Reviews with content warning for Gaslighting - A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire

First of all, I absolutely love this book. But still, it was quite the roller coaster.
Half of the book was really repetitive, nothing actually happened and then, it all went so quickly and now I'm confused with the ending.

I really love the romance between Poppy and Hawke. It just didn't feel rushed like in other books, especially after

Hawke's betrayal towards Poppy. Poppy having to figure out her feelings and being in denial about loving someone that has so deeply misused her trust..

JLA has done an incredible job with their relationship and I have fallen in love with both of them.

The side characters - god they are amazing.
Many new characters are introduced in this book, and I especially love Kieran now. The banter between them all and new friendships developing was really great.

And Poppy finally being able to actually make friends, just felt amazing in itself.

The plot itself didn't really move forward that much at first, in the second half, it started to pace up a bit and I'm really glad it did, because I had already started to wonder, if it was worth it to continue.
Now at the end of the book, I'm left on a major cliffhanger and I'm already so excited for the next book.. which I luckily already have laying right next to me :)

In conclusion, it's a really good book, but some parts of it was just too slow-moving for me. I'm glad I didn't put it aside, and I hope the next one will now continue a bit quicker.

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abicaro17's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Again the banter in this book is incredible!! The chemistry between Casteel and Poppy is incredible and their connection never once seems forced or fake. My issues stem from the world building/plot. It seems like every other chapter something contradictory is introduced and changes everything. I just wish there was some consistency to follow the relationship building thats so strong.

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mistress_of_fire's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.75

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iggylizard's review

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This book is nothing more than traveling and poorly written smut. More than once there is non-consensual sexual relations. The characters have no development. They’re insipid, boring, and horny. There is no plot.

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midnacine's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional 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? Yes

5.0

I really just love these books and listening to it this time around was amazing.

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kellicat94's review

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adventurous dark emotional funny sad tense medium-paced

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

4.75

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joshuacaps's review

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reflective slow-paced

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

2.25

I didn't hate this book. The writing itself is pretty deecent. It's just most of the content, and the amount of content, that was the problem. This book had to be a filler. Right? It was so long, and almost nothing happened. If an editor had come and trimmed it to about half the length, the pacing would have probably been okay, but this book took too long to read and it had very few triumphs.

Let me get some of the gripes out of the way, since I've already started there.

In terms of plot, basically nothing happened.

-Poppy and Dark Prince Perfect are traveling across the country. A small handful of times, there are fights/they are attacked. Dark Prince Perfect is immortal, though, so there is no danger to him. He has dimples, and amber eyes. Did I mention amber eyes? This book is hundreds of pages of Poppy having an internal monologue, mostly focused on Dark Prince Perfect and attempting to rationalize him and what he is doing (making sexual passes and advances, mostly, but whatever) or attempting to convince herself she isn't in love with him until at some point admitting that she is. Stockholm syndrome, really, because she is a prisoner of his for a lot of the book.

That brings me to my next issue: repetition. This book is going to be way too long, AND insult the reader by just repeating itself over and over to fill too many pages?

-

Someone gets hurt, Poppy heals them, people see, people are either afraid or in awe, someone tells her she is amazing, she modestly disagrees.

Repeat, except in a slightly difference location.
-Dark Prince Perfect looked at her with those amber jewels. He curled his lip up, revealing one of his dimples. Repeat. Repeat.
-Poppy has a *random* question, Dark Prince Perfect says something about being *intrigued*, Dark Prince Perfect blatantly hits on Poppy, Poppy threatens violence, Prince tells her he is turned on, she says something must be wrong with him, he says she likes it. Repeat. Repeat.
-Poppy threatens to stab someone, or someone insinuates that she will. Repeat. Repeat.

Most of the elements of this book can be found in other young adult fiction as well. There are vampires (oh boy, can't wait to get to that), there are wolves, there is magic. The magic isn't well developed, and in fact neither is the world-building. There are a lot of things in the world-building that don't stand up to scrutiny (

why would a species evolve to require the blood of only its own kind in order to survive? Absolute nonsense) until you realize they are just thin plot devices drawn up to instigate romance. Dark Prince Perfect needs Poppy's blood because she is a half-blood of his people, moving her into situations where they will both get aroused due to drinking blood and then the boning will happen.

Let's talk vampires. There are vampires (atlantians), vampires (ascended), and vampires (craven). The first vampires are the good vampires. They don't feast on other creatures, they only drink their own kind's blood and require it and only it to survive. Again, that's nonsense, but it was done to

coerce Poppy into having sex with Dark Prince Perfect (via the blood drinking, as I mentioned)

, as well as to separate the Prince from the other, bad vampires - he doesn't feast on others, he drinks with consent from his own kind, like a good vampire. Then there are the second vampires, who are the bad vampires but also the actual vampires of the story - they're immortal, powerful, hide from sunlight, feast on blood to survive. They've also created an elaborate religion so that society willingly gives its children to them to eat. Clever. Liked all that. Then there are the craven, who are sort of like vampire zombies - mindless beasts that attack people and feed and inspire fear, and all that stuff.

Pretty convoluted, but okay.

You'd think that would be interesting to read about. It isn't. The craven only show up once in this book, so there's a brief fight. We run into the Ascended two, maybe three times tops. The rest is just Dark Prince Perfect traveling with his entourage of wolves, keeping Poppy hostage, and repeatedly making sexual advances on her

until she succumbs

. Then when she attempts to escape, he gets mad at her, calls her stupid. Later on, he tells her she isn't a prisoner, even though she very obviously was a prisoner for most of the book.

Let's talk about Dark Prince Perfect. He spends all his time using his amber eyes on her, and showing dimples, and hitting on Poppy or directly putting hands or other parts on her.

She goes from highly resistant to these things gradually to compliant gradually to they get married.

He doesn't tell her anything, except that she is *intriguing* or *quite violent*, and that he wants to have sex with her. His whole motivation is getting laid in this book. Weird for a supposedly nuanced character with hundreds of years of life experience, but okay.

He tells her next to nothing about himself until late in the book, meanwhile expecting her to trust him. Honestly, he just withholds as much information about himself as possible until confronted and forced to admit something that we had to learn about from another character. Kieran, to be specific. Kieran basically exists just to give us long explanations of the Prince's background, to present his humanity, and to justify his behavior. Oh, and the threesome that's probably coming in book three, but I think that's a latent consequence. His real purpose is to give us the Prince's softer side because the Prince doesn't tell Poppy anything.

And he gets REAL MAD when she doesn't trust him. Like, when she

agrees to marry him as a business arrangement that they will pretend is real, and then she finds out very publicly that he has been promised to another woman to marry back home. She gets upset that he is supposed to marry someone else, none of which he ever mentioned. And dude gets EXTREMELY upset that she is upset with him

. Like, dude, you go from withholding one truth to withholding the next truth for an entire book, you don't get to take the moral high ground about this.

Let's talk about Poppy. Given her background as the Maiden and what she learns about the Ascended, there is great potential for character work here. Missed opportunity. Her whole purpose in this book is to be seduced by Dark Prince Perfect, and her entire personality in this book has become *random* questions and *being quite violent*. I wish I could say more, but there really isn't much to it. She asks a ton of *random* questions, usually unrelated to anything that is happening (hence the *random*), just to justify info dumping about the world. She is a device for the reader to get a lecture on what they need to know about the world, and also as a means for the reader to pretend hot sex with the Prince.

Okay, so I wasn't impressed with this book in a lot of ways. Let me tell you what I did like a lot about this book: This book isn't afraid of sex.

I read a ton of novels, most of which are not in the category of romance, and in the overwhelming majority of those novels, the characters must all be asexual. Some books will tastefully lead up to sex and fade to black. But most books don't include sexuality at all, beyond maybe a surface level comment here or there. I understand this omission of sex is related to publishing and book categorization and all that. I know that if I read romance novels, I will find sex. I'm not criticizing that. I'm criticizing the absence of sex or even sexuality in books that aren't "romance".

I don't think books get worse because of a lack of sexuality (not even sex, just sexuality), but I think books and especially characters have a lot of potential to get better by embracing sexuality. Not all characters need to have sex, because not all people in real life do, but at least SOME of them should have at least an aspect of sexuality to them. On that count, I found it refreshing to see that prevalent in this book. Regardless of my qualms with the way the relationship of Poppy and the Prince develops in this book, I do applaud that the author leaned into sexuality.

That doesn't justify the Prince's sole behavioral motivation being sex, because there ought to be a balance, especially for a guy who is allegedly hundreds of years old. But that goes back to my initial issues with the plot and world-building. Things in this book that should have been three-dimensional are often two-dimensional, and it felt like it.

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alleya's review against another edition

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dark emotional slow-paced

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

2.5

After how much I loved From Blood and Ash, this book was a real letdown. First of all, I found the relationship dynamics between Poppy and Castiel to be extremely troubling. He exhibited very controlling behavior which was justified by his desire to protect her. This reasoning was never seriously questioned. Her resistance to his control always took the form of childish temper tantrums, throwing things, and screaming, so I couldn't even sympathize with Poppy. And worse, those temper tantrums were portrayed as something Castiel found sexy. And there was way too much sex. I love a good sex scene, but I prefer at least a little plot between them.

Finally, the plot -- which is almost nothing. The attraction of a good fantasy series is to immerse in a world and explore it. But we spent large portions of the book just a couple locations. There was also way too much exposition through dialogue. Every time Poppy has "questions" I know that the author is about to do another info dump on us, and it happened way too often. My eyes glazed over after a while. I spent the entire book waiting to get to Atlantia and see what it's like, and it was incredibly disappointing. This felt like a connector book, and I really hope that these problems will all be left behind in this book because it's only my enjoyment from the first book that's going to be enough to get me to try book 3.

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