Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass series, published between 2012 and 2018, contains seven books and an accompanying collection of short stories, The Assassin’s Blade (2014). The main series comprises Throne of Glass (2012), Crown of Midnight (2013), Heir of Fire (2014), Queen of Shadows (2015), Empire of Storms (2016), Tower of Dawn (2017), and Kingdom of Ash (2018). The books gained popularity and have been included in several Fantasy and YA Fiction lists, earning the Goodreads Best Young Adult Fantasy and Science-Fiction Award in 2015 and 2018.

The series follows Celaena Sardothien, a young assassin later revealed to be the presumed-dead queen of Terrasen, Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, in her efforts to free her kingdom from evil creatures and rebuild her kingdom. The story begins with Celaena being imprisoned as a slave in the mines of Endovier in a country called Adarlan, which is ruled by an all-powerful, evil king. The king organizes a contest to choose his next champion, and Celaena is recruited due to her skills as an assassin. She eventually wins the competition and starts working for the king while befriending the prince, Dorian, and the captain of the guards, Chaol.

Additionally, magic has been banned from Adarlan for 10 years, but strange events lead the three friends to investigate and discover that the king threw a spell to make it vanish.