Crescent City Three—House of Flame and Shadow: A Spoiler Free Review
Working Title: CC3 is a fun romp, but there are pitfalls when plot drives the story instead of character growth.
Please note: There are minor spoilers for books one and two in the Crescent City series. If you have not read them yet, please come back to this article once you’re all caught up.
The hype surrounding the release of Sarah J. Maas’s House of Flame and Shadow has died down. Readers now know how the story ends—and the reviews are as ambivalent as my own feelings. Without any further ado, I’d like to highlight areas where Maas succeeded in writing a romantasy with some epic moments as well as point out areas where her editor should have insisted on another pass of revisions.
Examples of Where HoFaS Shines as Bright as Bryce’s Starlight
I adore the world SJM has created, and this book is no exception. And I do mean world and not worlds, now that it is proven there is crossover between the fae in Crescent City with those in ACOTAR. Maas has created entire royal bloodlines with history, religion with deities and rites, and magical creatures who are all interlinked. Anyone fascinated with mythology and lore cannot help but love this feature of her writing, and this volume delivers. Even better, there a a number of “breadcrumbs” for fans to follow as they wait for future installments that hint at a Throne of Glass tie-in.
The very best writing in this book focused on the dynamic between Ruhn Dannan, Crown Prince of the Valbaran Fae, and his mate Lidia, aka The Hind. Fated mates is a favorite trope featured in all of SJM’s books, in part because it pits two characters from different backgrounds—usually enemies—in a situation where they must work through their differences, only to discover they have more in common that they could have ever realized. The other fun part of this trope is, that when the characters finally get into bed, it is usually a meeting of bodies and souls. Sigh. I love love.
Ruhn and Lidia’s story gets even better. If you are like me, you didn’t bother to google what “hind” means. I’m so glad I thought it just sounded good alongside the “The Hound”. If you don’t know all of its definitions, please just go in blind. It will make the resulting light bulb moment all the better. Well played SJM. Well played. Reviewers who did not enjoy the book almost all had a caveat that this storyline was well-done.
Problems with the Plot and POVs
There are a fair number of folks who were left unsatisfied with overall story arc, including me. Following my initial read, I think the three biggest problem with HoFaS are as follows:
The plot drove the story rather than the protagonist’s arc of growth.
It absolutely kills me to write that. Maas is normally a master of creating wounded protagonists that face adversity head-on, morphing into powerful leaders in the process. Unfortunately, at the end of this volume, Bryce was little changed from the person she was at the end of book two. In a bonus scene I did not read (but found a quote from online), Rhysand describes Bryce as “soft-hearted yet ruthless. Scheming yet impulsive. Determined and stubborn. And a dangerous tendency toward recklessness.”
That also describes Bryce at the end of the second book, House of Sky and Breath. Those are the very same tendencies that resulted in her mate, brother, and her best-friend’s mate being captured by the big baddies, the Asteri. Their initial scenes in this volume show them chained up in torture chambers, where they are subjected to a lot of treatment that requires a pre-read list of trigger warnings.
Surely Bryce must be aware on some level that her dogged determination to find out all of Danika’s secrets has inflicted pain on those she loves the most. Yet she continues on in this vein for the rest of the series. Yet worse goes to worst. The Bryce I liked in books one and two morphed into knock-off version of Aelin, the protagonist from the Throne of Glass series. One crazy stunt that was only revealed afterwards? I can handle that. But Bryce did it again. And again. And again. The teleporting bit was really overused. Where was the editor? Unfortunately there were a few other issues with her characterization that made her come across as unsympathetic in terms of her approach towards Hunt and the fae community as a whole.
There was very little romance for a romantasy.
THANK the GODS for Ruhn and Lidia’s storyline, because Bryce and Hunt fell flat. In the scenes were they were apart for obvious reasons, that was ok. But this is supposed to be a romantasy, and the chemistry was not there.
Not in their reunion.
Not in the let’s cuddle scene. Let’s cuddle? WHAT?
Not in the creaky old bed that was about as romantic as two teens doing it on a rusted cot at a YMCA camp.
No no no no no. I understand that the lack of sexy time was a believable scenario for the setting—but we are reading romantasy as our preferred form of ESCAPISM. I did not feel like I had escaped my dreary reality to go and save an entire world with my hottie winged mate at my side. I am #sad.
There are too many POV shifts and Dangling Plot Points
What follows here is my speculation based on what I’ve gleaned about the original deal SJM made with Bloomsbury Publishing when this book deal was announced. Crescent City was originally under contract to be a trilogy, per the reporting in 2020. The ending of this book feels very much like Bryce and Hunt’s story surrounding the mysteries first discovered by Danika have wrapped up and come to a satisfying conclusion.
However, the number of pages in each volume (over 800), the number of POV characters by book 3 (six), and the fact there are four houses in Midgard—and four perfect book titles—tells me SJM wanted this to be a four book series. Maas is known for writing sprawling books with lots of plotlines. If I had to guess, some of the issues with this book come from seeking a compromise between the story Mass wanted to tell versus the story she was under contract for producing. It is the only reason we have the following in the Crescent City series and book three in particular:
800 pages per book, which is too much information for the average reader to absorb.
Many of the chapters in CC3 had multiple POV shifts, confusing readers.
These same POV shifts result in stopping the action media res. Once in a while, its ok to leave us hanging on a hook. But this can be frustrating when overdone.
Information that should have been dramatized was info-dumped. The long-awaited cross-over with Bryce arriving in the world of ACOTAR was poorly handled. So much was told rather than shown on the page.
Many characters from the first two books who were important to Bryce have nothing but small cameos in the last book. We learn nothing new about Fury, Juniper, Syrinx, or Cooper. Worse, what was the point of including the dragon-shifter in the series? Why wasn’t Ari put to real use?
Because SJM had to get to the end of the story, the climax felt rushed and then—oh I hate to say it—anti-climatic. Elements seen in the endings of her previous two series were duplicated, lowering the stakes significantly.
This is perhaps a book to ponder when considering the pros and cons of traditional versus self-publishing.
Conclusion
I realize I was really tough on House of Flame and Shadow in the above assessment. That was written as a book coach and developmental editor. It is criticism, but also I feel it is fair. SJM is a brilliant writer, but I really feel like the team around her should have been doing more to support this story to make it the best it could be.
With that said, I still really liked this book. I am happy to be one of the people who purchased it on publication day even if I’m not the first to review it. Would I read the series again? Yes, as an audiobook. If I’m being honest, however, I am more excited to see more ACOTAR books rather than CC books on my shelf in the future.