Throne of Glass, by Sarah J. Maas

Celaena Sardothian is an assassin. Treacherous and uncatchable - that is, until she was caught. And now she resides in the Salt Mines of Endovier, a slave, no future, no escape - until the Crown Prince’s Captain of the Guard arrives and offers her a deal: the king is to hold a tournament pitting thieves and assassins against one another to find the best, his own personal ‘champion’, and Prince Dorian wants her as his representative.

And so Calaena is taken to the Glass Palace, the one place she possibly despises more than the Salt Mines, to be a puppet for the King, the one person she despises more than her slavers; the man who is her slaver. Yet this is an entirely new world for Calaena: a world where she must regain her strength and skill, a world where she will be challenged in multitudinal new ways; a world where politics and not just brute force reigns.

Author Sarah J. Mass is a great new force in the world of teenage fantasy. In Calaena she has created a - generally - strong female who definitely knows how to kick some ass, and in Throne of Glass she has created a world simpler than George R R Martin’s Game of Thrones series, but with similarities that tap into the reading phenomenon he and his TV adaptation has created. As Calaena settles into her new rooms at the palace and her new training and fighting regime, a series of brutal and unsettling murders begins to ripple its way through the competing assassins. Who - or what - is behind them? Myth and power and otherworldiness surge through the plotline and Calaena is drawn deeper and deeper.

“You must listen to what I tell you. Nothing is a coincidence. Everything has a purpose. You were meant to come to this castle, just as you were meant to be an assassin, to learn the skills necessary for survival... 
“Something evil dwells in this castle, something wicked enough to shake the stars quake. Its malice echoes into all worlds,” the queen went on. “You must stop it. Forget your friendships, forget your debts and oaths. Destroy it, before it is too late, before a portal is ripped open so wide that there can be no undoing it.” (pg. 186)

Mass writes her story with real confidence and she writes it well, with just one small niggle. Calaena is, in so many ways, a strong and worthy heroine, except just now and again when she behaves in a rather weak and slightly snotty-teenagerish way, predominantly where the male sex is concerned. The real love interest in Maas’ story is Captain Chaol, yet Calaena is irritatingly drawn to Prince Dorian, and often in this aspect of the story she behaves in a weak and faltering manner that seems contradictory to her otherwise kick-ass character, diminishing the strength of what would otherwise have been an extremely positive role model, seeming to imply that its acceptable for girls to become simpering in the company of men, and making her just that bit annoying. However, we all make mistakes in love, don’t we? Perhaps that is the lesson for readers here and Calaena will go on to kick ass in all areas of her life.

Overall though, Throne of Glass is awesome. Again, as with my recent review of Rachel Hartman’s excellent Seraphina, it is truly great to see new types of fantasy being written for teenagers: fantasy that features strong women fighting for all that is good, rather than simply falling in love with supernatural beings and mooning about for a couple hundred pages. And also fantasy that, even though the main character is a girl, boys can enjoy and get gripped by as well. Bring it on please.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone, and Days of Blood and Starlight, by Laini Taylor

Laini Taylor has got to be one of the best new fantasy writers around at the moment.

First, in 2011, there came Daughter of Smoke and Bone, which was introduced to me care of the publisher, Hodder and Stoughton’s, nice little marketing campaign: a plain-bound proof with virtually no plot details, and a feather. A real feather floating out of its envelope. And inside the book I discovered a character and a world that gripped and amazed me. This is a book that truly crosses over; one of those stories that doesn’t begin overtly as a fantasy novel and so will win its way into the hearts of any die-hard anti-fantasy reader, before turning on them to become something else altogether.

And now Laini has written part two of her trilogy, Days of Blood and Starlight, which takes what she began in Daughter, both continuing her story and introducing a whole new level of awesomeness and new dimensions.

In Daughter of Smoke and Bone, we meet Karou. She leads a strange sort of double life.   Living in Prague, going to art school, hanging out and laughing with her friends. But Karou has no parents or family; instead she has Brimstone. She was raised by him, taught by him, cared for by him. But Brimstone is clearly not of this world: horned, eyes like a crocodile, bestower of magic, he lives and works in a shop that is ‘Elsewhere’, endlessly stringing teeth onto necklaces. Where is Elsewhere? Who is Brimstone? And what does he do with all those teeth? Karou is boiling over with answered questions about this part of her life, but they always go unanswered. Until she sneaks out the other door to his shop and sees... things she can explain even less. And then it gets worse: after she returns to Prague, the door to Brimstone’s shop is sealed. Will Karou ever see him again? And will she get the answers she needs?

Adventure, mystery, love story, war story, and everything in between, Daughter of Smoke and Bone is simply fabulous. Taylor turns our preconceptions of good and evil on their heads, and creating a world that is by turns breathtaking and terrifying. And she absolutely follows up the good work in Days of Blood and Starlight. By the beginning of book two, Karou has uncovered both her hidden history, that of Brimstone, and that of her lover Akiva too. In some ways she is now whole and wholly understanding, but the last revelation that Akiva throws at her leaves her reeling and lost - and in the perfect place to be preyed upon by the manipulative Thiago. How much of what Thiago tells Karou is truth and how much is lies?

Days of Blood and Starlight finds Karou and Akiva caught up in the rivalries of their peoples, each of them lost and alone and struggling to find again the things they used to believe in. They hopelessly entangled in a war on that feels like its on biggest scale imaginable, yet its about to get a whole lot bigger. I don’t want to give away all the careful plot details, but this is a story that just gets better and better. How Taylor came up with her ideas and her story arc is beyond me; it is just awesome. The secrets and lies that everyone weaves, the political machinations, the world-building; every part is just brilliant, flawlessly constructed and perfectly written. The story moves at quite a pace and by the time the end of the book is near, Taylor has introduced several new dimensions to the overall picture, setting up a really intriguing launchpad for the final part of the trilogy.

Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman

Isn’t it great when a book completely surprises you? I was sent Seraphina in a pile of review copies and wound up leaving it until almost last before picking it up. This turns out to have been a good thing because, whoa, what a dark horse. Out now in a much cooler paperback, the cover design and blurb on the hardback copy I had didn’t really do the story inside justice, hence the part where I had left it to the end. In short: Seraphina is fab, and how awesome to see some really interesting and different fantasy emerging into the teen market. Goodbye lovelorn vampires and werewolves: this is the real deal and treats the teenage reading audience with so much more respect.

Seraphina is set in Goredd, a world where humans and dragons coexist. For centuries they have been two peoples at war with each other, but finally, within the last human generation, they have reached a tentative peace and are learning to coexist in a more true sense: in a fascinating twist of world-building, the dragons in Rachel Hartman’s world have the ability to take human form. Thus they can walk in the city and learn human ways; for the humans’ sanity though, dragons must identify themselves as such by wearing a small bell, for the dragons’ sanity, they must undergo regular checks to ensure they are not developing emotions: for dragons, logic is everything.

Into this world steps Seraphina, a young woman who has taken on the role of music mistress in the royal palace. Little does she know how big her role in framing the future of Goredd is about to become. The peace between dragons and humans is as tenuous as a spider’s web, and there are some who would gladly break it. For starters, the prince has been murdered and all fingers point to the dragons. Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? With her impressive knowledge of dragons, Seraphina is drawn into the investigation and drawn into the life of the palace. But this puts her own safety at greater and greater risk, for she holds a powerful secret - can she keep it hidden? Will it be her downfall, or will she be the key to saving the kingdom?

Seraphina starts off strong, and then simply moves from strength to strength. The plotting is careful and intriguing, quietly introducing more threads and ideas as it builds and builds. Who is the traitor? Who can she trust? Medieval and modern all in one, there is murder and darkness, humour, a touch of romance, secrets and mysteries and political masterminding, and some really fabulous world-building to boot. The dragons are fully characterised, Hartman giving us a taster of both their natural form and their human, telling us the story through both up-to-the-minute action and flashbacks, all whilst encouraging us to consider certain moral and ethical questions. This is where fantasy works at its absolute best.

Seraphina is a book that absolutely deserves to have made it onto the 2013 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize shortlist, but I would be at pains to point out that the quality and the storytelling is of such a standard that it is just as equally deserving of a place in the adult fantasy section. Dragon author Christopher Paolini made his name with Eragon and the Inheritance series; personally, I think Seraphina is better. Original and with a strong female lead who knows how to stand up for herself, there is little more I would ask of Hartman, except this: deliver an equally awesome part two please. Ten out of ten.