Book Review: ‘Crescent City: House of Flame and Shadow’ by Sarah J Maas

Title: Crescent City: House of Flame and Shadow

Author: Sarah J Maas

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Publication Date: 2022

House of Flame and Shadow is the third book in Sarah J Maas’ Crescent City fantasy series. The novel wastes no time, with the opening scene beginning only a couple of days after the climax of the previous book: House of Sky and Breath.

After leaping through a portal, Bryce now find herself trapped in another world. Hunt, Ruhn, and Baxian face an eternity as prisoners of the Asteri. Meanwhile Tharion has just sold his sold to the Viper Queen and Ithan finds himself solely responsible for Sigrid; the Fendyr heir he rescued. This leaves poor Tristan and Declan at a complete loss at how to save or solve any of their friends problems without getting themselves murdered by the story’s numerous villains.

With Sky and Breath setting up and then leaving open a wide array of plotlines, Flame and Shadow has to do a lot of heavy lifting in order to resolve these numerous threads.

In Flame and Shadow the story is essentially split into two halves. The first half of the novel takes place over a few days and focuses on the characters escaping from their current predicaments in order to reunite. The second half focuses on Bryce’s rebellion against the Asteri.

I love the world building aspect of epic fantasy novels and this book delivers beyond anything I was expecting. Flame and Shadow is incredibly lore-heavy with Maas presenting her readers with seemingly everything we could wish to know about the backstory to the worlds she has created. I know lore-heavy stories are not to every reader’s taste but, considering this is the third book in a series, I really loved that we got so many answers in this novel.

I confess I was very apprehensive about reading this book. I knew that at least some of the story would take place in the world of ACOTAR (another of Maas’ fantasy series). Despite not having read those books, I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to follow what was happening – however I know I will have missed every ACOTAR reference. While Maas’ shared universe reveal was a clever twist for multiple reasons, part of me does wish the references had been more subtle like the Throne of Glass easter eggs that are also hidden in the book. I feel this would reward returning Maas fans but not alienate readers who may only be familiar with Crescent City.

While Earth and Blood will probably always be my favourite in the Crescent City series, Flame and Shadow was a big step up from Sky and Breath in my opinion. I liked both the slower build-up in the first half and the sense that we were heading to real conclusion in the second half. In the later chapters we got a clear ‘changing of the guard’ moment of the younger characters rising up and taking the place of their corrupt elders. There were a lot of very satisfying moments in this book.

That being said, I do have a couple of criticisms.

Firstly, there’s the wasted potential of Sigrid. She could have been a really interesting character whose mere existence should have had a world changing impact. Instead Sigrid doesn’t make choices for herself and her character seems to only exist to provide motivation for Ithan to make impulsive and reckless decisions. If Crescent City does get a fourth book hopefully it will redeem her character.

Secondly…was the final battle against the Asteri a bit too easy? The build-up was so good but then Bryce and Hunt didn’t seem to have too much difficult in fighting the Asteri one-to-one and the teased showdown between the Asteri and the Princes of Hel happened off-page. Despite its physical scale, the battle just didn’t seem to have the jeopardy as earlier fights did.

For example in the first book when Micah ambushed Bryce in the gallery, that fight had a real sense of danger. You felt that Bryce, Syrinx, and Lehabah (sobs) were in genuine peril and I didn’t know what the outcome would be. By contrast, in Flame and Shadow, I never felt worried about the safety of the characters and knew that they would all be alright by the end of the book.

Despite my mixed review, Flame and Shadow was very entertaining to read. I love returning to this group of characters and I love the amount of lore and world building included this time. While there were parts I questioned, the good far outweighs the bad. Overall a solid fantasy epic.

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