Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - Iron Flame - Flammengeküsst

I'd put off reading this since finishing the first as I wanted to both cosy up to it in Autumn and have a breather between the first two books as I'd heard that they were quite similar to each other. I can see what people mean when they say this, but it would be in the same way you'd describe all Harry Potter books as the same, particularly in the beginning when the world and school life is still being established.

Physically getting back into reading for the first time in a few years - this book was a demotivating thing to hold in my hands and for the first few days I would read for an hour and feel like I was making little progress. One Sunday, I tried to make better progress with the book, and sat down and feel like I blinked and a few hours later I'd devoured around 350-400 pages in one sitting.

I left myself with about 80 pages to finish and I was wishing those 80 pages to end as I read them (possibly as I was a bit annoyed I didn't manage to get to them in that one sitting!).

Whilst I did enjoy the story, at times I felt like it was a long - and particularly by the end of the book, the first part of the book I felt like could have been cut down significantly as Part 1's events felt a distant memory by the end and they were so much less significant within the storyline as a whole. I think these would have been suited as 2 shorter books as Part 2's action really outshone Part 2 IMHO.

Where it also lost points were at times the story felt like it was vomiting information at me, maybe because I've not read much fantasy it was taking me longer to grasp some concepts that are maybe common in other books. The book at times throws so much at you for example : wards, tomes, luminary - and the explanations can be chaotic or they just expect you to get it.

The book is largely spent trying to get your head around Wards, and at the end Brennan fixes the Basgaith ward but it is entirely unexplained. I reread the chapter as I thought surely I've missed something here but felt like even Rebecca Yarros had ran out of ideas on how Brennan may have saved the day.

Sad that Varrish's time in the plot ended so soon - actually felt like he was fairly compelling as a bad guy from within.

Personally, felt like Cat could have been cut from the storyline, the "my hot ex" line seemed irrelevant to Xaden who seemed completely unphased by her presence and nonchalant about their betrothement - and all it really did was create some light bickering within the storyline between Cat and Violet, her character needs more point and development in further books.

The last line of the book did change my perception of what I thought was going to be a bit of a flat ending, but a cliffhanger 3 words at the end had me excelled, had this been a tv show episode i would have been screaming at the tv if the series had been left there. I've seen other reviews mention it's feeling like pacing for a tv series with mini sub plots required for a tv audience to feel like a story is progressing, and that made complete sense to me, but feel like some of these un-necessarily added to the length of the book.

Content Warnings