Throne of Glass
by Sarah J. Maas (Bloomsbury, 2012)
audiobook read by Elizabeth Evans (Bloomsbury, 2021)
Maas empowers her protagonist only to lose her in paint-by-numbers world-building, a sputtering plot and—most egregiously—a Bermuda love-triangle drawn and redrawn with the mutability (and consequence) of an open-ended rock, paper, scissors game. A readable enough debut but majorly overhyped.
Six of Crows
by Leigh Bardugo (Henry Holt, 2015)
audiobook read by Fred Berman, Brandon Rubin, Elizabeth Evans, Tristan Morris, Jay Snyder, Lauren Fortgang, and Roger Clark (Bolinda, 2019)
A well-constructed heist fantasy, nominally young adult, with adept world-building, memorable characters, first-rate scheming and an audiobook ably served by its numerous voice artists. For a work this long, however, the reader deserves closure, not a cop-out to sequel amidst the crescendo.
House of Earth and Blood
by Sarah J. Maas (Bloomsbury, 2020); audiobook read by Elizabeth Evans (Audible, 2020)
A long novel that glows brighter with every chapter. What seems at first ‘merely’ a winning character study (of female empowerment against male alpha-holes) reveals itself to be so much more: an intricately crafted and truly gripping, crescendoing epic. Audiobook highly recommended.