A review by booksalacarte
House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J. Maas

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

First read- 4.25⭐️ 3🌶️

Adult High Fantasy
Multi POV
Fantasy Romance
Magic
Found family
Journey
Secrets
War
Rebellion
Tech/sci-fi elements

Tw: torture on page, language, 


This was a Crescent City book. It wasn’t an ACOTAR or TOG book. It was crescent city through and through with the quick POV shifts and 

This large cast of characters has always been the messiest. They are completely flawed and full of contradictions and harder to completely stand behind. There wasn’t a lot of self reflection for anyone in the cast. There were a lot of really brash decisions, even from seasoned warriors and politicians, that I rolled my eyes at. There just wasn’t the character growth that I had hoped to see… if anything, some of the characters, a main character even, seemed to get worse… some character growth and revelations that were foreshadowed in the other two books seemed to have been completely tossed out the window. 

The plot was A LOT… and all over the place. There were moments of world-building that was just gigantic info dumps. There were times where we went into sci-fi elements. Many things were concluded and tied up prettily. I’m having a hard time thinking of how this is going to be extended into any more books… 
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