Reviews - House of Flame and Shadow

34.1k reviews for:

House of Flame and Shadow

Sarah J. Maas

4.12 AVERAGE

knantz1217's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous challenging 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: Yes

deshodgs's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous 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: Complicated

mbutton's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous funny hopeful 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

ellieb2636's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous 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: Yes

sanderspaige's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging emotional funny medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

anderswoodland's review against another edition

2.0

I wanted soooo badly to love this book because I LOVED the first two, and I love ACOTAR. But I pretty much hated it the whole way through??

It felt like we were supposed to be excited just to see characters names mentioned on the page. Like in a sitcom when a famous actor guest-stars and the audience cheers just cause they walk into the scene. There were like 15 side characters I didn’t care about at ALL, who were significantly featured, and then even MORE were added! And it felt like no effort was made to get the audience to love them, aside from making them seem “cool” with new powers etc.

Also the endless power level ups held like no tension or emotional pull because they happened soooo quickly and there were SO MANY OF THEM!!!! So it just got annoying. Like every single character becomes the leader of practically every faction / house we know of?!?!

The “reveals” about bloodlines and connections to other series were so frequent they lost any emotional meaning. And holy shit there was so much info dumping.

I just can’t get into 900 pages STRAIGHT of moments I’m SUPPOSED to gasp at. Every section and chapter ended with a sentence that was clearly meant to be a mic drop. After a while it just made the whole thing so uninteresting - you can’t just push the same button over and over and over and still have emotional resonance.