Poppy wasn’t as annoying as the previous two books, but the book itself wasn’t great. It all started positively, resolving the cliffhanger that the previous book (A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire) left. But from there, nothing. it happens. This book could have done with some SERIOUS editing. I didn’t even read the physical book, I listened to the audiobook which I ended up going up to 1.4x because, again, nothing was happening. The JLA made this book so, incredibly long, and it honestly was like… a boring story book about all these people and different species and bloodlines and ugh, that’s like 50% of the book and it killed me.
I must say I still love Kieran (fave), Delano and Emil, Naill and Vonetta. Their banter and camaraderie (and the fact that most, if not all, turn into wolves, I literally can’t remember if any of them are Atlantean), kept me listening to this book. To make up for the lack of profit and any interesting events or developments in plot, characters or relationships, the JLA absolutely used sex scenes to fill this book. Honestly, I think the ratio of interesting events and development in sex scenes was VERY AMAZING. As a side note, everything is written so weird I’m so glad I’m listening to this book. Honestly, the spelling of the names would have absolutely put me off reading this book in physical form.
The unnecessarily pointless anti-dumping details that no one asked for, the comments about Poppy asking questions, Casteel finds her hot when she talks about stabbing things, and the overall general repetitiveness of this book is exactly the same as before. The fact that there are three more of these books out there absolutely blows my mind. Wasn’t this book as addicting to a guilty pleasure as the first one, and at least in AKOFAF, things turned out? Have new and interesting characters been introduced? This one felt like an unplanned, unedited mess of words.
It’s like JLA had no idea this was going to happen when she was writing the first two books and then added whatever else she needed to drive her plot through the next three. Honestly, I have absolutely no idea what she’s going to fill these books with. The amount of ~plot twists the JLA added to this godforsaken novel literally took the fun out of the plot twists to begin with. It’s almost like, the reader knows that nothing has happened in the last 200 pages, so there will probably be a plot twist… and there you have it. Another side note, apparently Poppy has a lot of ‘…’ in her inner monologues which makes me so grateful I’m listening to the audiobooks in this series LOL.
In fact, I still don’t like Cas very much??? People are absolutely fawning over him, but he’s such a basic guy ‘ who grows up rich and real, has bad things happen to him, is so strong that he goes through it, does shit and gets the girl. ’ Obviously this is an oversimplification, but is he just boring???? Give me more THANKS KIERAN. I’m still not over the way he treated Poppy at the end of the first book and the beginning of the second book. I don’t know. I just don’t see the appeal of it.
So to sum up, this book was not good (in my opinion). It was too long for insufficient action or character development. I don’t mind books that linger on the action if they give me a lot of character and relationship development, but in this case, we LITERALLY have none of those things. It’s a 25 hour audiobook (and a 600+ page book) in which NOTHING HAPPENS and I was so bored.
What a wild ride filled with everything you need to have an epic fantasy adventure: danger, drama, suspense, romance, humor, friendship, history, so many amazing characters, and shocking twists that take your breath away! This Blood and Ash series is literally EVERYTHING and it was just as enjoyable of a book for me. It would have been absolutely perfect if not for the slow midpoint for me, but with everything that happens in the last chunk, it almost makes up for any boredom or preoccupation I had at that point in my time reading this book.
I’ve never been a huge fan of prequels, I always feel like they’re so limited in how far they can go as a story because they’re literally set up for something you’ve already seen or read. In a way, you already know what’s going to end up happening in the end, and the predictability factor of that isn’t all that interesting to me, so while I’m still looking forward to A Shadow Over The Embers coming out in October that will shed some light on Nyktos and the Gods and all the rich history there, I’m not as excited as I would have been if book #4 of Blood and Ashes was coming out. Still, I trust the JLA as an author at this point, so I’m going to keep my inner reserve, reluctance, and negativity to a minimum and give this prequel a chance.
