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From Blood and Ash: Review Round-Up

To prevent you from having to search thither and yon on this website, I've rounded up my reviews of Jennifer L. Armentrout's From Blood And Ash series. Enjoy!

Hey, hi, hello. This is your SPOILER WARNING. There be spoilers here. Consider yourself warned.

I Do Love A Stabby Princess

So after the complete and utter disaster that was The Primal of Blood and Bone, I needed a reread of the rest of the series, because I remembered really liking it the first time around. And Jesus Horatio Christ were this book and TPOBAB like night and day. I still love stabby kitten Poppy Balfour, and somehow this book managed to be well plotted and lots of fun, if potentially a bit speedily paced. Let's talk From Blood and Ash.

Hey, hi, hello. This is your SPOILER warning, so be caught up or be cool. Ummm, and spoilers for the series, just to be safe.

Watching Poppy self-sabotage her chances of a successful ascension and realize that is actually what she's doing in real time was a lot of fun. I also enjoyed a lot of the worldbuilding and the details.

And yet when I go to write the review, I find it challenging in that I find I don't know hat I have much to say? I enjoyed the story and the characters. The worldbuilding was fun, if occasionally a bit opaque. I will say that the longer the series goes on and the more it is revealed that actually Poppy knew jack shit because the Ascended's propaganda campaign was so successful that our POV character is wrong about almost everything, the more confusing the world gets. This is also compounded by Poppy's status as a being changing practically every book. But those are series-wide issues, and this first book I think k does a really good job giving the reader a foundation.

There are also, as there so often in with JLA, a few key themes that are really highlighted via our POV character. Poppy is over here embodying empowerment, self-acceptance and a willingness to be open-minded and change. She also is advocating for treating people like people and for dignity in death. (That last one really kinda gets muddled and then lost in the larger series, but its a piece of this first book that I really like.) I also like how a lot of this is tied up in Poppy's unique experience surviving a craven attack and having visible facial scars in a culture that is so fixated on perfection in physical beauty. I'm not sold on Hawke instantly going, "all of you is beautiful and your scars are a sign of strength," but the thing is...Poppy was there first. Before Hawke sees her scars or knows who she is, Poppy understands that the scars don't change who she is or what is important about her. On top of that, she understands that the strength is in knowing her own worth despite Duke Teerman over here insisting to everyone that she's half angel, half nightmare. She knows he's full of shit, and she knows that the shame he is making her feel isn't about her; it's his power kink. That's where Poppy's strength is, and it's there BEFORE we hit romantic subplot, which I quite like.

Possibly I should address the Teerman thing, if for no other reason than TPOBAB seems to be trying to...I dunno, not retcon this, but possibly highlight what I always assumed were more illustrative examples than foreshadowing. In this book, Poppy references a "lesson" in which Teerman gives her ten lashes, then she snarked at him, and he hit her so hard she blacked out for an extremely ambiguous amount of time, only to wake up to Teerman and his stooge (yeah, he has a name, I don't remember what it is and the book is in another room) sitting on a couch 3/4 of the way through a really good bottle of booze. We know from the one "lesson" we actually do see in its entirety in this book that there are sexual assault elements to the "lessons" but as far as Poppy and the reader are concerned in this book, it doesn't go farther than caning and exposure because she's the maiden and they want her to be found worthy of being ascended.

TPOBAB outright says that Teerman raped Poppy during a lesson, and probably during the one where she wasn't conscious. Which...

Not gonna lie, I don't love this. It was sufficiently bad as it was in FBAA to be something that Poppy carries scars from. It didn't need to be retroactively worse, and it kind of feels like making it retroactively worse was a reaction to people reacting well to Sera's story in A Fire in the Flesh and Born of Blood and Ash rather than a logical progression of Poppy's journey. Like...it was bad enough. It just was. It's allowed to be bad without penetrative sex being involved, and it's the idea that if there wasn't a penis directly involved it's not bad enough that I don't love. It's not a matter of degrees, it was already bad enough. Making it worse is just authorially kicking Poppy while she's down and it suggests that some forms of sexual assault are worse than others, which...no.

Poppy and dignity in death is a really interesting one as well, since her entire life as the maiden is a perversion of dignity in life. She has no privileges, no freedom, no control, and is told that it's to keep her sufficiently pure and dignified and maidenly. The fact is, Poppy is living as public a destruction of her self as those citizens and denizens of Masadonia who get bitten by craven, found our, and dragged off to be publicly burned alive. It's very different types of stripping people of dignity, but I love that Poppy's utter lack of dignity in her own life leads her to insist on dignity for others in death. It might well have been Hawke who says that by the time people get bitten by the craven, they've already given absolutely everything to defend the rise and their homes and should be treated as such, but it resonates with Poppy and is just a banger of a line. It's really, really sad that this fizzles out later in the series.

I will also say I'd forgotten that so many things are planted in this one. The pretty poppy limerick, for one, which is a really strong throughline in later books. Poppy being stabby and asking more questions than Hamlet, for another.

Oh the other well executed trick was Hawke getting Poppy out of the city and to his stronghold. Like, as a reader I was seeing red flags, but Poppy was just SO PSYCHED to get to go on an adventure as a regular human instead of as the maiden that you just...wanted it to be real. So the betrayal wasn't a hidden twist, but the emotion was there to make it effective.

So yeah, overall I really, really enjoyed FBAA. It's a lot of fun, even on reread, and Poppy herself is a delight. I'd go for coffee and a girl's day with her any time, and there are surprisingly few protagonists I'd go for that with.

I'm going to keep on with the reread and reviews of this series, so keep an eye out!

The 540-Odd Pages It Took To Get Poppy's Head Where Her Heart Has Been Since Halfway Through the Last Book

Look. I adore these books. That's just the assumption we are starting with. That said...I am low key questioning whether we needed 500+ pages to get Poppy's head and heart aligned and to get her ass on the Atlantian throne. I'm not mad about it, but the professional in me is like...some of this could have moved along faster. And perhaps we could have varied the speedbumps a little more than Alastir repeatedly revealing information to Poppy about Casteel, Poppy being BIG MAD but still head over heels in love, and Casteel explaining himself and boning Poppy. That pattern repeated itself like four or five times in this book. So let's talk A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire.

Hey, hi, hello. This is your SPOILER WARNING for this book, and a just in case spoiler warning for the FBAA series, because this is a reread for me and I'm unlikely to censor myself.

Penellaphe Balfour is one of my favorite FMCs. JLA is actively trying to do interesting things with her, including the mechanical processes of deprogramming from abuse, grooming, and propaganda. Is it always effective? Gotta say no on that one. Is she trying? Yes, and it works enough that I'm willing to give points for effort (at this point in the series). I actually think that the hilarious part of this is that Poppy deprogramming and creating herself might have worked better if the story wasn't also a romance. Like I think her interactions with Kieran, Alastir, and the mortals of Spessa's End and Atlantia are WAY more interesting and thematically sound than her circling the same pattern with Casteel for 500 pages. Does she need support and affirmation as she gets away from the Ascended and their abuse? Hell yes she does. Is Casteel the best place for that support to come from? Arguably no, and his self-awareness that he isn't worthy if her and that he's leading with selfishness begins and ends at self-aware; he's not in a hurry to change. So the romance dynamics are already beginning to hatch into the albatross that will drag down the characters in TPOBAB, but they're not that bad yet.

For all that Casteel and Poppy's romance kind of kneecaps Poppy's thematic arcs, I do like these crazy kids. Poppy takes no shit from Cas, and I enjoy her stabbing Cas almost as much as I enjoy everyone stabbing Callum. I do find myself rooting for them, and frankly they're a lot of fun, repetitive circle of this book notwithstanding. I also do appreciate Cas's unflinching affirmations of Poppy, from her beauty to her kindness to her bloodthirstyness. I live in 2026 as a woman, so hell yes, affirm that Poppy is perfect as she is and that she doesn't need to censor or be less to be acceptable. Like I cannot say we need less of that in the world, and frankly more would be great.

We also get a lot of exposition dumps in this book, as Poppy and Cas come to grips with each others' backstories. As a book, it means the plot feels a bit slow and it's...a lot of exposition. As a follow up to the first book though? I'm not mad about it because it not only puts a new spin on the first book, but it also works well with Poppy's thematic arc of deprogramming and rebuilding. That takes time, it takes repetition, and it takes rehashing what you thought you knew with the new information. You're on that journey with Poppy, and I am not mad about it. The slower pace compared to book 1 and the circularity of information (which is different from the circular dynamic with Poppy and Cas that I didn't love) are part of the experience. I will stand by this, because not every book has to be a fast-paced, plot-heavy adventure. It's ok to slow down and do the internal work, and I liked that for Poppy.

I liked it most when she was doing it with people other than Casteel, but still. Her chats with Kieran really popped for me on this reread; I like Poppy and Kieran a lot.

I exist on the internet and I know people get exercised about the carriage sex in the middle of the battle over Jacinda's ashes. This might be poking a bear, but like...y'all, I don't hate it. They thought they were going to die. They had privacy and five minutes. Feyre and Rhys in ACOMAF climaxed to the pained screams of wounded and dying soldiers, and I contend that that was handled significantly worse than Poppy and Cas. It's fine. I'm pretty sure that half of the point of romantasy is shoehorning in sex scenes around mortal peril, and at least Duchess Teerman had the courtesy to fall neatly to ashes rather than stick around as an inconvenient corpse in the room while Poppy and Cas knocked boots.

The book is really pretty neatly wrapped up, when all is said and done. It begins with a proposal of practicality and it ends in a marriage if heart mates blessed by Nyktos. Very very neat, tie it up with a bow. The plot behind that is basically a road trip with a few battles thrown in, and like...the book was fun. It's trying some stuff, succeeding and failing in a balance that keeps it entertaining. Poppy stabs stuff, which is always the best. Especially when she stabs Cas.

There were some typos and grammar issues in the book (the hyphenation in "cut my throat wide-open[sic]" very nearly killed me, I won't even lie), which honestly I don't love, but its nothing compared to what was up with TPOBAB, and at this point I'm almost at "at least this way I know an AI probably didn't write this, even if it wasn't well edited."

Bring on book 3!

The Whump and Angst Girlies Ate Well With This One

If the previous book's cycle was Cas massaging the truth, Poppy getting big mad, and then sex, the cycle in this one (at least in the middle third) was Poppy does an eather power and then Cas pulls her into a private corner for more sex. The middle got real repetitive, but the beginning and ending of this book absolutely SLAP. This book also is really where I'm pretty sure I'm right about my TPOBAB analysis of Casteel. So let's talk The Crown of Gilded Bones.

This is your SPOILER WARNING. There are spoilers below the cut. Consider yourself warned.

Ok, so the middle of this book. The bopping around Atlantia doing god stuff and boinking Casteel. The theorizing about what the actual tits Poppy had ascended into. The Miss Willa stuff. Was fine. I was a little bored on reread, if we're being completely honest, but we DID have to get Poppy on the throne of Atlantia for political reasons. Did we need to spend that long and do that much bopping around? Debatably no.

Now let's talk about the good stuff.

I am an absolute simp for rescues. I freakin' love them. Kidnap SOMEONE, and let's get off our asses and ride in to the rescue. So the fact that this book STARTS with Alastir orchestrating Poppy's kidnapping and then catastrophically blowing the part where he was going to hand her over to the Ascended to be used as a blood cow was EXCELLENT. I was so here for that rescue. And THEN we follow it up with the oopsie poopsie, Alastir had an archer in his back pocket and they got Poppy directly in the chest. The ANGST. The whump vibes. The "do it now or lose her forever" choice Cas made to ascend her. The slowly disappearing marriage imprint on his palm.

*Chef's kiss*

The entire first chunk of this book is just tailor-written for all my favorite, self-indulgent, angsty, whumpy preferences. It also really does mark the death of Poppy the stabby kitten and allows her to do all the growth and power discovery stuff in the middle. She's beginning to actually grow into the self she wants to be, beyond the expectations of the Ascended and the Atlantians. It's important, and it's going to be a big thing, especially since it heralds the very beginning of a shift in Poppy and Cas's relationship.

For the first two books, Casteel is over here with all the power. He has the knowledge, the worldliness, the confidence, and he positions himself as Poppy's protector. Which is great and fine and works, and really comes to a head at the beginning of this book, because Cas will be DAMNED if he's going to let Poppy die. Here's the thing though: Through the middle of the book, Cas's perspective on his and Poppy's relationship is that the foundation--Big, Strong Protector Cas and Stabby Kitten Poppy--has not changed. But Cas's choice to ascend Poppy and basically unlock her god-tier powers takes her and puts her several levels above him in sheer power. She isn't a stabby kitten anymore the minute she ascends; the fact that neither of them figure it out until she's eathered a bunch of bad guys and has PROVED that she's the baddest motherfucker outside Illiseeum, at least as far as raw power goes. She hasn't become her full-fledged goddess self yet, but that's absolutely where she's headed. And Casteel not only doesn't seem to realize that in the bits of the book where he's around, he then *checks notes* hands his ass over to Isbeth (who has been Ileana this whole time) in exchange for Poppy's life.

Which brings us neatly to the kickass third act of the book. Poppy and Cas have a showdown with Isbeth, and it uh...it goes BAD. Poppy's brother Ian is brutally murdered in front of her and then Isbeth pulls a "look what you made me do" in the vein of abusive parents and boyfriends everywhere. Tawny gets herself should-be-mortally wounded. We lose a wolven. We find out that the Blood Crown has REVENANTS, of all fucking things. We meet Poppy's cave cat father, Ires--although we don't find out it's Ires until we pop back to Illiseeum to raise the draken. And finally, Isbeth comes within a hair's breadth of murdering Poppy, and Cas hands himself over as a hostage who needs rescuing. (Which cues up ANOTHER rescue plot, and I am cackling and kicking my little feeties in excitement about this.)

This meeting could not have gone worse if they'd TRIED.

The critical thing about the outcome though? Poppy's about to have time and space to grow on her own, with Kieran's support, but without Casteel. She's going to grown and change (and then spend a book in stasis) and by the time TPOBAB kicks off, everyone's had growth that nobody's had time or space to come to terms with. And Casteel losing his absolute shit about his stabby kitten not being his stabby kitten anymore? Makes sense. (I am not defending TPOBAB. I'm building a theory here.)

Overall though, this book lives at the beginning and the end for me, because Cas and Poppy being raked across the coals is just PEAK. It is wonderful. I skim over the Atlantia politics, but the kidnappings, attempted murders, showdowns and hostage situations? They are FANTASTIC.

Put That Prince Back Where He Came From Or So Help Me...

Ok, so...there are big chunks of this book I absolutely adore, but quite frankly it's also where I realize that I'm no longer here for Casteel. He hasn't internalized that Poppy isn't a stabby kitten anymore, and the ONLY reason this doesn't become an active problem until TPOBAB is because this book is busy. So let's talk The War of Two Queens.

Hey, hi, hello. This is your SPOILER WARNING. Consider yourself notified.

Ok, we are FINALLY at war to bring the blood crown down, and Poppy and the reader are finally not being smothered by Casteel anymore because his ass pulled a heroic sacrifice at the end of the last book. He spends a little over half this book languishing prettily in Isbeth's crypt, and...we'll talk about that, because it's doing some interesting things, but for the most part I'm objectively glad Poppy and Cas get some space. This is primarily because I love Poppy and Kieran's dynamics.

Kieran has a lifelong, bone-deep understanding of what it is to support another person. Casteel is not good at this. Kieran IS. Not only is he holding his own ass together over the emotional fallout of Casteel's capture, he is doing his damndest to make sure that Poppy stays together too. He's making sure she's eating, sleeping, feeding when she needs to, and he is at her back while she learns how to stand on her own authority. Sometimes that does mean protecting her, but so often it means standing beside her while she does queen stuff--up to and including the message the ascended leave her that Valyn was all like, "she shouldn't see this" and Kieran doesn't even flinch. He just follows Poppy and is there to help her hold it together. She grows with his help, and their mix of banter and candor is always on point and invariably more interesting than Poppy and Casteel's. I just like the pair of them together, they're a lot of fun. And Kieran understands that she will grow and change, and he makes space for that.

I also love that Poppy understands that Kieran is the one she has to ask to put her in the ground. I think her assessment that Casteel absolutely could not do it correct. I also think it might kill Kieran to do it, but he WOULD, because she asked him and he is out here respecting her requests. Crucially, even the ones he does not like or agree with, which Casteel won't do--and which is going to cause preventable issues in TPOBAB. So overall, I genuinely think that Kieran has more respect for Poppy's authority and requests than Cas.

The fact that Kieran is out here trying to direct Poppy to memories that will spark a vaguely shocked response rather than make it weird that she can see his memories when she needs to feed from him is also very playful in a very dry sort of way that really fits Kieran's personality and his dynamic with Poppy.

Like overall, everything with Poppy and Kieran in this book was great and I so wanted more of that. Pretty much everything up to and including the immediate aftermath of Cas's rescue was A+ no notes.

While Poppy and Kieran ran the show, we did get a few glimpses of Casteel, and they were interesting insofar as we are seeing Cas in this situation for the second time. He has expectations and can self-coach through coping mechanisms with some prior knowledge. I appreciated a look at Casteel under pressure when he isn't also looking after Poppy. It's probably the closest thing we get to who Cas is in the dark, and...while that's interesting just on a "how will he cope and survive?" level...there's really not a whole hell of a lot of personality there. He's cool with his choice because it spared Poppy this exact situation and there is some situational fear and a pinch of self-loathing, but other than that, it's all "no thoughts, just captivity." Even his choice to force Isbeth to kill him rather than undo the checkmate Poppy put Isbeth in isn't so much a him choice as a "my brilliant wife" choice. It's fair to be afraid of losing himself to bloodlust, but also he's the main character and he has Poppy armor, so that stake falls a little flat.

I'm absolutely not saying that JLA fridges Cas, but his pain and adventures in the crypt are definitely less for his character development than they are to hurt Poppy. And it does hurt Poppy, but she also has the space to do some growing and changing in the process. Cas barely even manages self-reflection. And after reading TPOBAB...I half think this was intentional? Because Cas absolutely doesn't learn anything and he doesn't take into account that Poppy might have changed (which is exemplified when he's screaming at her across a battlefield not to look while her mother implodes and dies but Poppy chooses to look anyway; this is so not addressed in the book and it should have been). And then since Poppy is in stasis for all of ASOBAA, nobody deals with each others' growth and changes until TPOBAB, when they STILL don't deal with it because everyone is collectively holding the idiot ball. But in TWOTQ? I can absolutely see Cas's staticness and Poppy changing as intentional to set up conflict going forward. Which...hnnnnnnnnnnnng, fair thing to try, but the execution...yikes.

While most if what I enjoyed about this book was Poppy and Cas being apart, I would be a lying liar who lies if I said the Joining wasn't fun to read. We can absolutely argue over whether it was earned (meh) and whether the circumstances that led to it were contrived (they were), but the actual scene was fun. I will also assert that the fantasy of having two people you trust and love that much is just nice.

So, before this evolves into a list of things I had feelings about, let's talk about that ending, because epic showdown battles with ancient forces of evil are a wholeass thing. I will say that while JLA is generally decent at writing battle scenes, there were moments with this one (especially once Poppy goes full Primal) where I was getting a little lost logistically and geographically. Nothing a retread of a sentence or two didn't fix, but there were moments that could definitely have been clearer. I think that's also just a symptom of occasionally opaque sentence-level writing too. For example, yes, I can figure out what JLA intends when she says "daggers sheathed on both thighs" but I would argue that "sheathed daggers on both thighs" is clearer and it doesn't make my brain stumble on the preposition, because you sheath daggers IN things, and you wear weapons ON your person. The grammar isn't wrong, but like...clarity. Word order. They matter.

The aftermath of the epic battle is also a bit...curtailed? Curt? It's kind of one of those, "we saved everyone!" tempered with "you didn't save SHIT, Kolis is loose." So it's an ending, but it also opens up a metric ton of new space and more or less brings the prequel quartet full circle, because BOBAA ends with Kolis's entombment, and we've just undone that. It's a point of convergence in a lot of ways.

Oh, the other thing that happens in this climax? Poppy fully goes "I don't believe in dignity in death anymore" when she murders the hell out of her mother. Which...on the one hand, I get it. Isbeth absolutely doesn't deserve mercy or dignity or anything. On the other hand...I feel like the blanket statement is not a GOOD character progression for Poppy. The dignity in death was SO important for her, and she's gonna be the Primal of Life and Death, so that recognition felt important for her and felt like it would CONTINUE to be important for her. I feel like that was a loss that didn't make sense with her character development.

Ok, at this point we are devolving into specifics that made me feel some kind of way:

Kieran sleeping in wolven form next to Poppy the entire time Cas was gone, except for the one night Poppy almost broke and he turned human to comfort her and then she returned the favor by asking him to put her in the ground if ever she went fully out of control. Like. MY HEART.

Poppy going to see the "message" the Ascended left and not letting the sheer violence and pointedness and maiden-ness of it all break her, and having the courage to know that they still need to be cut down and put down before they become craven.

Poppy having the togetherness to tell Kieran that she doesn't want him ANYWHERE NEAR Cas's severed finger. He doesn't need that, he doesn't need to DEAL with that. There are other people who can take the finger, remove the wedding band, burn the finger, clean the wedding band and hand it off to Poppy. Kieran does not need to be part of that process.

Hill I'm going to die on: Malik and Millie are plot bloat and we don't need them. I'm not interested in them. I don't want them taking page space away from Poppy, Kieran, and Cas. We didn't need that many players in this game, the cast is already huge.

Everyone stabs Callum. This is a net win for everyone.

Delano. Delano is the best, and the goodest boi.

Isbeth being a full-on beloved sex kitten. Like...she's objectively the worst, but godsdamn if the bitch isn't doing it with STYLE, and we appreciate that

Reaver and Kieran's epic feud. This is just fun, and more Reaver is never something I will complain about.

Losing the draken. I was fully devastated with Poppy about this, because there are fewer draken than wolven, and I don't know how they recover from that.

Ok, I think that about covers it. I really love this book too, frankly, even with it's flaws.

Talking Through Your Trauma With a Captive Audience

So, by the time I dug into this series, the book I ended up WAITING for was TPOBAB. But I wasn't waiting all that long, so I didn't have the same issue I did with Chaol's Desert Adventure when I was reading Throne of Glass. There are actually parts of this book I really enjoyed. So let's talk A Soul of Ash and Blood.

Hey, hi, hello. This is your spoiler warning, and I'm just going to say that it counts for the whole series. Just to be on the safe side.

Ok. So. A retelling of the first book in the series from Cas's perspective is...a potentially fraught proposition just on its face. And I will say, the parts that I actually found least interesting in this book were the parts that we saw the first time around. Like...I didn't particularly CARE what Cas was feeling when we were with Poppy in book 1. I also didn't think we needed all the updates on how Casteel's dick was feeling in the sex scenes that we got again from book 1. I, at least, had been there, had done that, and didn't find Cas as interesting as Poppy in the scenes where she is present.

So those scenes fell really flat for me, and I feel like the problem is that we have literally already seen that, and there isn't enough of a shift to add something genuinely new to keep it interesting. That said...

The parts that are new? The scenes we see where Poppy ISN'T present? Well those we can split into flashback scenes and present scenes, and they're good for very different reasons.

Starting with the flashback scenes, I think my favorite thing we get is Cas negotiating Solis and the power dynamics among mortals and Ascended alike WITHOUT Poppy being first and foremost in the equation the way we get in later books. We get to see Cas actually making broader choices that would have consequences, and working with the Descenters to forward Atlantian plans. We actually get a glimpse in the mind of a commander. It's very cool, and we get a better sense of the mindset and trauma that Cas walks around with on a day-to-day basis. I'm actually quite here for that, and for the character arc that we all knew was happening in the background of FBAA, but that we only saw from Poppy's POV: Cas falling in love and shifting away from the trauma umbrella he's been standing under.

I also love the dynamic where we see what happened BEHIND the scenes of FBAA. Like, getting to see Cas actually mercy kill mortals who are going to turn craven and how he goes about that is great and gives the statement we get in FBAA more weight than just "ooh, shared interest in giving these poor bastards some dignity in their inevitable deaths" vibes.

I also really enjoyed getting to see Cas wreck Duke Teerman. That was just a great scene. It also seems like it offered a little easter egg that Kolis was in Duke Teerman, but uh...that also seems iffy if Kolis was awake and trapped in the ground until the end of TWOTQ? I dunno, I'm not going to dig too deep into that or the Kolis timeline, because it doesn't actually hurt the scene as it plays out in ASOAAB. Which is glorious. If anyone deserves Cas at his most cocky asshole, it's Duke Teerman. I wish Cas had taken out Mazeen and Poppy had cut Teerman to pieces, but y'know. They both got handled.

Another flashback scene I really, REALLY enjoyed was Cas over here sitting with Poppy while she was keeping herself drugged in the aftermath of Vikter's death. It's really sweet, and since I was a tiny human watching The Swan Princess, I have loved when our MMC sits beside the FMC and declared care. It's the BEST.

Which segues nicely into the present scenes and why I love them. It's 100% Cas and Kieran at Poppy's bedside, handling life and doing their damndest to ensure that Poppy knows them, but more importantly HERSELF when she wakes up from stasis. All the present sections of this book are basically a quest to save Poppy's soul. It's really sweet and the stakes are deceptively high. It's the classic "we can't do much, but we will do the HELL out of what we can" and "keep the lights on for one more night" vibes. And oh my god I love this. I love it so, so much.

The details of this are just exquisite. From Cas ensuring that Poppy is clean and safe and Kieran insisting that Poppy not wake up wearing white, they're doing every tiny thing they can think of to ensure that Poppy is ok--even if she doesn't know it.

This even extends to Cas discovering that he so cannot handle Poppy being vulnerable, he discovers that he can shift into a goddamn cave cat and chew an aggressive, murdery Revenant into little pieces. It is glorious, and I honestly have no notes about that.

So overall...this book is fun. It's not what I'd call essential to the overall series, and there is an argument to be made about just being part of the "reverse POV" trend, but like...I'm not mad about it. It's got enough satisfying and cute stuff that I don't mind skimming over the stuff that is objectively not giving me any new information.

Will Nobody Free Me From This Bothersome Trend Where Trad Pub Books Are Aggressively Unedited???

So...this book is frustrating. It lacked the streamlining that a good round of developmental editing would have brought about, and it was covered in typos and formatting errors that a round of copyediting would have caught. It's a NOTICEABLE drop in overall quality from not only the first five books in the series, but the prequel quartet as well. It's extra frustrating because there actually is a good story in here, but it's buried in bloat and copy errors that dragged the whole book down and made it a notably less pleasant read. Let's talk The Primal of Blood and Bone.

Hey, hi, hello. This is your spoiler and content warning. I'm going to spoil the book, and I'm going to be discussing sexual assault. Take care of you first, and we'll see you next time if you need to skip this one.

So just overall...this book was bloated. It needed streamlining and some darlings needed to get killed (stares dead-eyed at Poppy 9/11s the Continent). Streamlining would also have very much helped the key things in this book stand out a little more; to whit:

The intimate powerplay between Poppy and Kolis for dominance that is ultimately skewed by Poppy missing a key peice of information about Kolis's motivation. Like...this is Christine and the Phantom, guys. This is "Point of No Return" but stretched into a whole book and cranked to 11. I genuinely think that this is meant to be the main thrust of the narrative of this book while we also wrap up the loose ends from the first four books and being the convergence point with the prequels (SERIOUSLY, this book is doing too much from the jump). However, because the book is so bloated, Poppy and Kolis get drowned througout the middle of the book. They get muffled in the other noise. I wanted this more front and center, foiled by Poppy navigating her new relationship with Kieran and Cas. Instead, the two felt distant, and Kolis gets lost in Poppy, Kieran, and Cas not talking about crucial things for 700-plus pages.

Casteel being more of an asshole than usual isn't enough foreshadowing (with as much bloat as there was in this book) to cue the reader to Kieran's conclusion that Cas is the Primal God of Death and Destruction (or, as I call him, the Primal God of Shitty, Overprotective Boyfriends). This is possibly TOO consistent for Casteel, because...we've seen his ass be a shitty, overprotective boyfriend from From Blood and Ash. He has been static as far as that is concerned, and cranking it to 11 just felt like overkill. If we'd been more clearly foiling him with Kolis (see point 1), then I honestly think it would be more apparent that this isn't just more of the same overprotectiveness, it's escalating into something BAD.

Kieran and how he fits into everything. I adore Kieran Contou. His relationship with Poppy is awesome. He didn't get to be active enough in this book. Again, I think this is because there was so much else happening that the foiling of Cas and Kolis got muddy, and Poppy didn't actually get to navigate anything new with Kieran; he was just absent or being the usual rock.

Muddying these three key points and having them buried under the freaking Ascended plot (literally I was over this when Ian got his head chopped off, it goes on too long and gets too much page time when the rest of the practicalities of running the fucking kingdom get largely handwaved) is so frustrating.

Also frustrating was how the Fates were tied into this book. Poppy's ascension causing the apocalypse on the Continent was dumb and should have been cut. She could have broken any number of other balance rules to get whisked off for her big meeting with the Fates, and even then, adding the Fates in as another antagonistic group is, in and of itself, adding to the feeling of bloat. They can be comic balance keepers, but Poppy over here plotting Lirian's murder? No, sorry, that's too many vengeance quests, put some back. Same with Isbeth's brief maybe-return; that was out of nowhere and the bitch is dead, let her be in the abyss.

I also want to talk about this book being the convergence of the FBAA and Flesh and Fire storylines. I am on record saying that I adore Flesh and Fire as a contained quartet. I think it was well executed, I love Sera and Ash, and as a prequel and intro to Kolis, it works and makes sense. Bringing it together with Poppy's timeline feels...not inappropriate, and not bloated, but like it put too much weight on this book. Poppy's entire life is shifting and evolving relationships, and in this book, JLA had to tackle the following relationships of Poppy's:

Cas and Kieran

Kolis

Seraphena

Reaver (and Jadis)

Attes

Malik and Millicent (both individually and as heartmates)

All the secondary characters we still have running around from the FBAA series

That is a LOT to deal with, and...it's too much. It's just too much, despite Sera showing up being some of my favorite chapters of the book, period. There isn't enough page time in the edit we got for all of this to land and to develop the core relationships consistently throughout. (This is not a call for the book to have been longer. This is a request for better developmental editing.)

So those are kind of my bird's-eye view concerns with the book, and between the issues with the developmental editing that didn't happen and the copy editing that didn't happen (this book. is fucking RIDDLED. with typos and ungramamtical sentences.), I was disappointed on first read. On reread, I was big mad about it, because there is also a lot of what I loved in FBAA and Flesh and Fire in here too. So what I'm doing next is a list of scenes/moments/mini arcs I liked, followed by a list of the ones I did not like.

You might see some overlap. That is what makes this book so goddamn frustrating.

Stuff I Liked

Kolis possessing Poppy. Listen. Everything about this was incredible. We have Poppy fighting her ass off on pure instinct to keep Kolis from taking her over. We have Casteel being forced to do everything he swore he'd never do to Poppy in a bid to keep her from hurting herself or anyone she cares about and being TORTURED about it. We even get a quick Cas/Kolis chat that feels like two fencers feeling out their opponents. And every moment Poppy herself breaks through and gets to connect with Cas for just a moment or two? *chef's kiss* This is really the pinnacle of all the hostage and rescue scenes we got in the first four books, and it's GREAT. I love it. I know people were apparently mad that we stayed in one room as long as we did, but if we had KEPT highlighting Poppy and Kolis's war for dominance throughout the book as a character struggle rather than with actual battle scenes, I contend it would have been a stronger book.

The Poppy/Kolis Fight. This fight is just...it's been coming for 700 pages by the time we get here, and I was SO READY. It's got some surprises, some classic Poppy, and quite frankly, it's just SO NICE to have someone finally put a dagger in Kolis's heart. Even if it doesn't quite take...

Poppy becoming her own independent self. Poppy's arc across this whole series from stabby kitten to Primal is actually really well done, and it comes to a proper head in this book. She's thinking systemically and strategically, she has enough context that she doesn't need everything filtered through Cas or Kieran, and she actually gives a damn about her people. After the zombie Cereen attack, her healing people to the point of nearly passing out (and getting lovingly scolded for it by everyone in the room) just shows that when given the time and space to choose who she is, Poppy chooses kindness and power used to help people before she thinks of herself. I really like who Poppy is in this book. Her strength is on display, even if it's not like...super well focused on themes and plot arcs.

Kolis getting actual character development (yes, even though it was wholly off-page). This dovetails a little with the Poppy/Kolis final fight, but honestly? I freaking LOVE that Kolis's big reveal in this fight is that he's moved on from Sotoria. He's gotten his ass over his obsession with the girl. He still wants to be The True Primal of Life and Death, but he isn't also fooling himself that he's in love. As a twist on first read, this was great. The "oh SHIT" it engendered was huge and incredible. On reread, watching everyone make the wrong assumption about where Kolis was coming from lent a lovely tension to the planning sessions, and it made some of Poppy's choices just tragic. I also just...wasn't expecting growth from Kolis, and that subversion of expectation was just satisfying.

Poppy beating the snot out of the revenant Kolis possessed. Poppy is murderous and angry, and when she's allowed to let loose and show it, it's very fun.

Poppy and Sera having girl talk. Ok, everything about Poppy and Sera interaction was just incredible. It was awkward, it was earnest, there was a shared recognition of trauma and a shared hope for a happier future. My badass queens get to just be themselves and chat. It was darling and I loved it.

Sera and Jade when Jade wakes up. This was heartbreaking in the best way, especially given that Sera and her baby draken were among my favorite parts of Flesh and Fire.

Every time Callum got stabbed. This is precisely what it says on the tin.

Stuff I Did Not Like

The apocalypse. This was stupid. I will die on this hill. It wasn't necessary, it felt WILDLY disconnected from everything else in the book, and I had zero investment in any of it whatsovever. Were I the developmental editor on this book, scrapping this nonsense would have been my first and strongest suggestion.

Poppy's semiconscious(?) exhibitionist episode. So, remember when I said that Poppy and Kolis's war for dominance got muddied? This. This scene. Was so muddied and unclear and had so many consent issues I cannot even. The fact that Poppy asked Casteel to dominance fuck her in front of Kolis but didn't tell him that's what the situation was is a violation of Casteel's consent. To quote John Oliver, sex is like a boxing match; if all the participants didn't 100% agree to be there, one of them is committing a crime. Consent issues aside, this was also a moment that foiled Cas and Kolis...but not in a way that I think was necessarily intended? Kolis, during the Poppy/Kolis fight, explicitly says that he wanted to fuck her in front of Casteel before he killed her. That's a dominance move that Casteel implies (via his "that isn't how a man behaves with a woman he loves" spiel) he would never, ever consent to with Poppy. So uh...Casteel, who spent five books being as careful as he possibly could be with Poppy where consent was concerned, and who is foiling Kolis, somehow comes out as LESS of an asshole than Kolis because Kolis can talk big all he wants, but he does not actually dominance fuck anyone in this book. Casteel does by deception. If Cas and Kolis had been foiled off each other more clearly, rather than sort of being in an asshole swamp (I saw it when I wrote it, and then I chose to leave it. You're welcome.), then I don't think this scene would have stayed in the book. It makes sense that we needed SOMETHING there to keep the Poppy/Kolis connection war alive, but holy shit, maybe don't sacrifice the clarity of the Cas/Kolis foil and Casteel's respect for consent in the process? The more I think about this scene and think through what it's doing and what the implications are, the more I think this is a swing and a hit yourself in the balls with the bat as you miss.

Literally everything with the Ascended. Look. I get that we technically need to mop up the Ascended after the destruction of the blood crown, but we spend way too much time on this, both bad (the sex murder scene) and the attempting-to-be-good (the scene with the unbound). Again, this could have been handwaved, like all the other running the kingdom stuff was all throughout the book. Ian has absolutely been dead long enough and was a sufficiently small presence in the previous books that the reader isn't missing the Ascended. A mention or two, sure. Poppy weighing in on the policy before Vonetta goes and handles it off-page, sure. But we didn't need that much of the vamprys in this book. This would have been my second blanket "kill your darlings" suggestion if I had been the developmental editor on this.

Poppy, Cas, and Kieran not talking to each other. Kieran spent too much goddamn time threatening to tell Poppy what's actually up and not enough time DOING it. I would much rather have spent the book watching these three fight about Kieran's promise to Poppy rather than aggressively not talking about it. Not talking about it is passive, and that got old FAST. Make it an active choice to tell, and make them deal with it. It doesn't have to be resolved by the time Poppy fucks off to mano-a-mano Kolis, we can still have that bitter goodbye. But for the love of god, throw that diseased dick on the table and poke it with a stick. It's not interesting in the plot's pants.

The complete and utter lack of explanation of how the hell we got from pregnant Sera to the clusterfuck that is the aftermath of Malec, Ires, and Isbeth (including the side quest to wake Jadis up). Ok. I get that the history here could be its own series. But I think too many details were left off-page, and I want some of those holes filled in, particularly as it comes to Jade. Why the hell was she in stasis in the basement? What HAPPENED to her???

Casteel being right about Kolis and everyone else getting blindsided when he's not in love with Poppy anymore. Ok, this one is difficult, because as much as I love that Kolis got growth, it does sort of fuck up everything around it. I'm actually so cheesed off that Casteel was right about this. He's spent the book being a raging asshole, he doesn't get to be rewarded by being RIGHT. I also don't love the sense that, hey, Kolis might be RIGHT that Poppy's weakness is her willingness to give people the benefit of seeing the best in them--if you can consider Kolis being capable of love the best in him. That makes it feel like we're punishing Poppy, which I do not love. The fact that Casteel is the one who clocks this also gives off a "it takes an asshole to know an asshole" vibe that, once again, could have worked if the foiling between Cas and Kolis wasn't so muddy.

Callum did not get stabbed enough. This is also precisely what it says on the tin.

So yeah, overall, there were things I loved in this book. There were also things that would absolutely make me say, "maybe read a summary of the book rather than the book itself" because Jesus Horatio Christ, so much of it was frustrating or bad. I'm locked in for the next book (and no, I don't mean the fix-it novella, I mean the next novel), but if that one is bad too, then we might have to acknowledge that JLA blew the end on this one...We'll see.

For the Love of All That is Holy, Stop Firing Your Editors

Jennifer. Ms. Armentrout. Ma'am.

These 40,000 words should have JUST BEEN IN THE BOOK. This is why you don't fire your editors, because TPOBAB might not have been the (affectionate) utter disaster it was if it had been properly edited. And had included the stuff that, y'know, EXPLAINS THE END of the book. And to make this fit, and editor could have tightened up some of the repetition in TPOBAB to make space for this.

I wasn't mad about getting these 40K words, they were good, and they were necessary. But I am kind of mad that a fix-it novella was NECESSARY. Let's briefly talk A Crown of Ruin.

I shouldn't have to put a spoiler warning here, because this novella in no way stands alone, but spoilers for the novella and The Primal of Blood and Bone below the break.

Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. How did the scene in this novella between Kolis and Poppy make more sense than the fight scene in the book itself? Because it did. It just did. It was sensical, it was well-plotted, and I knew what was happening the entire time.

Poppy being in stasis and dreamwalking with Casteel was interesting and frankly I'm glad we got SOME kind of connection there. But again, this connection needed to be in the book proper, not in the damage-control novella. Same with Kieran and Cas having it out about Kieran's promise to Poppy. That needed resolving, but I'm actually gonna stand here and say that probably should have been in the NEXT book.

Listen, I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the novella; I very much did. But the overall structure of TPOBAB shouldn't have been this broken on publication. I'd honestly rather have had the pub date pushed back a second time and have a better book instead of releasing a novella like it's a patch for a buggy video game. This is a symptom of structural problem with the authorial and publishing ecosystems.

Books should have the time to go through multiple rounds of editing, and publishers should be here to help with that. If publishers are falling down on this, then what the hell are we paying them for?

I'm honestly in such a weird place with this one. I'm happy to have the extra 40K words, but my God, this shouldn't have been necessary.

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