Shelley's Updates

"�� Last 35%
�� Not too much smut
�� Romance
�� Drakens (still in love with Nektas' daddy vibe)
�� Secondary characters
✅�� Pace
✅�� Plot
🆗 Sera
🆗�� First 65%
❗️❗️Trigger warnings: mentions of past sexual abuse and captivity, death and death of loved ones, gore, decapitation

I swear they pick the same 6 or 7 words for their titles. It’s getting confusing with all the Ash, Blood, Fire, Flesh, and Bone��

The last 35% were really good, probably worth 4.5 stars, but the first 65% felt so long and pointless that I can't give a higher rating than 3 stars for the book overall. I was bored for most of the first half, and it took me forever to finish it.

It saddens me so much to give this book a low rating, but this book felt so long! I had to force myself to read a few chapters every day because I kept being distracted or wanting to read something else or do something else. This book couldn’t hold my interest.

Where was the plot? This book is over 700 pages long, and the plot makes up less than 25% of it. There are a few interesting chapters here and there because Sera interacts with other characters like Veses, Callum, Kyn, or Kolis, but even those interactions don’t really make the plot progress. It’s mostly plotting against Kolis, without being able to act, and repetitive conversations and inner monologues for over 60% of the book. This book could easily have been 300 pages shorter without having any impact on the plot.

There are still info dumps and shocking revelations, new characters are dumped into the story, and new powers are explained despite this being the fourth and last book of the series. Why add so many new things and create info dumps right before the end? There were so many descriptions and explanations of everything! The damn prophecy also gets longer and more complicated, and at that point, I don’t even care anymore. I know that Sera and Ash need to deal with Kolis, but the prophecy is just annoying me at that point.

Thanks to her ascension, Sera also developed a new intuition gift, which allowed her to master new skills quickly and, sadly, a little too easily for my taste. Because of that, she instantly gets answers to many of her questions or instinctively knows how to use her new powers.

Sadly, as is the case with a few couples I love in romantasies, it annoys me how they can't seem to resist their lust for each other, even in the least appropriate moments. I love it when characters have deep feelings for each other or when there is so much sexual tension, everyone can feel it, but there is a fine line to walk there. Having intense sexual tension is good, letting go of control and jumping each other is good, and doing it when there are crucial things to plan and talk about, or when people are waiting for them right next door, or when one of them hasn’t washed for months (#CasAndPoppy). Maybe it's just me being picky and a cranky reader or not having enough libido to understand what it’s like to be unable to stop and think when your significant other looks at you or touches you, but I don't find this sexy or hot. I find it illogical and annoying.

***I hope the next part makes sense and that I do not appear to be an insensitive monster.***
Sera’s trauma following her time in captivity at Kolis�� palace takes up a considerable part in the book, and I am not the biggest fan of it. There were so many inner monologues about how Sera was traumatized because of it that it started to lose its impact after a while. Now, I am not saying that her trauma is not justified. I can only imagine how horrible what happened to her felt, and I don’t want to appear as if I am invalidating her feelings and trauma. I just feel that it takes up too much room in the book and Sera’s personality, and the fact that she keeps on having those inner monologues, but also tells everyone that nothing happened and refused to talk about it made the whole trauma part less impactful after a while. Sera’s feelings are more than justified, I just feel that the author made such a big deal of it and brought it up again and again and again until it felt like Sera’s only defining trait in the first half of the book was her trauma. I got annoyed with it instead of feeling empathetic and hurt for Sera.

Then, once Sera finally started talking about it with Ash, we learned that something more happened?! Something that we didn’t read about in the previous book?! Why add this extra trauma now? It would have made more sense to me how badly she dealt with everything if I’d known from the start everything Kolis did, instead of thinking I knew (you know, because I read the previous book), only to learn that there was more when I was at 75% of the book already and frustrated with Sera already. Again, I am not saying it was nothing and that Sera shouldn’t have trauma (especially in the light of the new revelation she dropped on us), but this “new extra added trauma�� feels like a last-minute addition to the list of Sera’s trauma because the author just felt like making her even more scarred by her time with Kolis.

The drakens have held a piece of my heart since the very beginning of this series, and they continue to do so. Sera’s relationship with Reaver and Jadis is so cute and wholesome, and Nektas�� daddy vibes were just perfect. I love Daddy Nektas.

While this book was not my favorite of the series, it did get me excited for the final book in Poppy and Casteel’s adventure (I know there is another book planned after, but I heard it will follow Millie and Malek..?). I hope that Poppy and Cas will get to spend time with Ash, Sera, and Attes in the next book.

1. A Shadow in the Ember ⭐⭐⭐⭐��
2. A Light in the Flame ⭐⭐⭐⭐
3. A Fire in the Flesh ⭐⭐��

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