I think the fact that I started this book 3 weeks ago probably gives you a good idea what I thought of it. It was only 400ish pages long, but it felt like a long hard slog to get to the end. The plot was just really slow and it felt like there was a lot of emphasis placed on certain areas and others were just skipped over entirely.

To say that the main plot line was a series of tests to determine the new King’s Champion, there were too many times where the entire test was skipped over in a single sentence telling you who had been eliminated, which felt like a bit of a cop-out – give me some action please!

That, of course, left much more time for the stupid love-triangle slash will-they won’t-they series of events which seriously dragged the book down in my estimation. I prefer my female leads to be a bit more kick-ass and a bit less doey-eyed than Celaena was, and more than once I just wanted to give her a kick up the backside and tell her to pull herself together.

It also felt like it took way too long into the book before any ‘real action’ started, it must have been over halfway before I felt it pick up – this is probably the main reason it took 3 weeks to read.

When I started reading, I reserved the next 3 books in the series on my library e-reading app so that I could go straight on to the next ones without waiting, but after 2 weeks of reading and not even getting to 50% through, I returned the others so someone else could have a go. I may come back to them at a later date and see if book two can pick up the pace somewhat, but for now I want to read something more compelling!