Book Review: The Assassin’s Blade by Sarah J. Maas

The Assassin's Blade

by Sarah J. Maas
Series: Throne of Glass #0.5
Published: March 4th 2014
(448 pages)

Contains all five novellas.
Celaena Sardothien is Adarlan's most feared assassin. As part of the Assassin's Guild, her allegiance is to her master, Arobynn Hamel, yet Celaena listens to no one and trusts only her fellow killer-for-hire, Sam. In these action-packed novellas - together in one edition for the first time - Celaena embarks on five daring missions. They take her from remote islands to hostile deserts, where she fights to liberate slaves and seeks to avenge the tyrannous. But she is acting against Arobynn's orders and could suffer an unimaginable punishment for such treachery. Will Celaena ever be truly free? Explore the dark underworld of this kick-ass heroine to find out.

The Assassin’s Blade was a great prequel. It’s interesting on it’s own and we learn more about the main character and her personality as well as more of her background. But best of all, it directly sets up the plot for the first book in the series.

The writing is funny and sarcastic with a few minor cliche moments like the classic “letting go of the breath that she hadn’t realized she was holding” (eye roll) and a few exclamation points in the prose that made it feel cheesy. It wasn’t too bad, though. I didn’t want to chuck it out the window or anything but I did notice it which pulled out of the story for a minute. I liked the writing for the most part mostly because of freaking hilarious quotes like this:

“He smelled of her lavender soap–her expensive lavender soap that she’d once warned him to never use again.”

-Sarah J. Maas, Assassin’s Blade pg 346

HAHA! I love that it’s set up to be romantic, but this is totally the reaction I would have.

I read this right after reading Throne of Glass, which is the first book in this series that this collection of novellas is a prequel to. I thought it was perfect timing. I read book 2 right after these novellas and the background that I learned in the prequels was referenced. Knowing the details of what they were talking about really filled out the story in book 2 and changed my perspective of what happened in book 1.

Magic is briefly mentioned in this book and it was so beautiful that I’m hoping magic starts showing up more in the series! It talked about singing sands which I loved.

The main character, Celaena, meets this girl Ansel who has an epic revenge quest going on that rivaled The Princess Bride.

Celaena meets a wise master (he goes by the name “Mute Master”) and gets some off the wall training with him that was something like Kung Fu Panda. My favorite quote from this wise master:

“The Mute Master had told her that people deal with their pain in different ways-that some chose to drown it, some chose to love it, and some chose to let it turn into rage.”

-Sarah J. Maas, The Assassin’s Blade pg 236

So much fun. Can’t wait to continue this series.

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