Jennifer L. Armentrout is the #1 New York Times and bestselling author of Wicked, Don't Look Back, and The Problem with Forever. Jennifer lives in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. All the rumors you've heard about her state aren't true. When she's not hard at work writing, she spends her time reading, watching really bad zombie movies, pretending to write, and hanging out with her husband, their retired K-9 police dog Diesel, a crazy Border Jack puppy named Apollo, six judgmental alpacas, four fluffy sheep, and two goats. You can find Jennifer at jenniferlarmentrout.com.
Chosen from birth to usher in a new era, Poppy's life has never been her own. The life of the Maiden is solitary. Never to be touched. Never to be looked upon. Never to be spoken to. Never to experience pleasure. Waiting for the day of her Ascension, she would rather be with the guards, fighting back the evil that took her family, than preparing to be found worthy by the gods. But the choice has never been hers. The entire kingdom's future rests on Poppy's shoulders, something she's not even quite sure she wants for herself. Because a Maiden has a heart. And a soul. And longing. And when Hawke, a golden-eyed guard honor bound to ensure her Ascension, enters her life, destiny and duty become tangled with desire and need. He incites her anger, makes her question everything she believes in, and tempts her with the forbidden. Forsaken by the gods and feared by mortals, a fallen kingdom is rising once more, determined to take back what they believe is theirs through violence and vengeance. And as the shadow of those cursed draws closer, the line between what is forbidden and what is right becomes blurred. Poppy is not only on the verge of losing her heart and being found unworthy by the gods, but also her life when every blood-soaked thread that holds her world together begins to unravel.
Poppy has lived as the Maiden for her whole life, meaning that she was secluded from everyone she lived with save for her guards, the royals, and her designated friend Tawny. She learned to fight, she learned the religion of her world, and yet there are so many things that she didn't learn that she never questioned. The author did a lot of work to bring to the forefront all the internal tensions that existed (between Poppy and the Duke and Lord, Poppy and her position, her friendship with Tawny, her positions regarding her sexual life, and her position on the world around her). I personally wish I understood the rules of the Maiden a bit more, because it was hard to visualize exactly the kind of life she'd lived without knowing the rules. Especially since she has described her past as being isolated, and yet it feels like she's pretty well connected to a lot more aspects of the castle than she lets on. To put it another way, she doesn't act or speak like a character who has dealt with isolation her whole life. Poppy's voice and character also just wasn't my favorite; she is this girl who knows how to fight, and yet during one of the most dangerous scenes, she ends up cowering and not moving. She feels like a pretty basic young adult fantasy character, one who thinks she's pretty special but is just a pawn on the board and doesn't realize it until it's too late.
I was intrigued by Hawke's entrance to the book, because he was introduced in the first scene and then conveniently comes back after Poppy's guard is murdered. From the start, he seems like a fishy character, but he's excitement for Poppy and in a way was excitement for the reader too. The author does a great job building the sexual tension between these two characters, but nothing else between them gets truly exciting or meaningful until the last 100 pages or so of the book, when we finally find out who Hawke actually is. The dialogue between these two is often cheesy and outright cringey, and even in the scenes that should be the most meaningful in a non-sexual way (such as a hug after the loss of a father), the moment is somehow made sexual in an uncomfortable-for-the-reader way. My problems with the book didn't so much lay within the characters themselves, but in my following comments about the world building and the writing. I think the lack of development for the characters were side-effects of the underdeveloped writing and world building.
As far as the writing of this book goes, I thought the pacing was good. There was a good amount of space between major events and the closeness we get to Poppy's thoughts. Unfortunately, the writing just wasn't very strong at all. There were some conversational moments where it felt like the author couldn't decide between a close first-person narrative or a more distant first person narrative. The dialogue between Poppy at the other characters started as feeling pretty real, which in turn made the characters feel relatable, but after a while, it all started to feel the same and stilted. The author also didn't really have a handle over the tone, either; the first scene at the Red Pearl did not match the tone of the following 200 pages. While it should have served as a warning to what was to come, I was thrown by the decision to make that the opening scene, since it didn't do anything to build the fantasy world up or set the tone for the exposition. The use of too many ellipses, unneeded repetition, and the stilted and cheesy dialogue all made for very awkward writing. This was compounded by the fact that it felt like this book wasn't copyedited—or even edited—at all. I felt like there was no way this kind of writing would have made its way into the world without a skilled editor on the project. From a design standpoint, there were way too many widows and orphans; I didn't realize how great typesetting affected how I read a book until I read one that was typeset poorly.
The fantasy world the author created with this book was impressive. It was a self-described "high fantasy" and I really got those vibes from the book. The mythology is totally its own (with inspiration from Greek mythology, I felt like), and the world felt vast and unknowable. After a while, though, that began to be a problem. It became difficult to visualize and conceptualize this world without a map, or without clearer-cut descriptions of specific things. I was also starting to get confused on why the Maiden even had the responsibility of the kingdom on her shoulders, and why the Rite and Ascension even existed. There were more questions than answers as I kept reading, some of which were answered a lot closer to the end than I would have liked. The world did feel lush and dangerous and exciting and tense, but I was really questioning what exactly that meant for the plot and the characters most of the time. And when things were explained, it was usually in a really confusing or convoluted manner that often left me feeling overwhelmed and just as confused as before. Finally, the reveal at the end was shocking, with the wolven and the vamprys. I was disappointed by this, only in the sense that I really don't want fantasy novels to keep falling on the werewolf and vampire stereotypes, because it doesn't send a good message on the types of characters and creatures that fantasy can include. To me, it felt like a cop-out, and the beginning of the book didn't do much to even let us think that wolven and vamprys even existed, which meant that this reveal was truly shocking in an unpleasant way for me.
From Blood and Ash's sequel, A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire is available now wherever books are sold! I'm not entirely sure I'll be picking it up, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't give it a try if you'd like to see what happens next with Poppy and Hawke.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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