Reading Time: 3 minutes

Spoiler-Free Review

This is book 3 in the Crescent City series. For my reviews on the first two books, click below:

• House of Earth and Blood
• House of Sky and Breath

What’s House of Flame and Shadow about?

This is the conclusion to the Crescent City series (barring any spinoffs we’ll get in the future). Bryce and co. must face extreme odds in their battle to defeat the Asteri.

It was…okay.

I wanted to like this so bad. But in the end, my interest had started moving on even while I was reading. HOFAS was too easy to put down, and too hard to pick back up. It wasn’t keeping me hooked.

Listen. I loved book 1 in this series. Then book 2 was really disappointing. Basically, House of Flame and Shadow was more like book 2 than I would have liked.

What I liked

The first two hundred and the last one hundred pages were the best parts of this book. The beginning absolutely hooked me, and I was so intrigued by the situation Bryce was stuck in. I wanted to see what she would do, and how she’d get herself out of it.

Without a doubt, the high point of this book is Lidia. What an excellent, well-written, and compelling character with a great arc. I was a little neutral on her character in book 2, but she really shined here and made such a perfect addition to this story. Her scenes were some of the best in the whole book.

What I disliked

• Too much dialogue, and dialogue as exposition dumping
  • This is a poor trend I’ve noticed lately (which I discuss more in this post). Everyone was constantly explaining things, sharing lore, rehashing info, or just shooting the breeze. It was a slog to get through so many endless conversations
• Sass and sarcasm overload
  • Seriously, Bryce was quipping at ancient beings who I don’t believe would actually take it. It would be like some righteous twerp making sassy remarks at a character like Amren from ACOTAR. Amren would simply eviscerate them. But here, they were just disgruntled, at best
  • This was emphasized by everyone always reacting to Bryce’s sass with chuckles or snorts, even when it really wasn’t that funny. It felt sort of like recent Marvel movies in that way – quippy and irreverent in a way that is not charming
• A lot came too easily
  • Many things felt like they came with too little effort or resistance, kind of like the cliché of “it was inside you all along” – all of sudden being able to do or attain something that really shouldn’t have been so easy
  • Also, some other things were just glossed over and never explained – almost egregiously so. For example: “[Character] and [character] stood in the chamber, somehow having caught up with them.” Somehow? What do you mean, somehow? It’s just too convenient
• The POVs shifted too fast
  • Each POV only got a few pages at a time, at most, so I never stayed hooked on any one character’s plight
  • I never did figure out what the point of Tharion’s POV was for this series, he contributed very little. If Tharion’s POV was taken out completely, I don’t think anything about this story would have changed. I would’ve been content to see him only from the others’ perspectives, like Flynn or Dec – just a background character
  • I did see the use of Ithan’s POV by the end, just like book 2, but throughout the story it often frustrated me to come back to him
• Some plot threads added little to the overarching story
  • I could see how some might consider Sigrid and Sathia relevant…but also the story didn’t really need them. Every time I saw either of them, I was struck with this feeling of, “what’s the point of this?”
  • It just felt like a poor attempt at setting up another book without ever actually making these plots relevant to the current story

Also, did SJM just forget that Tharion must submerge himself in river water every 24 hours? That was so important in book 2, and just never got mentioned in book 3 at all. Even when Tharion was in places for longer than 24 hours where it was questionable he’d have that kind of access.

Final thoughts

I just needed more emotional connection with this story. The main characters had little in the way of compelling growth arcs – in fact, it felt like Bryce regressed quite a bit. This was not book 1 Bryce. That amazing and emotionally poignant shower scene from book 1? Book 3 Bryce could never.

Somehow, it was too fast and too slow at the same time — and both too long and too short.

Should you read House of Flame and Shadow?

If you’ve read the first two, it’s worth seeing how this story ends. But it was far from a favorite for me, and I really wish the two sequels lived up to the first book. House of Earth and Blood was one of only two 5-star ratings I’ve given to SJM’s books. But unfortunately, the Crescent City series as a whole is at the bottom of her works for me.

For a full SJM guide, click here.