Book Rants

Every character, and I mean every character, just had to be in a relationship by the end of the series. Dorian was the one guy who didn't have a particularly good one, but he could have. It just irritated me. Oh, and all the relationships are as straight as a ruler. There are obvious signs that same-sex relationships are not looked down on, but not a single major character is in one.

The magic system is absolutely terrible. Things are thrown in for the heck of it, twisted and distorted, then forgotten. Does anyone even remember the "Moonfire" Aelin uses? That literally came up ONCE. And it was just so she could blow up some ships. Oh, and the "raw magic" Dorian has makes him a god. He can do anything at all; turn into liquid fire, shapeshift, use elemental magic, make kinky invisible hands, constrict people, and I forget what else.
Oh, and shapeshifting in general is poorly done. There seems to be no barriers involved. If I want to become a flea, I can. if I want to turn into a raging sea dragon the next, I can, assuming I see a picture of it first. Yaaay.
The court of Terrasen is messed up. Everyone's COMPLETELY loyal to Aelin, or one of her friends; there is no chance of betrayal whatsoever. It's such a perfect little court that it becomes unrealistic.

After one point, all the wretched sex became unbearable. It reads like fanfic smut, and the descriptions are... I can't even.
That reminds me; there's all the nonsense that Fae childbirth is very dangerous, but it's implied that Rowan and Aelin have five kids. Wow. Just wow.
99% of the male characters are the same; aggressive to each other, dedicated to their lover, loyal to Aelin.
There is zero racial diversity. You'll see mentions of that a lot in discussions; all the characters are white and perfect in every way. The one coloured character, the one character I loved, died in the very first book.
Wyrdmarks can do anything. Why don't the characters use them for whatever purpose they have? Because plot development.

And there are a ton of loopholes in the plot, of which I don't remember everything.

I was furious with how the battles have zero strategy. It's just "chaaaaarge" and get killed or miraculously win.
In the last few books, everybody wants to help Aelin. From a random group of wolf-riding Fae, mentioned once or twice in the whole series, to a sect of witches that have been hunted to near extinction, and the other sect who decide to forget everything they stood for because of a shoddy speech, a prince who sails to another continent because he vaguely knows his distant cousin, and a bunch of pirates who show up right when they're needed, the whole world wants to be her ally.
Wait, let's not forget faeries and a stag. Because.

Oh, I just have to mention the end. It was awful.
I mean, after so many novels, the big baddie is beaten by a character introduced in the second last book? It was poorly done, and it felt as though Maas had no idea how to get rid of the villain and came up with something extremely feeble at the last moment. And not a single POV character died, which made me wonder what the point of all the epic fighting was.
That's it for now.
If anyone wants to have a discussion on the series, let's talk!

Yes, just yes.
I totally agree about everything you said because the book is kind of weird. Some of the characters are overpowered like Dorian's powers, which I mean, stop.making.people.too.strong.because it makes the reading experience less than ideal. Maas is a good author, but the plot makes everything run on and it gets boring.

Ugh, where do I begin?
It's poignant, but I hate how Death keeps reminding us that people will die at this date, or that time next Tuesday. It is repetitive and I don't like when a book always reminds of a future character or death to come because it ruins the surprise aspect of reading. I guess that the approach was to make a sadness factor.

Also, I didn't see any minor character development of Liesel, which I believe is important. Maybe the author was too busy passing out spoilers throughout and he forgot to make the main actually improve.

So.. I saw the title 'book rants' and the Throne of Glass series immediately popped into my head. I came here so fast just to see that you'd already beaten me to it lol.

I completely agree. I bought the entire series on a recommendation and now it's sitting on my shelf gathering dust and I have so much regret. I made it maybe three or four books into the series before I had to give it up. Celaena/Aelin is one of the most unlikable protagonists I've ever read about and a total Mary Sue.

I know a lot of people like this series so I typically refrain from bashing it, but to be honest, I can't stand the main character. As I kept reading more and more, I started to realize that the world revolved around Celaena and everyone loves her. It seemed to me that all the characters were bland, attractive people with forgettable personalities and few motives aside from helping Celaena.

Plagiarism. That's all I can say. Paolini has plagiarized stuff from lesser known stories and books, and also from Tolkien himself. I can't bring up the Star Wars point, because to be honest a LOT of books follow that arc nowadays. It's practically becoming a trope. But I will say Paolini took more of Star Wars than a lot of other books did.
Let's talk about elves. Yes, people use them, a lot, but Paolini did practically NOTHING new with them; they're immortal, elite, magical, physically amazing and freakin perfect people. Dump the elves of Arda here and you wouldn't spot a difference.
And please. The singing to trees thing is overused, so, so much. It's such a bore to read nowadays.
It is possible to write Tolkien-style stories without leaning so heavily on his stories. This, however, doesn't even seem to try, to the point it's almost embarrassing. Paolini could have pulled it off even then, if his style wasn't so amateurish. For example, if he wants his characters to speak with a dialect, he removes a few random vowels and syllables to the point where the only person capable of speaking like that would be someone with half their teeth missing, or a mouth full of jelly.
The result is that the series reads some cheap fanfic from a fantasy-obsessed teenager who wrote for his satisfaction and not for an audience with good taste.

Ancient language that controls magic and whatnot; stolen from Tales of Earthsea. He didn't even try to make a unique system of his own. In fact, this system is just BAD. Practically anything is possible if you don't consider the "fact" that magicians will die. And seriously, whoever has the name of the ancient language (Jesus, he could have named it something creative) is a god. There's no debate here. They're a GOD.
Oh, and if Murtagh knew the name, why on earth didn't he break free of Galbatorix, considering that the name can warp anything?
The last two books were TERRIBLE. They were boring, with "worldbuilding" that was painful to see.


Honestly I could go on for AGES about this. But at the end of the day, i think if he hadn't had rich parents who published it and let him tour, it would NOT be such a big deal.
Drop a note here if you want a full-blown essay on this, lol.

Oh, and here's a little something: it isn't a serious review, but it made me snort more than once. http://impishidea.com/criticism/everyth ... ith-eragon