She saw the floor first. Red marble, its white veins illuminated in the light of the sun, which slowly vanished as the opaque glass doors groaned shut.

…so, what, you built a glass floor and then laid marble over it?  I’m still failing to see the point of a “glass castle” when really, all the book seems to want is a normal castle with a glass shell around the outside of it to make it sparkly.

Frankly, a glass shell makes more sense anyway.  Maybe that’s what they have and they just tell people it’s “all” glass to sound impressive.

Cally is quaking in her boots at meeting the king, which seems really odd.  I know he sentenced her to the mines last time she saw him, but we’ve been bashed over the head with how she’s the greatest assassin ever.  Supposedly she’s been in all sorts of tight spots and seen all sorts of terrible things, but all that’s in the past, and the first time the book deals with her facing down anything unpleasant, she can barely function for fear.  It’s not like the king himself even did anything to terrify her, she’s just associating him with her sentencing!  I get that she can be nervous and have bad memories and all that, and I get that people can react like this to stress and that’s fine.  However, people who react like this to stress do not become world-famous assassins.

The king spoke at last. “Now that you’ve all finally bothered to arrive, perhaps we can begin.” 

I think the book wants me to hate the king for this, but no, I don’t.  Yeah, he changed the time of the ceremony and all that, but this is also a competition to see who’s the best badass in the land.  ‘Expect the unexpected’ goes hand-in-hand with that, and so does ‘take proactive steps.’  She knew this was the first day of stuff, but she just sat in her room idly waiting for someone to come get her the whole time.

She finally gets to see the other competitors.  They’re all men.  Once again, we don’t have a world where women can be awesome, we have a world where one woman is awesome enough to rise above her naturally weak gender.

Most of the competitors’ attention jumped right over her. She gritted her teeth. The dress had been a mistake.

Because when you’re in a deathmatch competition, the most important thing is to make sure everyone knows you’re a serious threat, so they all gang up on you first.

What?

The king explains the mechanics of the competition, which seems like a role below his ego.  Shouldn’t the sponsors be doing that?  He’s the king, not an MC.  Anyway, they’ll have a gameshow-esque elimination competition once a week, and one person each week will be sent packing, presuming they don’t die in the process of losing.  The final four will have an all-out duel to see who’s the final winner.

Still no word on why he needs a Champion instead of that whole fucking army that he’s got.  Want someone killed?  Take your pick of who you send to kill them.

Hell, there’s an assassin’s guild that’s still hanging around.  Why not just hire a few of them?

Also, the rest of the court knows there’s some contest going on, but not the specifics, so they’re to keep that under wraps.  Because…reasons.

Cally spends a while thinking about how he’s the most murderous murder in the room, because of wars and such, and then the king says he’ll be gone most of the competition period and dismisses them.  Not a very grand little ceremony.  The same thing could have been accomplished with a memo.

Dorian meets Cally and Chaol out in the hallway to chitchat.  Dorian explains that they invented a cover story for her.  Before, when this was brought up, he said that the government had lied about her age because being a afraid of such a young criminal was considered a black eye, and here Dorian says they’re lying because people knowing she’s a super famous assassin could be used against her?  I’m not really sure how, but whatever.  Her new story is that she’s the daughter of a rich merchant but got her kicks as a jewel thief, and Dorian met her when she tried to rob him.

Suddenly, the Main Mean Girl from before comes by to talk to Dorian.  Her name is actually Kaltain.

The assassin might have bothered to care about the slight if she had any interest in courtiers.

These epithets continue to be absolutely useless, if anyone was wondering.

Dorian is openly disdainful of Kate, because it’s not like he’s embroiled in politics and would need to keep up a good public face or anything.  Nope!  Showing off how pathetic the Mean Girl is, that’s far more important!

They dither on for a while, even sneaking in a reference to how very, very, very pale and white Cally is.  Because it’s not enough to utterly lack diversity in your books, no, you have to hammer in that your protagonist is the whitest of the white folks, too.

Like most things when it comes to diversity and exposure, this wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t in 93% of books.  So I’m not necessarily saying that they did a bad thing by writing about whites, but I am saying that they’re part of the problem.

After Kate and Dorian leave, Chaol and Cally talk about how terrible Kate is.  Classy, book.

I hate women like that. They’re so desperate for the attention of men that they’d willingly betray and harm members of their own sex.

First of all, Kate show no inclination toward harming you.

Second of all, you cannot throw that line out in a medieval-esque setting, not without giving us some more context.  So far, the only people in power that we’ve seen have been male and if it’s following a traditional feudal/royal set up from that time period, then women are actually barred from openly taking power for themselves.  So exerting influence on males is literally the only avenue they have toward controlling their environment.  Turning around and shitting on them for doing it is extremely hypocritical.

Might as well say “god, why can’t she just stay in her place?”

You can almost make an argument for women doing that in modern times, but on the other hand, the most you can say is that it’s annoying to you personally.  If someone wants attention, that’s a very natural impulse, especially since everyone in this book seems to be teenagers.

So after the two have a good laugh while mocking Kate behind her back, they part ways until the next morning.

Celaena felt as if she’d barely closed her eyes when a hand jabbed her side. She groaned, wincing as the drapes were thrown back to welcome the morning sun.

“Wake up.” Not surprisingly, it was Chaol.

She shimmied beneath the blankets, pulling them over her head, but he grabbed the covers and threw them to the floor.

Ladies and gentlemen: the greatest assassin in the land.

Cally continues to act like a brat, being slow and complaining about the cold floor.

Yet again, there were no knives. She stabbed her fork into a piece of sausage.

Because heavens knows you can’t possible stab a person with a fork.

She gets dressed in a shirt and pants, then complains about the shirt and pants, because Cally is yet another character that could claim the sky is too blue in heaven.

Any why is Chaol waking her up and cajoling her into getting ready?  Does this guy really not have a job?

They get to a big giant work out room full of weapons, because there’s no way that could go wrong in a room full of deadly criminals.  There’s even mention of one young man firing arrows with ‘unnerving accuracy,’ but no one thinks “shit, what if he starts shooting at the guards?”

Cally runs across another man named Cain, who Duke P is sponsoring.  Apparently he’s a mountain of muscle, because that’s really what you want for your super-sneaky assassin?  Jeeze, anyone could see that guy coming from a mile away.  If you’re going to be blunt about things, really, WHY NOT JUST SEND IN THE ARMY?

“Good morning,” he said, his voice raspy and deep. His dark eyes snaked along her body, then found her face again. “I’d have thought you’d be running home by now.”

She gave him a close-lipped smile. “The fun’s just starting, isn’t it?” Cain returned her smile and stalked off.

It would have been so, so easy. So easy to whirl and grab him by the neck and slam his face into the ground. She didn’t even realize she was trembling with rage until Chaol stepped into her line of vision. “Save it for the competition,” he said softly, but not weakly.

“I’m going to kill him,” she breathed.

You really have no self-control at all, do you?

It’s not like she can’t be angry about someone being dismissive and leering at her, of course.  But why is it sending her over the edge when, really, she should have dealt with much worse?  I mean, I’m all for not bringing up the ‘rape your prison slaves’ possibility, but even leaving that out, she’s already said that there’s a lot of competition in the assassin’s guild she used to work in.  Did she start shaking with rage every time someone made a slightly disparaging comment about her?

He’s just a brute from the king’s army

WELL IF YOU’RE WILLING TO USE ARMY GUYS, THEN WHY NOT JUST USE ARMY GUYS?  THEN YOU CAN HAVE LOTS OF ASSASSINS!

Chaol decides to spar with her, because apparently ‘Captain of the Guard’ is a meaningless title in this world.  They banter for a bit, then fight.  They’re pretty evenly matched for most of it, but then Chaol gets the upper hand by backing her up until she trips over…um…

He grinned at her, and before she could comprehend the words, something cut into her feet and—

She had the sickening feeling of falling. She gasped as her spine collided with marble, the rapier flying from her hand.

Magic?  Did he swipe her feet with his sword?  But she’s not cut afterward, and that wouldn’t make her fall over, so… ???

She pushed herself onto her elbows. “You had to resort to tripping me. That’s hardly winning at all.”

Apparently Cally killed all her assassination victims by challenging them to a gentleman’s duel.

Drinking Game Count:  Epithets – 7, Bragging – 3, Exclamation Marks – 14

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