Thanks to Netgalley, I'm reading pre-release books on my iPad as I commute...

The droll: Our heroine is offered a Hobson's choice, serve out her death sentence in the grueling salt mines or come fight to the finish in a competition to become the world dominating king's new champion. The very same king that destroyed her homeland and family. I enjoyed Throne of Glass, a YA set in a fantasy world with ghosts, demons, the fey, a plucky book-reading heroine with a shady past as an assassin, a flirting prince, one seriously handsome Captain of the Royal Guard, and some reality show style games involving knives, poisons, and wits. The book left me wondering what will come next, it clearly starts a series with the fun to follow Celaena Sardothien alternately delighting in a well cut gown or well honed blade.

The drab: Why do so many quasi-medieval alternate fantasy worlds make the basic mistake of using too much modern stuff? It's one thing to have them speak in English...but watch out for anachronisms... one character described someone as a "psychopath," which immediately threw me out of the story—psychology and Freud in this time of sword wielding dudes? This world has chocolates too? The cast of characters plot and counter-plot in a castle sporting non-bearing walls of glass and I stopped to wonder how this was achieved without modern steel beams—the walls I mean. Why go to all the trouble of inventing ancient religions and bad ass flesh eating frights if you let the modern era creep in?


The verdict:  Derivative world-building, delicious heroine, fun flirting, 4 out of 10 huzzahs.