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A review by weraamanda
The Crown of Gilded Bones by Jennifer L. Armentrout
adventurous
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
1.75
It just keeps getting worse and worse, doesn't it? When I had read almost half of this book I realized that it wasn't going to be good. I was about to put it down and never pick it up again but I had one motivator to finish it: Kieran. So, I finished it. And it was bad. Definitely disappointed, but sadly not surprised.
I don't like how spEciAL Poppy suddenly is. Like yeah, sure, we got indicators that something like this was going to happen, but she very conveniently started to gain all of these random powers out of nowhere when she needed them the most. It was stupid. I might also just inherently dislike characters that turn out to be extremely special and rare and they have all these cool powers that make no sense, but still. I hated it.I was also quite pissed about all the wolven bonds breaking and them starting to protect Poppy, because it just isn't worth it, you know? She's annoying, and I don't like the fact that now all these lovely characters are at risk of literally dying for this girl. I wasn't able to bring myself to care about her, so the whole thing really annoyed me.
Even though I deeply care about Kieran, the Q&A conversations between him and Poppy started to get on my nerves. Poppy was constantly asking questions and Kieran was always saying something like "No one's surprised that you have questions." Like okay, we get it, Poppy can't shut the hell up, but it was pointless to repeat the same thing over and over again. The author also pointed out that Casteel, indeed, still smells like spice and pine. Not as many times as she did in A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire, but still. It seems like repetition is something Armentrout holds very close to her heart.
I wasn't into the smut either, mostly skipped those parts. It just keeps getting progressively worse, ever since the second book. I am: disappointed. Might be also because blood play and vampire sex aren't really for me, so I didn't find reading about these things particularly enjoyable.
So, what was good about this book, then? Kieran, Delano, Emil and Vonetta saved this whole dumpster fire of a book. At least saved it to a level where I felt comfortable giving it a little bit more than just one star. The Crown of Gilded Bones was still a pretty shitty read, though, so not sure was it worth it. It never ceases to amaze me how Armentrout is able to write a book that's 600+ pages long but has absolutely no valuable information in it whatsoever. This was so incredibly slow-paced and boring. There's so many things she could've done with this book, but instead of those, she decided to info dump us once again and made the characters have these long, pointless conversations that didn't lead us anywhere. But, I guess she tried. It just wasn't enough for me.
I don't like how spEciAL Poppy suddenly is. Like yeah, sure, we got indicators that something like this was going to happen, but she very conveniently started to gain all of these random powers out of nowhere when she needed them the most. It was stupid. I might also just inherently dislike characters that turn out to be extremely special and rare and they have all these cool powers that make no sense, but still. I hated it.
Even though I deeply care about Kieran, the Q&A conversations between him and Poppy started to get on my nerves. Poppy was constantly asking questions and Kieran was always saying something like "No one's surprised that you have questions." Like okay, we get it, Poppy can't shut the hell up, but it was pointless to repeat the same thing over and over again. The author also pointed out that Casteel, indeed, still smells like spice and pine. Not as many times as she did in A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire, but still. It seems like repetition is something Armentrout holds very close to her heart.
I wasn't into the smut either, mostly skipped those parts. It just keeps getting progressively worse, ever since the second book. I am: disappointed. Might be also because blood play and vampire sex aren't really for me, so I didn't find reading about these things particularly enjoyable.
So, what was good about this book, then? Kieran, Delano, Emil and Vonetta saved this whole dumpster fire of a book. At least saved it to a level where I felt comfortable giving it a little bit more than just one star. The Crown of Gilded Bones was still a pretty shitty read, though, so not sure was it worth it. It never ceases to amaze me how Armentrout is able to write a book that's 600+ pages long but has absolutely no valuable information in it whatsoever. This was so incredibly slow-paced and boring. There's so many things she could've done with this book, but instead of those, she decided to info dump us once again and made the characters have these long, pointless conversations that didn't lead us anywhere. But, I guess she tried. It just wasn't enough for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence and Sexual content
Moderate: Blood