What I’d Pay: $10
To sum it up: A young female assassin is given a chance to escape her imprisonment in the salt mines if she can win a competition to become the king’s official assassin.
I think my expectations were a little too high for this book and I ended up disappointing myself.
This book sounded so promising and it gets lots of rave reviews on other blogs, but I thought it was just okay. It didn’t really capture my attention until about halfway through the book when some exciting things started happening. Until that point, I was honestly a little bored. Part of the problem was that I did not like the main character. I appreciate a strong female character who can take care of herself, and this heroine certainly fits that bill, but there’s a thin line between confidence and arrogance. Her cockiness gets really old after awhile and grated on my nerves. The other aspect of the book that I didn’t like was the love triangle. I really dislike the use of love triangles in books, and a lot of this particular story centers around that. In this instance, it was at least easy to see how she could have feelings for both guys, since they are both good characters, but it’s apparent to the reader (or at least to me) which one she should end up with even though she is clueless for most of the book. For someone who is a smart, tough assassin, it seemed like she missed a lot of obvious cues. Despite those two disappointing aspects of the book, once the plot picked up the story was very exciting and I can understand why a lot of people really enjoy this series. I haven’t decided if I will read the second book, but the love triangle appeared to dissolve towards the end of this book so it just might convince me to pick up the next installment.
Bottomline: This is an exciting story about a strong female assassin, and despite a slow beginning it does pick up about halfway through. I imagine the series gets very entertaining and fun to read if it maintains the action in the second half of this first book, but if you’re annoyed by love triangles (like me) then it might be hard for you to really enjoy this particular book. I picked up the ebook from the LA library after a few weeks wait.
No Money 4 Books 