Review: House of Flame and Shadow

House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Last year was one of the few where Sarah J. Maas didn't release any new books, so the time was ripe for other authors like Rebecca Yarros to stake their claims to the romantasy throne. Hell, did anyone even start using the term "romantasy" until last year? I don't believe so. But in any case, SJM is now back to stake her own claim to retake the throne as the Queen of Romantasy that she's been for these last few years, and of course she does so with 800-plus new pages of not only the Crescent City saga, but also, as promised, a crossover into the world of ACOTAR.

Now, while the infamous ending of House of Sky and Breath royally pissed me off, it was actually the whole Under the Mountain kind of nonsense that interested me the most in this book, with Bryce going off and doing her Indiana Jones thing as she learned even more about the tangled histories of the Fae and the Asteri. Everyone else...meh, sorry, I just wasn't here for any of them. This is Bryce's book, and everyone else is just a distraction to pump up the page count.

But SJM actually does a great job concluding Bryce's story in this book, though with hints that there will be further Crescent City adventures down the line. For now, though, I think she'll be focusing on bringing her current extended ACOTAR series to a new conclusion for Nesta and Cassian, which is what I'm looking forward to most of all from her. And while I was afraid that this book would try to pull the same kind of twist that SJM previously pulled in both Kingdom of Ash and Wings and Ruin, I was actually stunned to see that SJM pulled, of all things, that same twist but inverted. You'll know it when you see it.

Bryce Quinlan may not be for everyone, but I'll be damned if I don't love her as much as I do SJM's other leading ladies. To her, I now declare ave atque vale.

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