Review: House of Sky and Breath

House of Sky and Breath by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, you know, this latest book of SJM's modern urban fantasy would've maybe been a 3.5 rounded up to a 4...if not for a few key points against it. As much as I enjoyed the first book for getting my ship right, and I liked that there was some natural progression to that ship's course, I still found that SJM really leaned a little too much on a lot of her biggest and worst tropes that are such pet peeves of me and other fans, many of whom have long since abandoned her over these storytelling sins. So it's a bit eye-rolling from me when I see SJM double down on everyone being a "male" or "female," all the "males" having enormous penises like in that Da Vinci's Notebook song, sex scenes long enough to match those dicks...

...but hey, at least SJM gives us a bit of good world building in this book too. Verging on sci-fi territory as well, more even than in those dimension-hopping scenes she's done in past books. Like, say, the scene from Kingdom of Ash where Aelin got glimpses of the worlds of SJM's other series, including a sneak peek of Crescent City two years before the first book was published. But especially the revelations of certain origins of Midgard, those had me all, "whoa. Damn, Sarah. How could I have doubted you?" 

And then the very end happened. In which SJM makes it very clear that she's not done with her personal fave characters just yet. 

I somehow avoided the spoilers, so you can bet that I was sitting at my desk at work, mercifully alone near the end of my day, and I declared to the empty room, "What? You gotta be fucking kidding me!" 

Oh, I'm not gonna forget that twist, SJM. 

And that twist alone is why I knocked this book down to three stars.

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