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A review by vermontsnowboarder
House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J. Maas
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.
1. Pacing. The pacing throughout this entire book was off. Parts of it were dragged out unnecessarily
2. Plotholes. Again, I think this is because there were too many different storylines to keep track of. But the mistakes were glaringly obvious.
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.
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.
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.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Misogyny, Colonisation, Confinement, Violence, War, Slavery, Torture, and Sexual content
Minor: Sexual assault, Classism, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, and Excrement