2.5/5 Stars. 
 The first time I saw the description for this book, I was incredibly interested. A kickass assassin kicking butt in a bid to win her freedom? Sign me up. I later completely forgot about this, and finally got it from my library after I was told that it was fantastic. 
 After finishing it, my first instinct was "I guess it was fine?". I just wasn't attached in any way to this. I liked the writing, but it didn't blow me away. The action/plot was pretty good- but I couldn't care less about the characters. Any good points are neutralized by bad points, and it all just boils down to being fine. 
 I think the biggest reason I couldn't get attached to the book was its heroine- Caleana Sardothien (no idea how to pronounce that), 18 yr old master assassin. When I think of spies and assassins, the first descriptions that spring to mind are along the lines of subtle, blending into the background, cunning, observant. She is none of these things. Her characterization is just incredibly inconsistent/she's a Mary Sue. 
 -She's portrayed at being the best at everything, and even things she isn't good at, she masters relatively quickly without seeming to struggle. In order to make it seem as though she has trouble, the author repeatedly throws in mentions of Caleana running laps then vomiting. 
 -She is told to remain solidly in the middle of the pack of competitors, in order to observe the others, and not make herself a target-solid plan. Instead, she is determined to show off in every competition and pouts when she doesn't place first. 
 -Repeatedly throughout the novel, characters walk in on her sleeping and wake her up, or find her and startle her. In fact, about 80% through the book, she's awake when someone enters her room and I was incredibly impressed. 
 -She finds a bag of candy outside her door, and gobbles it down, without even a thought that it could be poisoned, while other competitors in the castle are being murdered. 
 -She mentions having issues with heights when she's in the high up glass castle, but a while later she's off scaling up walls (maybe her issue with heights is only when it comes to glass structures, not sure). 
 -She's supposed to have a secret identity while she's in the castle, but her guard addresses her by her real name and she has no reaction, yet when another competitor finds out her identity, its a problem (In the former case, it might just be poor editing, but I was a bit confused). 
 -She realizes she has feelings for the prince, and mentions several times and how she'd like to kiss him. A few chapters later, she vehemently declares to her friend that she could never love anyone in his family. Then she's back to liking him and thinking about kissing him. 
 I think I found her most irritating when she repeatedly insults the king for being a murderer. The King, by all means, is a pretty terrible character. But it seemed incredibly odd that an assassin could condemn someone for killing other people, seeing as she amassed quite a fortune murdering people. She does mention that she has standards, as in not killing children. But throughout the novel, she doesn't seem to have any regret about killing. In fact, not regretting killing people is fine for an assassin- probably a good thing, in fact. But I'm not sure where she's getting her moral superiority from. 
 The other characters were as forgettable as Caleana was annoying. The King is evil. His advisor, the Duke is evil. The girl who wants to marry the prince is shown to only care about herself and how to better her position. The prince is handsome and a flirt. The captain of the guard is a stoic knight in shining armor. There's a love triangle. Nothing groundbreaking or interesting. 
 The plot was what saved the book, honestly. It wasn't great, but more interesting than the characters, by far. While this tournament is being held, competitors are being savagely ripped apart during the night. But the only one who seems concerned at all is Chaol, stoic Captain of the Guard. You'd think vicious murders would alert a master assassin that something is wrong? Not until 2-3 people are killed in this fashion. In fact, the prince even shrugs it off as a possible consequence of a drunken brawl. In my (admittedly limited) experience with drunken brawls, you usually don't end up with a victim ripped to shreds and missing their brains. Once Caleana finally rouses herself to care about the fact that her fellow competitors are being picked off, and that she might be next, she obviously finds clues while inspecting the crime scene (she actually uses this term, which isn't incorrect but seems so out of place with the times that I actually laughed out loud) that were missed by literally everyone else. Maybe the king is so evil because he's irritated this his palace guards/crime scene investigators are pretty incompetent. The villain(s) behind this plot are pretty easy to spot, but it still made for an interesting storyline. 
 Usually, even when I'm not a fan of a book, I read the next installments in the series just to find out what happened. I'm not even sure I'll do that with this series. If I do, its to hope that the characterization improves. 
 If anyone's interested in books with a similar theme, I'd recommend Poison Study, Six of Crows, or for a much more mature read, the Game of Thrones series. Poison Study is about a girl who escapes execution by becoming the head of government's new taste tester, while Six of Crows has a bit of an Ocean's 11 feel, but for young adults. There's a teenaged female assassin who is much more interesting than Caleana, and the cast is pretty well developed/characterized.