Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - From Blood and Ash

Poppy is very bland in my opinion. Her only real trait is “being trapped as the Maiden” and that’s it. That’s her only trait. Hawke is just as bad. The only character trait he has for like 75% of the book is that he’s…hot. That’s it.

And they have no chemistry. The whole chemistry between them is how “FoRbIdDeN” their love is.

Hawke try not to bring up their forbidden kiss challenge: impossible. But seriously all of their banter is just that over and over and over again.

The last 25% of the book is just plot twist after plot twist and a LOT of them felt very forced. They weren’t exactly well set up and came out of left field.

The only one that was slightly good in my opinion, was that the ascended were the real vampyres. That one had some plausible setup. But Hawke being “The Dark One”??? Poppy being half atlantain?? Where the hell did those come from?

So overall, a miss for me

1.5/5

Recommend For: Easy read for forbidden romance lovers.

Content Warnings

art_books_chemistry's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

kittykels's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark tense slow-paced

3.75

What I liked:

The MMC; wanting to know what happens next with him is the main thing convincing me to read the next book.

What I don't like:

The intense focus on the FMC being THE Maiden and most of the book being her introspection. I'm okay with introspection, but there was more of it than of action. The most interesting parts of the book were when we got to see the "consequences" of being The Maiden in action. I wish we would have been shown more rather than just being told all of her thoughts. Thoughts are so boring.
Many things were predictable
Mentioning her brother a lot but never meeting him and it not being clear if we will ever meet him. I'm sure we will since there are multiple books in this series, but it's really frustrating to have to hear about characters we've never met and having to take the main character's word that not only do they exist, but that they are at all the way they're being described. (I'm like, 20 minutes away from actually being done with this book as I'm writing my review so I'm gonna be mad if we meet him at the end lol)
Idk how the term is spelled in the book or how it's supposed to be pronounced, but in the audiobook, the narrator is saying "vamprees" instead of "vampires." I'm not saying this is wrong or anything since I don't know what the author intended, I just really don't like it. It's grating to my ears and brain.
Atlantia is starting to seem very Velaris-esque. If the parallels continue, I'm going to be disappointed. Not because I think there's any copying going on, I don't think that at all, I just don't love SJM books and I don't want this series to end up being as big of a let down as those were.

Content Warnings