scijessreads

• Genre: fantasy romance
• Tropes: enemies to lovers
• Spice Level: moderate
• TW/CW: death, coma-like situation, stabby with a knife, cult-like activities, assault and harassment
• Recommend: not really…

See, I don’t love and recommend EVERY book that I read (or post).

Honestly, with this series as a whole, I am in it for the long haul, despite my growing misgivings about the plot and books overall. I gave in to the hype at the beginning, and overlooked A LOT of the issues, because the story seemed fun and I was able to eye-roll and grumble and generally enjoy the fact that this whole span of books is over-the-top and full of very obvious cliches and ham-fisted tropes.

But there was enough there to keep going. Until I realized that this was going to be a series that never-ended. And this recent entry into the story was not needed. At all (IMHO). What this book showed was that all of the previous books could have been told in dual (or multi) POV. The last book had a little of that, but all of them could have benefitted from it. As is, this book is book 1 (From Blood and Ash), all told in Hawke’s POV. With the BARE MINIMUM of new info that really could have been an epilogue to the previous book or a prologue to the next one. We learn nothing new. Honestly, everything here has been hinted at in conversations had in previous books.

So, unless you are a die-hard fan of the series, a glutton for punishment, or just really bored, skip this one. You can read a Wikipedia summary before the next book. Or just skip to the next one entirely.