Meredith Rae's Reviews > House of Flame and Shadow

** spoiler alert ** Here it is, the review everyone has been waiting for. I'm going to start this off with the fact I was going to rate this book 2.5 stars, however I've changed it to being a pure 2 star book, all because of the last like 5% of the book. this was such a disappointment for me because I was so excited for this book, but it just fell so fucking flat.

One of my biggest issues with this book was the formatting of the chapters. There were so many unnecessary page breaks within each chapter that I was about to throw my kindle out of a window. I've read all of her other books, so I KNOW she can use transition sentences and phrases, so tell me why in place of those, it would be a page break instead? Like please just say "the room was silent after ruhn finished telling us x,y,z" why do a page break? it makes no sense. It was also jarring when there would be page breaks where we would go from Bryce's pov in prythian to someone else in Midgard which was just jarring, leave Bryce and her pov alone in its own chapter because jumping between worlds in one is just too much, especially in the scenes when she was getting the information from Selene under the prison. I think it would've been much more comprehensive if she had left that gaining of information to a few chapters by themselves, maybe a chapter of anyone on Midgard in between, rather than getting itty bitty pieces of information and jumping between worlds and povs so much. Then, along with those random page breaks we have awkward chapter breaks where some of them felt off? There were a few times where it seemed like she wanted to do that thing where you leave off on this super shocking ending which can work super well, but then pick up at the same scene on the next page, leaving it feeling like the last chapter had just been unfinished.
I don't know which of her editors, I know she has them, read this and said "yes Sarah! such a good job! lets print it!" because it in fact was absolute trash. The amount of jumping around in this novel just ended up making the story feel like there was SO much going on, that nothing was going on.

I also feel like SJM sat down everyone at Bloomsbury, and said to them "you know all of that character development that was done in HOEAB and HOSAB? well get this... we're going to throw that all away!" because what the actual fuck were these characters? Bryce was just a bitch the whole time, Orion was a mopey little dog following Bryce around no matter what, not having a thought to himself, don't even get me started on Ithan, because tell me why every time his friends ask him to do one thing or depending on him to help save people, he just bails? every single fucking time and I never wanted to strangle a chapter more than I wanted to strangle him throughout this entire book. not to mention the amount of times SJM made her contradictions about her characters. I mean Ithan saying that Hypaxia was not trust worthy with her necromancy powers because of what happened the trying to summon his brother but then turning around 2 chapters later saying "Oh my god, I love Hypaxia" like UH??? The same thing happened with Bryce and Orion, they would argue but suddenly two pages later she was sitting on his lap with no conversation about the argument. Their relationship in this book made me feel like I was reading the latest news on the newest pr Hollywood relationship and it was actually atrocious. The majority of this book was just them having sex, thinking about having sex, arguing, or saying "I love you 🥺" which like bitch where's the love? Because I'm so sorry but if you're supposedly "mates" why the hell is Bryce snapping at Orion for the grief, guilt, and worry he's been harboring over the last 200 years??? Like I'm no relationship expert but I feel like the better thing to do would be to talk about any worries or feelings y'all may have instead of just snapping... but I've only read about relationships so what do I know right?

Continuing with the characters, I feel like SJM was just trying to make Bryce into another Aelin, but in doing so, she made her into a Dollar Tree Aelin. As we all know, Aelin schemes and is ALWAYS 20 steps ahead of everyone else, and doesn't tell anyone her plans, but we of course see Aelin going out of her way to gain information to be able to this and we KNOW that she has a plan and just hasn't told us, but when Bryce was doing this, it felt more impulsive than anything. Yes, she went out of her way to get information, but she didn't really USE that information, she simply had the most basic of the information and didn't investigate any further. Like I'm so sorry but if you go to the homeland of the Fae and see that the LEADER of the Night Court looks EXACTLY like your brother, why are you not talking to him about his powers? Especially if you now know that there is a parasite on your planet, the Asteri are essentially light power, and Ruhn very well could have very similar powers to this leader, would you not want to get any information on his powers to see if there was anyway you could use these powers against your enemy? It just didn't make any sense. And I'm also so sorry but Bryce was so dumb when she was all "I have no idea how to combine the swords" right after she had combined the swords. Like girlie pop you acknowledged that you were killing Vesperus or whatever her face was, you saw time slow, and the only difference between when Nesta EASILY killed her and you killing her was that Azriel was being a dumb bitch? girlie you just found out that they absorb the powers of others to get more power and you can't connect the dots that the reason you stabbing her didn't kill her because Azriel GAVE her power??? you're that dumb??? like just think for a second PLEASE.

This is minor but Azriel and Nesta were also out of character in this book because tell me why they both KNEW how Feyre had killed the Middengard Wyrm with piles of BONES and they still stood around wondering if a sword would kill it??? like are you actually kidding me??

Onto Orion Athalar. I'm pissed so I'm full naming him. I get why he was all mopey the entire book, I get that he holds guilt from the first failed rebellion, and I understand he feels guilty for not stopping Bryce with this new rebellion, but theres a point when I was just over it. every time he had a pov I felt like his guilt was mentioned, and we can understand that guilt without being told every five minutes. It was giving Tharion in book two when he always brought up how he hated being in the engagement because he had just wanted to fuck the river queen's daughter, like we get it, but there are more important things that need your attention right now. I'm so sorry to say it. Orion also pissed me off when they were in that image of hel. Why are you mad at the princes? I get that through your 200+ years of life you've been told that hel was an evil place, but each time you've met or talked with one of the princes, they've only been trying to help your cause? like why are you getting mad? have they not proven to be trustworthy? it was giving Chaol when he found out Celaena was actually Aelin who was actually Fae.

Bryce and Orion were the ones I had the most qualms about in this book because it just felt so out of character for both of them with every choice they made and if y'all disagree thats okay, but they just felt wrong.

SJM's prophecies in this series also pissed me off. As we all know, I hate SJM's prophecies, but I think this takes the cake for my most hated. I mean Ruhn being end of the royal Danaan line? girl why do I have to jump through hoops for that to make sense??? Because it was first that it was because he gave the crown to Bryce... but she had already been publicly recognized as a Danaan so where's the end of the line... even if she didn't GO by Bryce Danaan it had been recognized that she was a part of the Danaan line, so that doesn't make sense, and so then, even when Bryce had signed the decree that the royal families were to be abolished, that was still Bryce being the end of the Danaan line, so any way you look at it Ruhn wasn't at all the end of it, unless you say he was the one who gave her power, so she could make that choice and make it mean something, which in that case I'm still jumping through hoops I fear so I recommend SJM simply stop making prophecies or at least get better at doing them.

The last thing I would like to discuss in this book is the absolute trash of the ending. Why the actual fuck was the final battle scene just the ending of Big Hero 6? if you don't believe me, rewatch that final battle scene. It was the same thing. I sobbed at the end of the book and it was BECAUSE of this fact. Also the amount of copouts that she made for there to be a happy ending? just fucking stop already. I get that Bryce owned her soul again because of the Under-King dying so all contracts he made were null and void, that's fine, that makes sense... but why were Danika and the Pack of Devils in heaven then??? were their souls NOT essentially evaporated to forever be gone? did they suddenly get the last drips of their soul's power back to them after it was put in that bullet and Danika's was given to Bryce for her assent in the first book? Now you can make an argument for the Pack of Devils that they put their energy/souls into the bullet, and when that bullet was fired and exploded, their souls were set free, however I would argue that's still a cop out. I'm just so sick and tired of these kind of endings because at least make the cop out believable instead of backtracking on how the energy from the souls work for the last 2400 pages.

one last thing: you're going to look me in the face and tell me that the moral of the story was "it's about the friends we made along the way"???? I'm SORRY???? I read more than 2400 pages for THAT???

anyway I hated this book, I never want to read another crescent city book again, sorry for writing a novel, this review took me an hour to write because of how much I have to say. I almost threw my kindle into a ravine multiple times, thank you goodnight.