Reviews with content warning for Classism - Crescent City - Wenn die Schatten sich erheben

Slightly underwhelming but still a good read. This book somehow simultaneously moves too fast and too slow and was a bit of a slog to get through. It also lacked so much of the emotional depth of characters and relationships we’ve come to know and love from SJM. It’s also inconsistent with previous books imo - previously unkillable, god-like characters get taken down like some run of the mill villain and so many things just seem to happen way to conveniently to be fully believable. Overall felt rushed. A fine read, but not what I expected for CC3.

Content Warnings

amschelly153's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

Really fun, well written read! Sarah managed to pull together many pieces in a gorgeous way that made me feel like I was putting together a difficult, but satisfying puzzle.

Content Warnings

vermontsnowboarder's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

It pains me to rate this book so low. I like Maas' books. I enjoy the characters, the worldbuilding, and the writing. This book fell flat in many ways. Before you read this review, please know that it contains SPOILERS. Big ones.

1. Pacing. The pacing throughout this entire book was off. Parts of it were dragged out unnecessarily

(I did not need pages upon pages of Bryce wandering through the tunnels, only to be repeated 500 pages later.)

Parts of it were rushed through. All of it was like getting whiplash over and over again. Honestly, there were far too many points of view. I doubt most authors could get a pacing that worked for so many different storylines.

2. Plotholes. Again, I think this is because there were too many different storylines to keep track of. But the mistakes were glaringly obvious.

Let's take Bryce at the beginning as an example. Rhys locked her up in the Hewn City. Knew that she would go through the grate. Made it so that she only saw one path. After we were told over and over again that "even Rhys doesn't know these tunnels are here".

??? Make it make sense. This is one example of many things that don't add up and contradict.

3. Repetition. Ok, all of this can be blamed on too many storylines. One storyline would end. That last paragraph would be *marginally* rephrased and then used at the beginning the next time that storyline was picked back up. A literary technique might be used here, but it wasn't used well. I would have thought the editors would have caught how jarring it was to repeat sentences. But it was more than just that.

I know that Maas was attempting to draw the connection between Midgard and the original world of the Fae (we still don't know what that planet is called, despite five books taking place there). But the repetition of Bryce walking through the same tunnels on two different worlds was a bit much.

4. The characters. I've never been a big fan of Bryce and Hunt. Bryce was excellent in the first book and has only slid wildly downhill into being an unrelatable, whingy, my way or the highway. Hunt was still cardboard. Truthfully, the only characters that were developed and interesting were Ruhn and Lidia. The fact that she did well writing them and devoted a similar amount of space means that if more care was taken, we could have cared about the others as well. Even well-established characters weren't written well.

We saw Rhys once, in the beginning. Really? He is the most powerful high lord in history, and he manages to talk to Bryce once. Gotcha. Nesta, at least, made sense and was written all right. But it is not at all believable that Bryce would be able to get Truth-Teller away from Azriel. Super Powerful Magical Starborn Princess nonsense aside - there is no way that the shadows and his training failed that badly.

It just....wasn't believable.

5. Writing. There are many instances of weak writing. It feels a bit odd for me to say about an author that I like so much. Having read everything Maas has written, I know that she can write torture scenes well.

Aelin went through it in Kingdom of Ash.

And we were given this watered-down jumble? Maas did not make me care that they were getting tortured. My heart didn't hurt, it wasn't sad, it wasn't brutal. It just was. I think it was because it was all past. There wasn't an action that she cut away from. She would cut to after, occasionally right before. But there was no skin in the game. Nothing for us to feel emotionally attached to. Battles. From ToG and ACOTAR, we know that Maas can write battles (some of them are better than others, but we know she can) well. Yet this giant battle that the entire book felt like it was working up to was blase. Boring and nonexistent. Where was the heartbreak? Where was the emotion? Where was the fear? It wasn't at this battle if you can even call it that.

After all that work to get Hel to Midgard to help them fight, we barely noticed their presence. The Asteri, who are supposedly the biggest bad that there ever was, were barely an inconvenience.

Content Warnings

traceyanderson's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Content Warnings

dani_reis's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5

HEAVY SPOILERS IN REVIEW

I wholeheartedly disagree with Bloomsbury giving out ARCs. The amount of people spoiling the story pre-release is unacceptable.

The ending was too focused on being a HEA and tried making a neat little packaged ending. Instead of cliffhanger POVs, I just felt like they were useless. Tharian headed back to Ariadne, and his wife going after another love. Then Ithan not telling literally anyone "don't drink the water after" because wtf are they supposed to drink? Sigrid just being a loose end. I think it's Perry, Amelie's sister, who isn't explained at all, and I'm not sure I care.

The crossover. Was it even necessary?? They spent the whole time in the caves. She leaves them wanting to kill her or slice off her back, and she's like "hey, you're all cool, take my fragile, human parents who I'd split worlds to save." But she never stepped out of the caves to experience fae culture to change her mind about fae.

Hel. Hel was not even needed because she could have just had a conversation with Aidas. They didn't even explore Hel, and sounds like they never will go back.

Hunt was pretty toxic in this book. I am anticipating that Hunt and Bryce have issues in future books (please be only one more).

As a whole, I really enjoyed it. It had lots of action. But let's just admit: Lydia carried this book, until the "I have secret children plot."

Bonus chapter from Walmart: liked it. Gave us insight to why she maybe gave up her parents to them.

Bonus from B&N: meh. I wanted to skim it. Near the end it was cute, but kind of mad I own the copy.

Bonus from indie: loved it. Thank fucking god. Approve of this one.

Still need to read the other bonus chapters.

Content Warnings

heidishartrandnewell's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

Content Warnings

stardust_heidi's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional inspiring mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

Detailed review to come.

I wantto give it 5 stars, but the trauma in Part 1 was excessive to the point of being more shock value than quality content for the plot. And I'm not about that life. I'm still processing, and either way, it doesn't really matter. I was glued to this book for 3 days.

Content Warnings

More...