This book is so good, it's got to be fattening. 
 I can feel it clogging my arteries, wearing cavities into my teeth, making my waistband tighter with each passing page; give me the rest of this series and I'll not only swell roughly to the size of Mercury, but I'll be pretty fracking happy about it, too. 
 Ok, so maybe the cheese is what's bloating me, but it's been a long time since I read anything really corny, thus the Scene That Shall Not Be Named didn't stir me that much. Honestly, it just made me laugh. And that was nice. I've been reading travel memoir lately which, while dear to my heart, isn't always much of a merry jaunt down literary lane. So I'll kindly forgive my new BFF Sarah J. Mass for building up this epic Jenga tower of a plot only for it to all collapse around my childish giggling. (I'm so sorry. But a flying ghost saved you from death with the power of...wind? Please.) 
 Sure, this isn't the most original book ever written, but at this point, there isn't an idea alive that's one hundred per cent fresh. Who cares if Maas was inspired by other works in the YA field? She knew what she wanted to do and she did it. This book isn't even really about the whole competition of Champions: it's about Celaena and her strength of will and her very dark past and her need to do whatever is necessary to secure her freedom. And I loved that. I loved that very much. Here we have a heroine who has been trained as a weapon since the age of eight (and we find this plot device in many, I say many, a YA novel, but here it actually felt emotional. It actually had weight) and... 
 Okay, let's take a brief break, because I was just eating a piece of pita bread and I bit my tongue really fucking hard and I now can taste pennies. 
 So Celaena's a badass with a Tragic Past, but it's not the hokey sort of Tragic Past that everyone kind of cries over but in the end you just don't really care. The thing is that Celaena's such a colourful character, and my little heart breaks for her, and I fell completely in love with her from the very start. I related to her so strongly, and that's some writing skill, considering she's an assassin and I am not. (Or am I?) 
 Chaol is my dreamboat, and I love him, and Dorian is so painfully dull, but the romance is on the back seat just enough that it doesn't have to matter if you don't want it to. (view spoiler)[And it's okay because in the end, Celaena decides that her dream of freedom is more important than a dalliance with a prince, and that was the moment in which my eternal fealty was pledged to her. This is a heroine who is practical and who won't trade her goals to stare starry-eyed at a dude. That's important, guise, in a genre where the heroine is always the one to offer the sacrifice in order for her and her "true love" to be together - whether it's losing her humanity or killing herself or leaving her family and friends or giving up her education or giving in to having children when she doesn't want to. In this genre, women are the sacrificers, and their men look on, forlorn, "applauding" their "bravery" while remaining unchanged and ultimately only receiving without having to give at all. So that's why Celaena's dresses and her books and her little dog don't, in my eyes, make her 'annoying'. Because she takes control of her life and her sexuality and that's the sort of heroine we should be falling in love with. (hide spoiler)] 
 The plot fell apart a little bit towards the end, enough to knock off a star from my rating - I was rereading passages, confused about what was going on. (view spoiler)[And honestly? I don't know that I would have picked this book up if I'd known we were dealing with faeries. I don't like faeries. They irritate me. I find them dull and confusing and ultimately, their stories are too small for me. There is only so much scope when you're dealing with forest deities that lead backpackers into bogs. (hide spoiler)]That said, the good parts are mega, and the dialogue and writing hold it all together, even when it starts to hobble on shaky ground. Good save, Sarah. Good save. (view spoiler)[And to be honest, now that I'm into the story? I don't mind the faerie thing. Like, whatever. I'll get used to it for Celaena's sake. Who knows? Maybe I'll change my mind about...oh, who am I kidding. I'll try and push past it. (hide spoiler)] 
 So, yeah, I'll be following this series. Hell, yeah. I've already started reading Crown of Midnight, and I'll be picking up Heir of Fire when it comes out in paperback (man, hardbacks are expensive these days! Whew!). 
 So, how's that for a review? See, sometimes I'm nice. Sometimes I'm a fucking delight.