Sarah J. Maas‘ popular fantasy series Throne of Glass has an ever-growing cult following. The absurdly popular series is best described as ‘Cinderalla but with knives’. The first book (also called Throne of Glass) follows the journey of Celaena, a teenage assassin in a corrupted kingdom with a tyrannical ruler. The series itself expands into the realms of conspiracy and is pretty much a tight, action-based series of thrillers set in a fantasy world. Maas’ work is filled with detailed description and beauty. So it’s interesting that they’ve decided to produce a colouring book.
The Throne of Glass Colouring Book is a sequence of scenes plucked from the entire series, with a couple of paragraphs on one page and then an accompanying illustration on the opposite page. All of your favourite heroes are present, of course. Celaena Manon, Elide, Lysandra, Arobynn and Aedion are all lovingly rendered in black and white. The drawing of Fleetfoot the dog is particularly adorable, and the accompanying text reminds the reader of the scene in which she first met the cute little puppy.
The scenes really don’t tell the story of Throne of Glass at all. It seems they’ve been selected solely on the criteria of what makes a good picture for colouring-in. The line drawings range from the simple to the incredibly detailed. Unusually for a colouring book, there is no one page filled with the same image over and over again. It’s not really a book for mindless doodling, it’s a book that inspires you to make art. (Colouring is art. If you don’t believe us, ask anyone who works in comics.) It’s a pretty thing even if you don’t scribble in the pages, but it would be a bit of a waste if you didn’t use it.
One of the marks of a good fiction is when you discover exactly how sharply and quickly it’s captured people’s imaginations. Art, song, fan-fiction are all ways that dedicated readers scoop up anything connected to a world. This is especially common with genre books, because well written genre tends to have strong central characters and powerful world building, and that’s the sort of thing that sparks imaginations. The Throne of Glass Colouring Book is not a mindfulness book; it’s not meant for relaxing doodling. Instead it’s intended to draw you into the world created by Sarah J. Maas through the medium of coloured pens and pencils. One for the fans of the series. But with the TV series on its way, those fans may very well be on the rise.
THE THRONE OF GLASS COLOURING BOOK / AUTOR: SARAH J. MAAS / ARTIST: YVONNE GILBERT, JOHN HOWE, CRAIG PHILLIPS / PUBLISHER: BLOOMSBURY CHILDREN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
