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A review by renee_c
From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout
2.0
2/5
I had heard so many good things about this novel and was sorely disappointed.
What I didn't realize was that this is a vampire novel. Which isn't a bad thing at all, but usually vampire novels these days try to do something different in terms of how vampires (or in this case vamprys) are created, and despite multiple pages of straight info dump, the world was never clearly explained. I thought I'd gotten through most of the info dump when I was 30% of the way into the novel but at 90%, "twists" are revealed and instead we are overloaded with the existence of vamprys which I could not for the life of me distinguish from the Craven (monsters?), the Atlantians (strong beings that are or are not the same as vamprys? arguably also monsters?), the Ascended (are they vampyrs? are they all vampyrs? also arguably monsters), and the Descenters (they support the Atlantians and they do monstrous things?). So basically everybody is a vampry? Literally, all I needed was a three sentences of direct statements to clarify what all of the pronouns meant and that was never provided.
Also, I predicted the true alliances of key characters in the first scene.
The bright light of this novel is Poppy. She is badass. I love her. The hype did not fail me there. The black hole dragging this novel down is Hawke. He is the YA trope of an alpha-hole. I couldn't even enjoy the sex scenes because of that. Poppy, you deserve better. I don't want to continue reading unless our love interest changes lol.
Pick up Throne of Glass instead if you want a badass heroine (or you can read this just for Poppy, I'd support that), or if you're looking for steamy scenes I'd recommend a quality adult romance like Meet Cute.
I had heard so many good things about this novel and was sorely disappointed.
What I didn't realize was that this is a vampire novel. Which isn't a bad thing at all, but usually vampire novels these days try to do something different in terms of how vampires (or in this case vamprys) are created, and despite multiple pages of straight info dump, the world was never clearly explained. I thought I'd gotten through most of the info dump when I was 30% of the way into the novel but at 90%, "twists" are revealed and instead we are overloaded with the existence of vamprys which I could not for the life of me distinguish from the Craven (monsters?), the Atlantians (strong beings that are or are not the same as vamprys? arguably also monsters?), the Ascended (are they vampyrs? are they all vampyrs? also arguably monsters), and the Descenters (they support the Atlantians and they do monstrous things?). So basically everybody is a vampry? Literally, all I needed was a three sentences of direct statements to clarify what all of the pronouns meant and that was never provided.
Also, I predicted the true alliances of key characters in the first scene.
The bright light of this novel is Poppy. She is badass. I love her. The hype did not fail me there. The black hole dragging this novel down is Hawke. He is the YA trope of an alpha-hole. I couldn't even enjoy the sex scenes because of that. Poppy, you deserve better. I don't want to continue reading unless our love interest changes lol.
Pick up Throne of Glass instead if you want a badass heroine (or you can read this just for Poppy, I'd support that), or if you're looking for steamy scenes I'd recommend a quality adult romance like Meet Cute.