House of Flame and Shadow Book Review
In January of this year, Sarah J. Maas (SJM) released the third book in her Crescent City series, House of Flame and Shadow. Coming out about two years after the second volume in the series, House of Sky and Breath, this book picks up right where book two’s jaw-dropping cliffhanger left off. Here, I’m sharing my complete House of Flame and Shadow book review, along with some insights I think are relevant to its reception online.
Table of Contents:
Please note:
This House of Flame and Shadow book review necessarily contains spoilers for books one and two in the Crescent City series, as well as for book three, House of Flame and Shadow.
For more information on the Crescent City series as a whole, please see my full reader’s guide for the series here.
The Build Up to Crescent City Book 3
This long-awaited Crescent City book just came out late January and the build up for it online was truly breathtaking to behold. It is all the bookstagram community online was talking about for weeks. Honestly, it felt a bit like the big midnight releases of the Harry Potter books in the early 2000s, and the excitement was palpable. With big releases like this, it is almost natural that many people were disappointed with the book — hyping something up so much in one’s mind makes it almost impossible for the thing to live up to.
Furthermore, if you consider the absolute insane ending of book two, House of Sky and Breath, and the fact that long-time readers of the series had to wait two years for closure…it’s easy to see that expectations were incredibly high. Since I only started my SJM reading journey last year, I had only a few months to wait for the third book. And even that wait felt like a long time! I’m already not looking forward to the wait until book four, but that’s a lament for another day.
My Honest House of Flame and Shadow Book Review
Overall Thoughts on Crescent City‘s Third Book
First things first, I truly enjoyed House of Flame and Shadow! I feel like I need to be very clear on that before I get into my review and critique. Honestly, I do give it 5/5 stars, and it only bolsters my motivation to recommend the entire series to fellow readers. I hadn’t planned to write a full House of Flame and Shadow book review, either, but when I sat down to add it to my reader guide for the series, I realized I had more thoughts on it to share than I thought.
House of Flame and Shadow is a behemoth of a book at almost 850 pages, and it is action packed from start to finish. The entire book takes place over a matter of days, basically, which adds to the chaotic nature of the plot (more on that below), but SJM managed to do each of the main storylines justice.
Strengths of the Novel
Spanning different worlds in the SJM universe, this book was just so different from CC1 and CC2, focusing way less on Bryce and Hunt as a couple and more on the entire cast of characters’ mission to destroy the Asteri.
This shift in focus is part of why I think it faced criticism online; I definitely missed the old Bryce and Hunt banter, and the condensed timeline, in my opinion, forced SJM to emphasis characters’ archetypes and offer super-concentrated glimpses of personality. The level of conflict between the characters (namely, Bryce and Hunt) was annoying, but also made sense when you consider it all takes place over like a week and the sheer levels of trauma each individual character experienced…. I don’t know, just something to consider as a reader.
Weaknesses in House of Flame and Shadow
All that is to say, do I think the book was perfect? No. There was a lot of jumping around amongst different sub-plots that was a bit disorienting at times, and a lot of time spent building up storylines for future books (IE: Ithan Holstrom’s general rise to Prime of the Valbaran Wolves while also being the single most annoying and incompetent character in the book…second only to Tharion, but I digress).
Seriously, though, way less time could have been spent on Ithan (aka: the Jacob Black of the Crescent City series) and Tharion Ketos. I understand SJM is setting them up as major parts of the next books in the series (same with Ruhn and Lidia, whose storyline I did enjoy).
However, Ithan and Tharion were just so freaking incompetent the entire way through. The number of times I rolled my eyes at these two…I can’t even estimate. I really wish the time spent on these two could have been spent elsewhere — whether that was with some of the good old Bryce and Hunt banter, building up Ruhn and Lidia’s storyline, or with more time in the ACOTAR world.
My Closing Thoughts on the Book
If you accept that this book is just different than the first two in the series, then it’s greatness stands out. If you go into it expecting a continuation of the Bryce and Hunt romance, you’re going to be disappointed.
The world jumping and multiverse lore that SJM brings into this book, though, makes me respect her talent as a writer even more than I already did. I loved the ACOTAR cameos (honestly, would have been happy with way more of those) and the references to the Throne of Glass series through Lidia Cervos. In all, it makes me even more excited to see where SJM takes these characters, even if we have a long wait till we see what is next.
House of Flame and Shadow is available from Amazon here.
Shop the entire Crescent City book series from Amazon here.
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