Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - House of Flame and Shadow

While overall enjoyable, this was a truly forgettable and underwhelming conclusion to the Crescent City series. Bryce’s poor character development, the lacklustre romance, the disjointed P.O.V’s, and the unrefined plot, made this a disappointing and, at times, frustrating read. The high stakes, searing romance, and heart-pounding tension of Kingdom of Ash and A Court of Wings and Ruin were nowhere to be seen. Despite being the first of SJM’s series to be promoted as Adult Fantasy from the very beginning, I found this series to be far more immature than its predecessors.

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stevienotnicks's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional tense slow-paced

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

4.0

I have no idea how I read this beast so quickly, but SJM has a way of sucking you into her worlds so completely that time has no meaning.

This is the third a the series, so look away if you don’t want general Crescent City Spoilers…

Where to even begin?! Because it’s been so long since I’ve read CC1 and CC2 I had forgotten how this series leans more into high fantasy storytelling than ACOTAR. It really does callback a lot of lore from ACOTAR and a smidge from ToG and while I really don’t think you HAVE to read those series before jumping in, some of the reveals lose a bit of their umfph without that knowledge.

If you’ve followed me for awhile, you know that “found family” is one of my absolute favorite tropes. HOFAS really leans into this, developing even deeper connections between the characters we fell for in the first two books, while introducing to more characters to love. I’m also a big fan of high stakes magical battles & HOFAS delivers!

So why only a four star, you might ask? The pacing is thrown off by the flip flopping between a million POVs. There are so many subplots in this book, I feel like I was reading four entirely different stories. I kept waiting for them to coalesce in some epic way by the end, but I really just found myself trudging through Ithan’s storyline because it was SOOOOO boring. Sorry not sorry.

Despite that, I really enjoyed this one and am excited to see what happens next. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go rest my hands & wrists from holding this one up for hours lol

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drsilverfox's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful fast-paced

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

4.0

Overall I enjoyed returning to this world and these characters! However, the resolution felt rushed at the end and there were some choices from some of the characters that felt off. Still a majorly impressive book tying together a lot of major plot points with some heartwarming scenes.

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betweentheshelves's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional medium-paced

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

3.0

Honestly, I gave this an extra star purely because they do research (or should I say "research," I don't feel like a lot of research actually happens) in a library with a card catalog. That made my little librarian heart happy. But Sarah J. Maas is at the point where I don't think she gets a lot of editing in her books, and it honestly shows. Not editing in the sense of the grammar, etc. Editing in the sense that there were a lot of unnecessary plot lines and characters in this book that didn't need to be there. Thus, this book could have been a lot shorter.

Anyway, the crossover between series was hyped up for this book, and less happened with that than I expected. It was a way to do a lot of world-building info dumping, and parts of the world still didn't make sense to me. If you look at the nitty-gritty, there's a lot about Bryce's world that doesn't add up, and when you add ACOTAR in the mix? I think this whole thing just needed to be overall fleshed out more.

Maas does excel in creating interesting characters, even if there were A LOT of them in this book. They don't all need their own points of view! There was so much point of view switching that it was hard to follow, especially in the audiobook. I think this was to create/build tension, but it didn't work that way for me most of the time.

Also, I can't get over the comment about underwear being too small for Hunt. Pretty sure it doesn't work like that?? "They had no underwear big enough for me on the ship." I literally cannot. I feel like those kinds of details are things that editors would take out.

There isn't as much spice in this book as the last one (which was fine with me). Mostly because Bryce is running around with a star shining out of her chest (which I know is like a serious thing, but it's funny image for me every single time I think about it).

There is going to be another book in this series, but I guess not for a while because she is working on the next ACOTAR book. Whether or not that will include characters from this book remains to be seen. Whether or not I will continue reading these also remains to be seen.

SJM's prose is accessible, and her fantasy style works for those that are intimidated by more complex, denser fantasy worlds. She may not be the queen of overall fantasy, but she's definitely queen of fantasy romance. And I don't think she's going to get de-throned any time soon.

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hrpower2's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional mysterious 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

5.0

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britwalsh16's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful 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

5.0

Omg!!! Soooo many thoughts!!! This book blew my mind!!! It was soooo good!!! I love every single one of the characters!!! I can’t wait to hopefully dive more into certain characters in future books & see how everything is after the war!
I love all the parallels & Easter eggs to Sarah’s other worlds, & ofcourse Nesta, Azriel, & everyone from Acotar who had small parts in the story line!
The twists & turns this book took! This series takes! It’s unbelievable, there is so much I didn’t see coming, & I love books that shock me!!
I’m just so sad that it’s over, & for the moment I don’t have anymore new Sarah J Maas books to read!!
Cauldron blessed us all with Sarah & her amazing writing! I can’t wait for more of her books! If she writes it, I will read it. No questions asked.

“Wanna hear a joke?.. Two Angels and a Fae Prince walk into a dungeon..” 🤣🤣🤣

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kfrewski15's review against another edition

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adventurous fast-paced

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

2.0

Should have been paced better. Split into 2 books? Too much going on and half of it not really amounting to anything and the parts that could have been more interesting were rushed or brushed over. I’ve already heard there will be a cc4 and I don’t think I care at all.

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lyssasabrina's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

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