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checkoutmybookshelf · 9 months ago

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Flesh and Fire Review Round-Up

I really like having reviews all together for series. That might just me me, but this went over decently well with the Bridgerton books, and frankly I thought the full Flesh and Fire series was VERY fun, so why not give you my whole journey with this quartet in one place? This is also Sera and Ash's journey, and they're objectively more interesting than I am, so think of this as their TLDR!

SPOILER WARNING. These reviews are spoilery AF. Proceed at your own risk, and don't come crying to me if you get spoiled after I've told you I'm spoiling things.

CONTENT WARNING. These books include some pretty heavy subject matter, and to talk about the books, I have to talk about the heavy topics too. So content warning for violence, sexual assault, mentions of suicide, violence, death, abortion, and physical, mental, and psychological abuse. This series does have a happy ending, but please take care of you. No book is worth your peace or mental health, so skip this if you need to. We'll be here if and when you're ready, and if you don't ever want to engage with these books/this post, we will happily see you in a space that you want to be and feel safe in.

A Shadow in the Ember

My middle sister and I have been sharing books since elementary school. Our tastes diverge a bit, and we definitely have favorite genres that the other pehaps does not roll with (literally, my PhD is in English lit and hers will be in bioinformatics, we are the Humanities-STEM divide writ large), but overall we can almost always find common ground in books. This sister is the reason I read The Hunger Games, so when she handed me this book, I dived on in...and now I have THOUGHTS. Let's talk A Shadow in the Ember.

Some light spoilers below the break. Nothing major, but take care if you haven't read the book yet!

When handing me this book, my sister basically said that she wasn't terribly invested in the leads, but the worldbuilding and subplot held her attention, and I have to agree with that assessment. Sera and Ash (or Nyktos, or Primal of Death...seriously, how did an editor not take one look at that and insist on the author picking ONE name???) are fairly generic YA protagonists. Sera has just enough character to not be Katniss or Bella Swan or [insert popular YA heroine here], but she's designed to be a canvas upon which a reader can project themself. Sometimes that's fine, and I want a blank slate I can find-and-replace myself onto. Other times...other times I would like an actual character to read about. Ash is very much the same; I imagine that a teenage reader could project themself onto him without too much trouble. The protagonists are definitely not the reason to read this book.

That said, some of the secondary characters--particularly Ezra and Nektas (seriously, where was the editor on this book? Nyktos and Nektas is just begging readers to get confused)--are intriguing and compelling and very fun to read about.

The worldbuilding and the (somehow this is a) subplot about the primals and who switched powersets with whom was incredibly interesting, and I was very much there for it. The concern about what the heck to do about the literal land dying and a prophecy/bargain with a primal that may or may not be real was intriguing. That said, it was worldbuilding and subplot rather than main plot, so it's not as fleshed out as I would have liked.

Overall, I agree with my sister on this one: I was weirdly invested in the background and worldbuilding, but the protagonists could have been any generic SFF protagonists, and while that didn't make the book less enjoyable to read, I definitely wanted the protagonists to be more than blank slates to project on.

A Light in the Flame

Ok, so two things are simultaneously true: First, if the sex in a book grinds the plot of a book to a screeching halt for like five consecutive chapters, that's just bad writing. Pacing is a THING, and the middle of this book didn't have it. Second, I am too invested in Sera and Ash's story to stop at this point, especially with the flippin' cliffhanger of this book. So let's talk A Light in the Flame.

Abandon all expectations of this being a spoiler-free review, ye who enter here. There will be spoilers.

Also some discussions of consent and assault.

Ok. Seraphena and Ash are AWFUL at communication, and I feel like if we improved that just a skoosh and cut some of the unnecessary sex scenes to tighten up the pacing, this book would have been excellent. Unfortunately, it's kind of caught somewhere between erotica and romantasy and doesn't balance those influences well in the pacing. Plus, we had all of book 1 to establish that Ash and Sera aren't good communicators, so when we got to the "oopsie poopsie, walked in on Ash and the mean girls primal appearing to be boning" misunderstanding, I was just like...have we seriously not moved past this?

And while we're here: I will acknowledge that men being assaulted by women happens, and it doesn't get the weight and representation in fiction it probably should. I also appreciate that this book handles it like the trauma and totally nonconsensual thing it is...but just because it's a guy doesn't mean I like reading about it. Because the book explicitly pulls feeding and sex apart as things that can but by no means have to go together, it pulls the metaphor away from sexual assault a bit. It's a weird one though because how much of Ash and Sera's relationship is sex, and how much the worldbuilding doesn't support reading this as not a sexual assault. It's a bit tangled and strange, but I can't even necissarily say it was badly handled, because unlike the majority of fictional instances where this happens to male characters, it's not written off as a joke. I just think the worldbuilding and intent are a little contradictory here. Like...yeah, sure, Ash and mean girls primal didn't ever actually have sex, but I literally struggle to the point of being totally unable to read this mini character arc as anything other than a sexual assault allegory. And I do not understand the mental gymnastics Sera does to try to pull apart forced feeding from sexual assault, because she did try that, but I was not following.

Moving beyond the pacing issues and issues with conflicting intent and worldbuilding, Ash and Sera's relationship was compelling. I appreciate the shift we see in Sera as she learns to value her own life--and the stab-twist as she is then condemned to die anyway, probably at Ash's hand was amazing (I am low-key an angst hound)--and in Ash as he begins to untangle all the conflicting control and wildly out of control aspects of his life. The character growth and dynamics there were always fun and believable and I was super invested in Ash and Sera's relationship with each other and their relationships with other characters.

Sera's relationships with the castlefolk--and Nektas and Reaver in particular--are darling and really lovely to read about. I also liked that we finally got to see her relationships with other primals, and her relationship with Kolis--such as it is.

Real quick before we wrap up, I just want to reiterate/clarify the point I rather haphazardly made in the intro. I don't have anything against sex scenes in books in principle. Go ham, authors, and readers can enjoy if they so choose. No judgement on their existence or the enjoyment of said scenes by readers or writers. What I object to is when sex in books that aren't explicitly meant to be erotica actually impedes the plot. And I think this book, especially the middle sections, had sex scenes impede the forward motion of the plot. We could have either cut back on the number of sex scenes or tied the plot into the sex scenes more closely so the plot kept moving even as Sera and Ash were smushing bits. So the mixed genres here was a bit of a detriment rather than a strength for this specific reason.

Just in general, the character work and worldbuilding in this book were excellent. The nice little parallel at the end where both Ash and Kolis want the embers out of Sera, but Ash refuses to kill Sera and Kolis refuses to kill Sotoria and if neither one sucks it up and kills her, her impending Ascension almost certainly will was also *chef's kiss*. I cannot wait to see how Sera wriggles out of THAT one, and the angst quotient is through the roof and I am HERE for it.

A Fire in the Flesh

One of these days, I swear I'm actually not going to do a thing I say I'm not doing. But today is not that day. This review isn't going to be as in-depth as usual, mostly because I just honestly don't have that much to say about it, and what I do have to say is...less complimentary than I shoot for on this blog. So all that said, I guess we're talking A Fire in the Flesh.

CONTENT WARNING: Some brief discussion of sexual assault. Always take care of you first; this book is not worth triggering or retraumatizing yourself over and we will happily see you next time if you need or want to bow out from here.

My biggest critique of this book is that it is generously half a book stretched to 600-odd pages. Like, you could have easily condensed the timeline, nixed about a third of the overall angst, and made this a really strong half of another book. The endless dragging out of Kolis releasing Ash and the agonizingly slow negotiations between Sera and Kolis could have paced faster without losing the stakes or the weight. Honestly, losing some of the dragginess might have ADDED to the weight, because honestly this book hit a point for me where you can only sit in a cage agonizing over whats-ifs and wherefores for so long before I am screeching at the book to *move the fuck on already*. There was too much of this book. Take some back, please.

Now before I jump into the conversation this book clumsily tried to have about sex and consent, I want to make one thing crystal clear:

Consent is important. Talking about consent is important. People knowing that they can choose to revoke consent literally at any time is important. Knowing what isn't consent is also important. This is an important topic and it deserves page time.

That said, maybe the king of "my dick wasn't actually inside you so it doesn't count" and gaslighting's court is not like...the best place to have that conversation. Especially with the mean girl primal (yes, she has a name, I don't care) actively going "I got off so its not rape" and making Sera question her own feelings about Kolis's assault on her. Gaslight is probably not the vibe you want in a romance book.

And yeah, the book tries to have nuanced conversations about this, but I didn't find them particularly well handled. The pacing and bloat of the book might have had something to do with that, because honestly I got tired of the repetitive nature of all of this. Again, brevity and speed might have strengthened an otherwise weak attempt at dealing with the absolutely fucky relationship North America has with sexual assault and its propensity to minimize, victim blame, and gaslight. And again, THIS TOPIC IS IMPORTANT. This book just wasn't well structured and paced enough to pull off the conversation it wanted to have, and then it also threw in the scene where Sera breaks a glass dildo in half and murders a guy with it. That is FARCICAL. Pick a tone and stick with it when you're trying to have a weighty conversation.

I will say that the ascension bits at the end and Ash full-on going "if you die, I'm dragging the world to hell after you" was entertaining, in a twisted kind of way. I did also think that it was an extension of the last two books' "Ash and Sera can't communicate if their lives depend on it" problem, but I'm starting to think this series is treating that like a feature rather than a bug, so... *shrug*.

That's more or less my take on this book. It was too long, it was too slow, and it could easily have been the first ten chapters of a stronger book. I wish I could say it was at least a dumb fun read, but the pacing just absolutely killed the reading experience for me.

Born of Blood and Ash

The book gods SMILED on me with this one, y'all. The book officially came out August 13, 2024, but it showed up a few days early to arrive on my doorstep the morning of my birthday. It was a TREAT <3

I was a little on the fence at the end of A Fire in the Flesh, because it was a lot of STUFF and I felt like the necessary aftermath was...just straight up not present. Well I should have more faith in authors, because this book handled the aftermath BRILLIANTLY, Ash and Sera finally figure out communication, and they get to kick unreal amounts of ass as they also figure out working through trauma. I absolutely adored this book! Small caveat: I have not read the Blood and Ash series. I have no idea what happens in those books, so it could not and did not color my read of the Flesh and Fire series, so if you HAVE read the Blood and Ash books, your experience may differ from mine and your mileage may vary.

This is your SPOILER WARNING and you CONTENT WARNING. I'm gonna spoil the crap out of this book. Please also be aware that this is going to require discussions of trauma, sexual assault, recovery from sexual assault, abortion, and a whole lot of murder. Take care of you and give this one a pass if you need to. We'll be here if and when you're ready.

So just to cover all my bases, and to start with a trend I REALLY hope we keep seeing in books, I'm going to share JLA's content warning from the front of Born of Blood and Ash here:

I love that authors are giving readers more autonomy to make informed choices about the books they engage with, and honestly given the hard conversations in this book? Well done JLA for including it. Because she's not exaggerating here; Sera was assaulted in multiple ways by Kolis in the last book, and this book is where that trauma comes home to roost.

Sera's reaction to her trauma resonated for me, because she spends a HUGE chunk of this book literally telling everyone "it was nothing," "I'm fine," "he didn't rape me [because there wasn't penetration]" (and just to be clear: He did. She gets there, but it takes time to process), and "other people experienced way worse than I did." We're not even ENTERTAINING the idea that she might have had a point, because the book absolutely does not and she DOESN'T have a point. Her experience was awful and it was real and her reactions and trauma are valid. That doesn't mean she sees it that way right away though, and I also appreciated that we got a reveal that Sera had been hiding the memory of what truly happened from even herself in this book. It can take time to acknowledge even to yourself what happened, and I honestly appreciated the time and space Sera got in this book to work through acknowledging the trauma in her own time.

So often the world wants you to just get better immediately, and that's not how brains work. That Sera was given the time, space, and support she was throughout the book was honestly lovely to see--especially since we had people like Kyn, Veses, and Kolis actively trying to twist and weaponize a narrative to try to shame, isolate, and embarrass her. But Ash was having none of that, and nor were Attes, Rhaine, or Aios. They also were very clear that they didn't need to know anything that Sera didn't want to share, and that is another really important piece for handling trauma. Nobody was judging, nobody needed Sera to be "the perfect victim" to support her. They simply validated her and offered whatever support she wanted or needed. That support and understanding was truly lovely to see, and there were moments I was full-on over here crying because of the support and grace extended to Sera as she found her own strength and her own ability to process and move forward.

And despite the fact that Sera does begin to process and move forward, there is no "have one good cry and one good conversation and suddenly everything is 100% better" nonsense. At the end of the book, Sera is in a SIGNIFICANTLY better space, and she is living with her trauma and experiences, but they're not gone. They've simply shifted, to be a part of her that she acknowledges and handles and has good and bad days with. I personally find that way more comforting and hopeful that magical disappearing trauma in books.

I could go on for a LONG time about how much I appreciated how this book handled Sera's management of her trauma, but at some point it's going to devolve into "OMG THIS WAS DONE SO SO WELL" over and over. The last little piece I'm going to say about it for the moment is that while some people might find the beginning of the book repetitive as Sera has very similar conversations about her trauma with people over and over, I would counter that with the fact that honestly? That felt deeply realistic to me. You have to bleed off the poison of just mentioning the cause of the trauma, and sometimes you need to visit and revisit that, and that is ok. Sera was allowed and given space to do that, and the world would be better if that was the case IRL too.

Now, just because we have to deal with the trauma Kolis dealt out in the previous book doesn't mean he's sitting on the beach with a book. No, Kolis is over here still trying to be the Primal of Blood and Ash and to get Sotoria back and basically wreak havoc and vengeance on everything and everyone. So not only are Sera and Ash working through the aftermath of the previous book, but Sera has to figure out her new set of Primal skills, face down Kolis and the Arae, and she has to deal with her own perceived monstrosity. That last one gets really bad when Kolis murders her entire human family, and in rage and grief Sera kills a LOT of people. Then brings some of them back to life, while forgetting that that will kill OTHER other people. Sera is super not ok after this, and spirals into "Oh my gods, I'm just as bad as Kolis" and we spend a really nice amount of time with Ash and Attes and Aios talking to Sera and helping her work through what monstrosity is and when a little monstrosity might be a virtue rather than a vice.

Again, this conversation isn't simple, it doesn't simply absolve Sera of her actions, and it doesn't even go "Oh no, sweetie, it's ok! You're not a monster!" because that would be a lie. Monstrosity exists, it is part of the reality of who Sera is and what she's become. But there is a really lovely acceptance of that, and a negotiation of how you live with monstrosity and where the hard lines are. I really appreciate the acknowledgement of that reality and the negotiation of it. There was something almost Eliot Spencer from Leverage about it, because it was coming to an equilibrium about who and what you are and how to leverage that for the most good you can do.

(Ok, I swore I wasn't going to take any cheap shots at Rhysand in this conversation, but I cannot help myself, because if ANYONE needs a come to Jesus about their own monstrosity and when it stops being ok, it's the lead bat boy!!! I said to someone when I was reading this book that JLA is the anti-SJM in some really key ways, and I stand by that...especially when it comes to the pregnancy thing.)

We're just going to take that parenthetical segue, because it's there and I am so excited to talk about the OTHER really good (if brief) conversation this book has: the pregnant person's choice when it comes to deciding whether to keep or abort a pregnancy. I did a whole little post about this while I was still reading because it was done SO WELL, and I'm just going to let Aios speak for herself about this one, because here is what she says to Sera:

Aios nodded. "Okay." She cleared her throat, her eyes glistening. "There doesn't need to be a choice [about whether to go into battle pregnant] at all." My breath snagged, and I recoiled. "I'm the Primal of Life, Aios." "You are Seraphena first." The eather intensified behind her pupils. "A woman who has fought for her autonomy. This is your body." My fingers dug into my knees. "You're a goddess of fertility, so hearing you speak of terminating a pregnancy to the Primal of Life is...kind of odd." "What I am allows me to fully understand the complex nature of these things." She reached between us, tucking a stray curl behind my ear. "Sometimes, the time is simply not right. It happens. And if anyone faults you for that, that is on them. Not you. They do not live your life. It is their problem. Not yours."

THIS IS HOW YOU HAVE A CONVERSATION ABOUT ABORTION. You speak directly to the pregnant person and give them all the information about their body. You remember that it is THEIR body. You don't judge. You offer space and compassion. This was such a kind, compassionate, and realistic conversation and I was almost in tears again about how well this was done.

(And again, to take a wee bit of a cheap shot at ACOTAR...JLA had the dang conversation here. SJM was just like, "C-sections aren't a thing, so I guess Feyre's going to just die. Abortion? That doesn't exist. Time for Rhys's man pain to take precedence over Feyre's choices about her own damn body!)

Sera decides to keep her babies, but the fact is? She had a choice. She would have been supported and loved whatever choice she made. There is a power to that kind of love, support, and acceptance that--once again--we could use more of IRL.

Those are kind of the big three conversations and themes that the book focuses on, but it's not all heavy and conversation-driven. The sex scenes are fewer in this book that previous ones, but they're well done and they don't bog down the dang plot, which I appreciate. Additionally, we get some purely DELIGHTFUL Ash and Sera being BAMF and going full primal. There are also some delightfully sweet scenes with Reaver and Jadis, plus some peak comedy with Sera trying to stop everyone and their mother from bowing to her.

And the best thing? Ash and Sera have cracked the communication code and they actually have FREAKING NAILED IT. That is character growth, and that is setup and payoff. I adored it.

Overall, while the middle two books of the series were a little hit and miss for me, the quartet as a whole was fantastic. I'm so happy my sister pestered me until I let her put the first book in my hand, and we've had such fun reading them. I cannot recommend these enough, and I absolutely adore Ash and Sera's dynamics.

#a shadow in the ember #a light in the flame #a fire in the flesh #born of blood and ash #flesh and fire #jennifer l armentrout #jla #books and reading #books #books and novels #books & libraries #book recommendations #seraphena mierel #nyktos

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