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A review by alexwhy
A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire by Jennifer L. Armentrout
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
The second installment of this series was a disappointment. The first book, From Blood and Ash, had all the trappings of a great fantasy/romance series; the character development was great, the world-building was pretty good, the relationships between the characters made sense, and I was compelled to continue reading to see what happened next. The writing is fine but the plot was interesting, so I was looking forward to the second book. The only similarities between the first book and this one were the character's names. I feel like the characters just fell apart, their personalities changed, their relationships made less sense, and the character development basically stopped, which is wild, because you meet so many new characters in this book.
The writing became extremely repetitive and NOTHING HAPPENED in this book, until like the last 75 pages. It was a lot of inner monologues that went NOWHERE and the push and pull between the main character, Poppy, and her love interest, Hawke/whatever his actual name is, becomes extremely tiresome and frankly, boring. We get it, there is tension, please move on. There is this whole thing about how violent Poppy is, which Hawke apparently loves, and earns the respect of his people, which would be fine if it wasn't the content of like 30% of the total dialogue in the book. The dialogue also changes in the worst way, from sort of a believable "olde english" formality in the first book, to characters rolling up on each other like "hey" and "totally" and other extremely contemporary IRL colloquialisms. Something that I didn't notice, but another reviewer pointed out is the use of words from our world, like "Champagne", which couldn't exist in a high fantasy world if France didn't exist in that world (spoiler: it doesn't). It was sloppy and lazy and honestly really killed this world for me. This book could have been probably 200 fewer pages and nothing about the plot would have changed at all.
Am I going to read the third installment? Usually, I would say yes because I do love a good hate-read, but I care so little for these characters and their destinies that I'll probably just skip it.
The writing became extremely repetitive and NOTHING HAPPENED in this book, until like the last 75 pages. It was a lot of inner monologues that went NOWHERE and the push and pull between the main character, Poppy, and her love interest, Hawke/whatever his actual name is, becomes extremely tiresome and frankly, boring. We get it, there is tension, please move on. There is this whole thing about how violent Poppy is, which Hawke apparently loves, and earns the respect of his people, which would be fine if it wasn't the content of like 30% of the total dialogue in the book. The dialogue also changes in the worst way, from sort of a believable "olde english" formality in the first book, to characters rolling up on each other like "hey" and "totally" and other extremely contemporary IRL colloquialisms. Something that I didn't notice, but another reviewer pointed out is the use of words from our world, like "Champagne", which couldn't exist in a high fantasy world if France didn't exist in that world (spoiler: it doesn't). It was sloppy and lazy and honestly really killed this world for me. This book could have been probably 200 fewer pages and nothing about the plot would have changed at all.
Am I going to read the third installment? Usually, I would say yes because I do love a good hate-read, but I care so little for these characters and their destinies that I'll probably just skip it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Violence, Sexual content, Physical abuse, and Murder