing in their respective roles like i don't find dorian to be this like amazing player so that's kind of where i'm at like i said yeah just like not much has happened there haven't actually i don't think been any trials there actually there was one trial in the past hundred pages it was a poisons trial and selena actually cheated on that one she was given a hint by queen elena on how she can win this trial or how she can not lose the trial i mean that's that's really all that matters is that she's not sent home or sent back to the salt mines in this case that trial has happened nothing else really around the trials has happened it's interesting because i remember so much of what happened but also so little because i read this back before i started youtube in i want to say 2017 and i don't think i've read it again since no no actually i have i have i think i read it in 2019 as well but i'm just like not really remembering how this book's gonna end and i'm wondering if there's gonna be like brutal trials at the end i know there is because i think she has to like defeat the final boss kane but it's interesting oh i did forget actually one component of this book that's kind of interesting and maybe debatable caltane as a character so caltane is this courtier and she has her sights set on dorian she wants to marry dorian and she's upset that lillian aka selena is trying to get into the prince's good graces and like you know win him or whatever even though that's not really what selena cares about and where i just left off caltane is showing that she might have more behind her dead eyes than we were led to believe like she might have something to do with the things that have been going on we don't know for sure but we're kind of suspicious of her she's kind of trying to get in bed with duke perrington who's like this kind of gross old man so she can like work her way up the ladder and or like get with dorian and we know perrington's up to no good for like does she know what's going on she doesn't seem to but also i don't know there's a lot of play here i'm curious to see kind of where her character goes i do know her eventual fate because i have read some of these other books but i can't really remember like what part she plays in this particular book and i'm curious to see because obviously like we wouldn't have her pov in here if it wasn't important so i'm curious to see kind of like what she has to do with the end of this book so as we go into the you know 400 page mark as we go into the last portion of this book there's much to think about hopefully things get more interesting will they debatable but fingers crossed they do in typical san jamas fashion the last hundred pages of this book were really the bulk of the plot and the bulk of the setup for the other books so i'm gonna briefly run you through what exactly happened in these hundred pages and then i'll let you know like how i felt about it because i feel like my feelings about this book are stronger than they have been in the past and not necessarily in a negative sense so first off selena ends up finding kane in the tunnels summoning demons so now she is kind of aware of who is using these word marks she still thinks that nahimia might have something to do with this she's not entirely sure because obviously nehemiah knows about word marks but she finds kane in these tunnels he summons a demon and he tries to send this demon after selena she ends up defeating the demon but getting bitten before she does do that and then she is saved by nehemiah in the tunnels nahimia basically heals her from this demon bite which could have killed her and now selena has this feeling that kane is willing to do anything it takes to win this competition i will say i'm surprised that her level of suspicion didn't necessarily go up after these events happened like you would assume that after something like this happens you would be like okay i need to like watch out but the only thing that she really does is warn one of the people that she saved i say one of the people she warns the one person that she saved during this competition that he should probably just leave in case he wants to i don't know not die but selena doesn't really heed the i don't want to say warning that this like demon summoning was but she knows that she can't really escape i guess so i guess it sort of makes sense as to like why she behaved the way that she did but she just doesn't really seem to think that anything is really gonna come of this i guess or like she doesn't assume that this is going to play any part in how her trial goes or whatever so anyway now that knox the guy that she warned is gone they have canceled the final trial and they're going straight into the duels so there's four people there's going to be like two sets of duels and then whoever wins obviously does the final duel and during the final duel or i guess right before the final duel selena is poisoned by kaltane at the instruction of lord parrington because he's like i'm gonna ensure that my champion i'm gonna ensure that kane ends up winning this competition so let's just ensure that with some poison and since selena is not great with poisons and since she needed help with that particular um trial she ends up not suspecting anything she drinks some wine and then she goes and tries to fight kane and she ends up seeing demons and while this like final duel happens she is obviously i don't say outnumbered but she is overpowered by kane because she is poisoned and he's really strong so she is dealing with this she's also like seeing because the poison is having her kind of like hallucinate but luckily of course selena has the power of elena and anime on her side and elena is somehow summoned we don't know at the beginning like how that's happened but elena is summoned and she somehow siphons all of this poison out from selena selena is able to defeat kane yay that's kind of the end of the duel so we do find out afterwards that nehemiah is the one that summoned elena and nehemiah does know how to use word marks that's apparently something that has been lost over time and it is a form of magic that you can use kind of when all else fails as nahimiya describes but that is essentially how she was using word marks and the word marks that selena found under her bed were put there by nehemiah so nehemiah did have some stuff to do with the word marks but she wasn't using them in like a bad way like kane was and during this whole ordeal we have dorian being exceedingly concerned for selena and at one point he says that he loves her not like verbalizing it but he says it in his head and i'm just like y'all have not spent enough time together for you to have those deep feelings of affection but okay interesting and i i think the end of the book is probably the weakest part frankly we get some insight into what's gonna happen in the next book with the interactions between duke perrington and the king in that they're trying to like mind control people but i think really the weakest part is the interactions again between selena and dorian and kale so selena after she wins and is officially kind of the king's champion i guess her king's assassin is really what she's going to be she tells dorian that she can't be with him because it just wouldn't make sense she wants to get her freedom after these four years why should she dally with a prince like it doesn't really make sense for either of them and he's like okay that's fine and then kayle comes to her room or like they start talking again and and there's this hint that there might be something there that there might be a relationship there they do have this like weird hugging situation that happens after kale makes his first kill and feels really bad about it chaos in our monologue just basically says like the next four years should be interesting i don't know if it'll be enough with her and it just felt very weird and very rushed like going from having dorian being the main love interest having kale be the love interest at the very end of the story with little to no prompting it just felt sort of strange anyway that's the end of the book i know i talked very quickly about it but a lot of happens in that last hundred pages i think i've probably left some things out but selena knows that there's magic selena knows that she's going to have to kill for the king unless she wants all of her friends and family to die not that she has family but all of her friends and friends family she just want her friends family to die so she has to be obedient that's it that's the book now we can talk about how i felt about this book as a whole i feel like my feelings are a little different after reading it for a third time i think the first time i was actually going back and looking at my goodreads review i said that i thought this was just like completely average and kind of boring and just whatever like it wasn't good but it wasn't terrible and i do kind of still stand by that but i think what really stood out to me the most this time around was how much this book was a setup for the other ones like it doesn't feel like a well-rounded completed story there are elements of this book that could have made it feel very completed but nothing was fleshed out enough to make it feel that way like the trial aspect of the story that could have been like a very well-rounded way to make the book feel satisfying and yes of course at the end we do have selena becoming the king's champion but i don't feel like it really felt impactful it didn't feel like selena had to overcome very much to kind of get to that place and obviously she's like this badass assassin and like she should have won in the first place but none of the trials felt that impressive or difficult or interesting to read about hell i think uh pharah's experience in a court of thorns roses at the very end of it was more impactful than the trials in this book like it just didn't feel like it had much bearing on the story even though that was like what the story was supposed to be about and then the love and trust i feel like were very weak in the story compared to other sarah j maas books i feel like tamlin had more personality in zest than dorian or kale which says a lot because tamlin didn't really have much like flavor in any of those books so yeah i don't know it's interesting to me how much this was a setup again those trials i mean yeah they do get us to the place where selena is you know the champion at the end and like we're gonna see what that is like in the next books but i just wanted it to feel like a more complete story and instead i feel like almost everything here is left with a lot of question marks at the end i wanted at least one thing to be kind of like resolved and feel good and again i guess you could say that that's the trials but i didn't really feel like that or at least it wasn't strong enough to make it feel like yes this is a good story and i think that's challenging honestly in any fantasy series like you do want to answer some questions in each book but also keep it open-ended enough to where it feels like there is a necessity for more books in the series so i guess i can't really fault her for that and since i believe this is her first novel i guess i can kind of overlook that but it didn't make for a very satisfying read that's where i'm at but i will say that the series does get more interesting as it goes on i've read i think the first three potentially four books in the series i cannot remember for sure and i enjoyed each one progressively more so i feel like having this would just be kind of like a two and a half maybe three star read is okay because i am gearing up for more exciting things to come i will be back next month to read crown of midnight i think that's the second book maybe potentially thanks so much for watching love you guys so much and uh until next sunday youhello welcome back to my channel today is the start of a 24 hour reading vlog wherein i am going to read throne of glass all in 24 hours honestly more likely it's gonna be 12 hours but today just felt like the perfect time to do this it's kind of ugly outside and hayden is going to be gone tonight so i figured me and you could cozy up with throne of glass and get into all the spoilery thoughts all of my feelings about this book if you didn't know i am rereading the entire throne of glass series over this next year of 2021 doing live shows over on instagram but my hope is with this video series i can give y'all all of my thoughts so if you're ever curious like what a chandler think of that series you can come back and revisit these videos or if you just want some delightful background noise i'm here for that hoping that this one is going to be more of a success than the assassin's blade was i feel like i didn't have any like super fun juicy thoughts but i think with the first real book in the series i'm gonna have a lot to say especially about kale and dorian is that his name the other male love interest uh and selena the whole like love triangle situation also selena's dumb mastery in the little like you know competition i don't i'm very i'm very excited we're gonna stay up we're gonna finish this book and it's gonna be a good time did i change out of my fancy dress you bet your ass i did 21 pages into this book and the first thing that is just astounding to me is that selena is getting out of a situation where she was in slavery she was like in salt mines how do you mine salt anyway she's been asked by dorian the crown prince to enter a competition to become an assassin or like handle the king's business you know what i mean like you win and oh my god you get to be an assassin and instead of um having to be assault slave assault slave a slave in the assault minds she can help the king and then she'll have her freedom in four to six business years or something like that but what's interesting to me is that she is brought out of slavery and instead of being like grateful she's just like and mad and like i get it i totally get it but also i just think it's funny that her like first thought whenever she is brought into these nice rooms and bathed and given food she's just sad that she doesn't have boobies anymore so already off to a great start also kind of stupid but i was trying to read some of the like place names in this book in my head the salt mines are indovie because it's an ier ending but when i looked it up it's an endovir and dovir the word that looks like early is aurelia i'm having a hard time trying to read these in my head kind of like when i was little and i thought the name carlisle was pronounced carlisle i'm just i'm struggling at the moment i never had any issues the first time i read this book with with the names like the names of the people like kale like that was like easy for me but for some reason the place names are kind of me up anyway i'm not having the worst time so that's encouraging it is you know what let's keep track of the time as we do this because that could be fun it's 3 30. i would like to get to page 100 sometime so 100 pages in the throne of glass it is 7 59 p.m and respectfully nothing's happened selena is not pissing me off as much as she did the first time that i read this book i think i've only read this book one time to be frank i can't remember a lot of the first part of this book i for some reason thought it started like very quickly after she got offered this like deal i didn't really remember them actually traveling to rifthold so where i'm at right now selena has you know taken on this quest to become the champion of aderlin i want to say aderlon but it's aderlin apparently she is trying to keep her head down she has made a new friend in this princess who is named nahimia i did know that i do like the relationship i will say that's probably been the most interesting thing so far other than that not like vibing super hard with any of the characters i feel like they have dorian in this book be this like kind of player interesting type when to be honest he's just like sad boy like that is who dorian is as a character so i'm kind of just like the characterization is just strange i guess it's weird seeing him here when that's like not how i think of him and then kale is just being who he is you know what i mean just very bland very lackluster giving me nothing not to on people with brown hair and brown eyes because i have those he's described like so blandly and i feel like it really kind of sums up his personality too because he's boring as i am surprised at how little has happened in these first hundred pages we haven't even had the first like challenge yet and i kind of forgot that the king isn't even at any of these trials so that's interesting i will say i'm pretty sure i mentioned like a couple seconds ago because you know that is who i am i forget everything i say that selena is pissing me off less this time around than she did previously and that actually is true because i feel like we are getting some seeds planted that she isn't a terrible assassin she did you know scope out her room when she first got to the castle and was like yo i don't see any weapons let me break these hairpins into jagged shards that i could stab someone with so you know i appreciate that i appreciate that that groundwork has been set um laid whatever and then on top of that i like that she noticed a word w y r d do you ever like picture letters in your head but you like can't verbalize anyway she found a word a rune type you know thing and she was asking kale what they were he said he didn't know and i just didn't remember that being something that was like at play so early on in the book nothing has really been explored but besides her just saying like hey what is that but i know that that's going to be playing a part as we as we continue so that is where i'm at to be frank i want a bowl of lucky charms and then i want to get into this like even deeper i'll give you all the juicy gossip all the juicy facts about this book or opinions there's no facts really it's all opinions but i did kind of myself to be honest starting this late and then like taking a three-hour break to i mean to be fair i was like budgeting so like we love financial fiscal responsibility but i need to get back into it because i wanna i wanna post this video tomorrow and we'll see if that happens but i'm gonna i'm sort of starting to remember why selena's such a dumb ass i think we've had three trials so far and in each one selena just hasn't been that intelligent but that being said i feel like had she been more intelligent the story would have been less interesting so i think the first trial is like a marksmanship thing they have to fire arrows into bull's-eyes kayle tells selena if she wants to win this competition she should stay low and just you know be in the middle of the pack until the very end until she can like kill the the main boss the last boss the final boss kane or whatever like the biggest competitor and selena in theory is like fine with this but obviously in practice she's not because like that's boring so during the marksmanship competition she ends up hitting the bullseye so impressively that everybody is just like in awe and shock and awe but it's not satisfying to her at the end of the day because she doesn't really feel like she won anything so that was like the first red flag right like the first time that she's being kind of stupid and like it's kind of worrisome i'm gonna put this down so i can gesticulate then we have the competition where they're supposed to be scaling the walls of the castle and whoever gets to the flag first is the winner whoever ends up being the last person down the the building or whatever loses and someone that selena has just barely become acquaintances with ends up trying to like slip not trying ends up forcibly slipping down the building and is going to meet an untimely death but of course selena saves the day make sure that this person doesn't die and in doing so she ends up coming in second to last place in this competition so i guess in that way it's kind of good because she's sort of listening to kale but at the same time she didn't really keep her head down for that one because she brought attention to herself by saving this guy obviously i think the main criticism of this book that i've seen over and over again is that selena is someone who is kind of dumb and doesn't really listen doesn't make the best decisions and i would agree with that but again i feel like if she had just kept her head down for all of these competitions like how interesting would that be to read about right so i can't really fault sarah j maas for doing it the way she's done it and it's clear that she is trying to make selena someone who does have skill so at least that's like kind of fun and interesting to watch and i do think that the skill selena exhibits seems to be greater than that of the people around her so like i do believe i guess that she is this famed assassin in other news we have gotten more hints as to kind of what the words maybe mean and by words i mean w-y-r-d-s we find out that they are part of like an ancient magic or religion and nahimia says that you should just stay away from those and selena is obviously very curious she also at one point discovers a secret tunnel in her bedchamber and while she doesn't find anything like particularly interesting in the tunnel that night she ends up having a dream about the tunnel and someone that might be residing there so there's some old ass way in the past monarch named elena and elena is telling selena that there are evils afoot ancient evils and that she needs to be careful and try to eliminate them at all costs so kind of interesting and i think it's bringing a slightly more zesty take to the story is it inventive no is it groundbreaking absolutely not but i do think it's adding just a little bit something more than just like a typical trials type fantasy because i feel like that's very common in fantasy and like had it just been that i feel like we would have all been bored this is at least bringing in a little bit of flavor and spice and it is setting the tone and the mood for the other books which i think is important because i feel like it would have come out of complete left field if the whole like magic component of the books didn't come in in this one so it's not bad like i'm i'm enjoying it so far i think my main disappointment at this point in the book also did i say i'm 200 pages into this did i say that it's 9 56 p.m it is those things also my forehead's deliciously shiny back to the topic at hand i think the only thing at this point that is kind of irritating me is kale and dorian neither of them seem to be real contenders as love interests and i just i'm not loving either of them like dorian kind of a pompous but like not even in a very convincing or interesting way like he doesn't have this damaged past that we know about so far at least to make him like have any sort of depth like he's just surface level kind of bland and then kale we found out a little bit about his backstory like he gave up his title so he could be part of the kingsguard or whatever but so what i don't really understand him and i also don't understand why he's such an to selena for no reason i don't know like i can do like a grumpy sunshine trope thing but there needs to be a reason behind it and so far kale's not very convincing he's just annoying that's where i'm at that's where i'm at with this book i think what i'm gonna do is sketch page 300 tonight i'll update y'all tomorrow on that and then i'll finish the final 100 pages tomorrow and we will finish out the vlog it'll still be 24 hours in fact it'll be less than that so pretty impressed with my progress don't know about you all also did y'all like that little like lucky terms montage i'm trying to get like slightly more creative with my vlogs i feel like they're kind of boring just like me sitting here and talking at you though i don't know if that really added anything but i'll be back tomorrow morning bright and early if we can hear any construction noise too damn bad because it's been going on for two damn hours and i have not been able to talk to y'all about throne of glass i'm like 300 pages in as i told y'all that i would be this morning i can't say that much has happened since we last spoke although i did leave out some crucial information last time we spoke so a lot of people are just dying winding up dead and their bodies are gruesomely teared apart and they're just kind of found around the castle and we find out that everybody that has died so far is a competitor during this competition and if anything that is making selena's life easier so that's just adding like some additional tension i think to the story like obviously these people are winding up dead and that is good for the competition but obviously like bad because selena is also a competitor so she's like a little suspicious a little worrisome so she's kind of trying to figure out that mystery she's trying to figure out what queen elena the deceased queen meant by there's danger of foot she's assuming that it has something to do with the people winding up dead and then things are also kind of mysterious surrounding princess nahimia so under selena's bed she finds a ton of word marks in kind of like a swirl pattern and then she's walking in the hallway one day and i believe nahimia gives her a piece of paper with a word mark and selena's like oh my god is nehemiah does she have something to do with the deaths of these people because a lot of the people that have been found have word marks like written in blood i think could be wrong here i could be just like making up at this point there's word marks found by the dead bodies so things are things are heating up things are getting more interesting and things are kind of coming together we have the word marks but they're not just this like random thing anymore they definitely are something that has power in this world and selena needs to figure out what that is but that being said not much has happened in the past hundred pages we basically just have selena going to this yule ball you'll miss ball she ends up kind of sneaking in because she's not allowed to go there because for some reason kale won't let her go even though all of the other competitors for the trials are allowed to go to these balls so she ends up kind of showing up in a mask because it's a basketball and she's like oh i can get away with that dance is with dorian she kind of pisses kale off but he is kind of sweet to her at the end of it i don't know i feel like sarah j maas is trying to build this tension between dorian and kale and selena and i'm just not really buying it i kind of understand the character dynamics here and i feel like this happens sometimes in books like you have two guy friends one is a little bit more gruff and mysterious and other ones kind of like the playboy fun type and they're both kind of competing for the affections of the same girl which is kind of what we have here but i just don't feel like either of the characters kale or dorian are very convincing in their respective roles like i don't find dorian to be this like amazing player so that's kind of where i'm at like i said yeah just like not much has happened there haven't actually i don't think been any trials there actually there was one trial in the past hundred pages it was a poisons trial and selena actually cheated on that one she was given a hint by queen elena on how she can win this trial or how she can not lose the trial i mean that's that's really all that matters is that she's not sent home or sent back to the salt mines in this case that trial has happened nothing else really around the trials has happened it's interesting because i remember so much of what happened but also so little because i read this back before i started youtube in i want to say 2017 and i don't think i've read it again since no no actually i have i have i think i read it in 2019 as well but i'm just like not really remembering how this book's gonna end and i'm wondering if there's gonna be like brutal trials at the end i know there is because i think she has to like defeat the final boss kane but it's interesting oh i did forget actually one component of this book that's kind of interesting and maybe debatable caltane as a character so caltane is this courtier and she has her sights set on dorian she wants to marry dorian and she's upset that lillian aka selena is trying to get into the prince's good graces and like you know win him or whatever even though that's not really what selena cares about and where i just left off caltane is showing that she might have more behind her dead eyes than we were led to believe like she might have something to do with the things that have been going on we don't know for sure but we're kind of suspicious of her she's kind of trying to get in bed with duke perrington who's like this kind of gross old man so she can like work her way up the ladder and or like get with dorian and we know perrington's up to no good for like does she know what's going on she doesn't seem to but also i don't know there's a lot of play here i'm curious to see kind of where her character goes i do know her eventual fate because i have read some of these other books but i can't really remember like what part she plays in this particular book and i'm curious to see because obviously like we wouldn't have her pov in here if it wasn't important so i'm curious to see kind of like what she has to do with the end of this book so as we go into the you know 400 page mark as we go into the last portion of this book there's much to think about hopefully things get more interesting will they debatable but fingers crossed they do in typical san jamas fashion the last hundred pages of this book were really the bulk of the plot and the bulk of the setup for the other books so i'm gonna briefly run you through what exactly happened in these hundred pages and then i'll let you know like how i felt about it because i feel like my feelings about this book are stronger than they have been in the past and not necessarily in a negative sense so first off selena ends up finding kane in the tunnels summoning demons so now she is kind of aware of who is using these word marks she still thinks that nahimia might have something to do with this she's not entirely sure because obviously nehemiah knows about word marks but she finds kane in these tunnels he summons a demon and he tries to send this demon after selena she ends up defeating the demon but getting bitten before she does do that and then she is saved by nehemiah in the tunnels nahimia basically heals her from this demon bite which could have killed her and now selena has this feeling that kane is willing to do anything it takes to win this competition i will say i'm surprised that her level of suspicion didn't necessarily go up after these events happened like you would assume that after something like this happens you would be like okay i need to like watch out but the only thing that she really does is warn one of the people that she saved i say one of the people she warns the one person that she saved during this competition that he should probably just leave in case he wants to i don't know not die but selena doesn't really heed the i don't want to say warning that this like demon summoning was but she knows that she can't really escape i guess so i guess it sort of makes sense as to like why she behaved the way that she did but she just doesn't really seem to think that anything is really gonna come of this i guess or like she doesn't assume that this is going to play any part in how her trial goes or whatever so anyway now that knox the guy that she warned is gone they have canceled the final trial and they're going straight into the duels so there's four people there's going to be like two sets of duels and then whoever wins obviously does the final duel and during the final duel or i guess right before the final duel selena is poisoned by kaltane at the instruction of lord parrington because he's like i'm gonna ensure that my champion i'm gonna ensure that kane ends up winning this competition so let's just ensure that with some poison and since selena is not great with poisons and since she needed help with that particular um trial she ends up not suspecting anything she drinks some wine and then she goes and tries to fight kane and she ends up seeing demons and while this like final duel happens she is obviously i don't say outnumbered but she is overpowered by kane because she is poisoned and he's really strong so she is dealing with this she's also like seeing because the poison is having her kind of like hallucinate but luckily of course selena has the power of elena and anime on her side and elena is somehow summoned we don't know at the beginning like how that's happened but elena is summoned and she somehow siphons all of this poison out from selena selena is able to defeat kane yay that's kind of the end of the duel so we do find out afterwards that nehemiah is the one that summoned elena and nehemiah does know how to use word marks that's apparently something that has been lost over time and it is a form of magic that you can use kind of when all else fails as nahimiya describes but that is essentially how she was using word marks and the word marks that selena found under her bed were put there by nehemiah so nehemiah did have some stuff to do with the word marks but she wasn't using them in like a bad way like kane was and during this whole ordeal we have dorian being exceedingly concerned for selena and at one point he says that he loves her not like verbalizing it but he says it in his head and i'm just like y'all have not spent enough time together for you to have those deep feelings of affection but okay interesting and i i think the end of the book is probably the weakest part frankly we get some insight into what's gonna happen in the next book with the interactions between duke perrington and the king in that they're trying to like mind control people but i think really the weakest part is the interactions again between selena and dorian and kale so selena after she wins and is officially kind of the king's champion i guess her king's assassin is really what she's going to be she tells dorian that she can't be with him because it just wouldn't make sense she wants to get her freedom after these four years why should she dally with a prince like it doesn't really make sense for either of them and he's like okay that's fine and then kayle comes to her room or like they start talking again and and there's this hint that there might be something there that there might be a relationship there they do have this like weird hugging situation that happens after kale makes his first kill and feels really bad about it chaos in our monologue just basically says like the next four years should be interesting i don't know if it'll be enough with her and it just felt very weird and very rushed like going from having dorian being the main love interest having kale be the love interest at the very end of the story with little to no prompting it just felt sort of strange anyway that's the end of the book i know i talked very quickly about it but a lot of happens in that last hundred pages i think i've probably left some things out but selena knows that there's magic selena knows that she's going to have to kill for the king unless she wants all of her friends and family to die not that she has family but all of her friends and friends family she just want her friends family to die so she has to be obedient that's it that's the book now we can talk about how i felt about this book as a whole i feel like my feelings are a little different after reading it for a third time i think the first time i was actually going back and looking at my goodreads review i said that i thought this was just like completely average and kind of boring and just whatever like it wasn't good but it wasn't terrible and i do kind of still stand by that but i think what really stood out to me the most this time around was how much this book was a setup for the other ones like it doesn't feel like a well-rounded completed story there are elements of this book that could have made it feel very completed but nothing was fleshed out enough to make it feel that way like the trial aspect of the story that could have been like a very well-rounded way to make the book feel satisfying and yes of course at the end we do have selena becoming the king's champion but i don't feel like it really felt impactful it didn't feel like selena had to overcome very much to kind of get to that place and obviously she's like this badass assassin and like she should have won in the first place but none of the trials felt that impressive or difficult or interesting to read about hell i think uh pharah's experience in a court of thorns roses at the very end of it was more impactful than the trials in this book like it just didn't feel like it had much bearing on the story even though that was like what the story was supposed to be about and then the love and trust i feel like were very weak in the story compared to other sarah j maas books i feel like tamlin had more personality in zest than dorian or kale which says a lot because tamlin didn't really have much like flavor in any of those books so yeah i don't know it's interesting to me how much this was a setup again those trials i mean yeah they do get us to the place where selena is you know the champion at the end and like we're gonna see what that is like in the next books but i just wanted it to feel like a more complete story and instead i feel like almost everything here is left with a lot of question marks at the end i wanted at least one thing to be kind of like resolved and feel good and again i guess you could say that that's the trials but i didn't really feel like that or at least it wasn't strong enough to make it feel like yes this is a good story and i think that's challenging honestly in any fantasy series like you do want to answer some questions in each book but also keep it open-ended enough to where it feels like there is a necessity for more books in the series so i guess i can't really fault her for that and since i believe this is her first novel i guess i can kind of overlook that but it didn't make for a very satisfying read that's where i'm at but i will say that the series does get more interesting as it goes on i've read i think the first three potentially four books in the series i cannot remember for sure and i enjoyed each one progressively more so i feel like having this would just be kind of like a two and a half maybe three star read is okay because i am gearing up for more exciting things to come i will be back next month to read crown of midnight i think that's the second book maybe potentially thanks so much for watching love you guys so much and uh until next sunday you\n"