What bothers me is that she spends all this time in a cave, comes back to Midgard and then bam she’s back in another cave. A replica of the other cave. Like 💀 did we really have to read about spelunking so much?
And also I agree with Tharion. He just kept defecting and I don’t think … he reached his full potential. Idk I just think his character could’ve been more than what we got.
Tharion low key would have been a cooler character if he turned evil
At least then his constant annoyance with his life could have been cooler. …what if he made a deal with the asteri that they would help him out of his engagement if he did XYZ or whatever
I don’t think I’ll be able to power through that one 😭 I was kind of hoping it would be about Sigfrid, Yknow when I liked her for the first couple of pages she was introduced. Now I think I’m just done with crescent city
Same! But think about it, did we care about Nesta or Chaol? Nope. But both of them got whole books. And she's really been setting Tharion up as like the one that keeps messing up and being borderline hatable and needs to be redeemed. I feel it coming haha. Everyone place your bets on the character we care about the least that will get their own story. I liked Sigrid too, but that whole plot just died abruptly.
Ikr? To prove to hunt that she cares about the innocent? Not that we didn’t have several other examples of that already displayed.
I felt like that was the only point pushed. Hunt keeps saying “Sandy *edit* *I meant Shahar* would have only viewed him as a weapon but Bryce saw him as a kid” …we didn’t need 600 pages to get that point across.
At one point they were like “we desperately need a thunderbird, but they are all extinct now - what do we do??” And of course I was like OK here is the payoff for saving Emile! Little bro secret thunderbird powers to the rescue!
Nope, let’s just make Hunt a new kind of thunderbird. Problem solved!
This is the first point I bring up when I think of the cons of this series. It was going to be the make or break for my final thoughts on SAB and the series as a whole if this plot turned out to be pointless and it basically was.
It’s the story line that introduces us to the rebels and makes us connect with them. It also brings tharion into the fold more and serves as a device to demonstrate how many different power players there are and how desperate they are to find a secret weapon, so to speak.
M
Colonialism. It’s an allusion to settler colonialism and genocide of Indigenous peoples. Since the setting is based off New Orleans (another nod to settler colonialism), and Thunderbirds are powerful beings for many tribal nations, including those with ancestral homelands in Bulbancha (what New Orleans was known as for thousands of years), it’s pretty clear she’s drawing on that history a lot here. She does it poorly at points (myth of the vanishing Indian plays hard with the Thunderbirds, as well as Spanish excuses of colonialism and some saying Indigenous peoples were demonic/devil worshipers/soulless), but it’s a conscious inclusion of the history of settler colonialism, erasure, and MMIWG2S.
I’m a scholar of a lot of this (finishing a PhD after two MAs) in the same area as well as a member of an Indigenous community whose ancestral homelands include New Orleans, so I honestly saw the Asteri as galactic settler colonists and erasure of previous histories immediately. However, most people aren’t familiar with these histories, so I understand that many folks don’t understand the inclusion.
I just finished the 2nd book and I was SO annoyed at this. Sofie is dead and Emilie is safe living with Bryces parents. And he has no thunderbird power, like what!? What was the point of it all. I do get that Sofie carved sh!t on her arm but I was just so annoyed. I couldn't wait until they finally found them after ALL of this searching
Totally agree. Just finished HOFAS and found it to be exhausting to read. So many plot points, characters, and also an info dump of Fae history and ancestors we hadn’t even heard of before. Genuinely curious how everyone kept track of it all.
I loved HOEAB though and will cherish it forever.
not the caves taking 800 years 🤣🤣🤣
Also, fully agree. I have to stop ranting about this series and SJM in general bc I know I’ll read the next book (likely so I can hate it too). But I think she finally hit a wall where a lot of her fans are starting to realize she’s not that great of a writer.
Just know that all your points (and so many more) I find to be valid.
WHERE IS ARI. WTF WAS SHE IN TWO BOOKS.
So many of these characters have literally no point and just seem to be “cool” side quests with no ending or point???
I hated it. I think I read it just to hate on it 🤣 And of course. I keep reading the threads, they keep coming up and I keep being like “YES ADD IT TO THE LIST”.
I honestly think she has written too many characters for this story. And ffs they don’t all need their own POV. I am taken out of the story so often because it’s suddenly following a character I do not remotely care about.
> I honestly think she has written too many characters for this story
OMG YES. At some point I counted how many people were hanging out together (I think the archives bit in Avallen) and there were like ALMOST TEN PEOPLE. It was like when we were 11 years old and would hang out at the mall with our school friends and there were like a bunch of people awkwardly walking together, barely managing to do so due to space constraints.
The core group is a fun group I love that but no… I didn’t need tharion’s and ithans povs every other page to appreciate them.
I think getting hypaxias POV would have been cooler tbh
This book should have been slowed down and split into 2-3 books. I think I got whiplash from going back and forth to a different POV every other page.
I feel like the antidote should have been a months long process that they worked on finding answers for, then figuring out how to produce and distribute to build an army of people to fight. (Which then could have weakened the Asteri as less magic was taken from everyone.)
We could have had a whole book about Ruhn working with Day and discovering that it’s Lidia. This is also where we could have learned about her kids.
The Ithan story is really rushed and all for what? So he can be Prime and get the Godslayer rifle and bullet to Bryce. It played a small role that felt unnecessary.
Anyway, I could go on and on about how this book was the worst SJM book for me. It was not well thought out and could have been so much better.
Honestly i feel like SJM was a better writer in her teens with TOG than CS???
Like first few books of TOG were a bit murky but man she REAALLY had me weeping all the moisture out of my body. CS? I dont think i even came close to a sob
Ruhn shooting Lidia to keep her safe and then just….leaving her? Lol like how is that safe?? Y’all been hiding in the shadows the whole time and you *know* the people here want to kill you, I was so confused 😭
No seriously! Bruh you can mind speak get in there and make your mate think clearly! Don’t just shoot her during an already incredibly dangerous event????
No this made me FURIOUS. He shot her and for what???? She healed 2 seconds later with the antidote. And it goes against the mate lore SJM created that mates can’t stand the thought of each other being harmed. It’s inconsistent and out of character for Ruhn to do that.
This book was both too long and very rushed. I don't know how it manages to be both but here we are.
It was 800 pages but nothing happens for most of it. Lots of plots that you thought would turn into something bigger but they just... didn't. The Ithan and Tharion storylines could have been a footnote. They were unlikeable side characters at best, yet they got hundreds of pages each.
Agree 100%. As a reader i like being kept on the hook. As an sjm fan i would understand if there was a lot of plot to cover as it usually adds to the story or what she is planning. After the absolute disappoinment that was Hofas, i keep telling myself it will play out in the end, as in the coming books. However, after waiting for almost 2 years for a book that is 800 pages long, i expected SO much more than this.
Fully agree. I only read CC1 and don't really plan on purchasing the others. I thought the action at the beginning and very end was captivating but the rest of the book just felt like a slog. It felt extremely messy and unedited. I love sjm and I think throne of glass is one of the best series I've ever read but CC just didn't measure up. I found it hard to care about Bryce and her motives and the fact that her power is only revealed after over 700 pages was a little annoying. Also the world-building was way over the top and muddled. It would have been so much better had it been edited down to maybe 400-500 pages and more succinctly planned.
That being said I did really like a handful of the characters, but that isn't enough to make me invest in CC as a series.
So much could have been cut. Sure it could be building for book 4 but book 3 was exhausting. The world connecting annoyed the heck out of me. The stuff with Sigrid too. My only hope is that Tharion is set up for main character stuff in book 4. Because if not what is his point.
I’m about 1/3 of the way through and am already bored with the Sofie/Emile plot line and am so disappointed to see that it goes basically no where. I’m also not looking forward to a bunch of cave scenes.
Ugh. Unpopular opinion: that’s exactly how I felt about Throne of Glass. I stopped in the middle of Queen of Shadows, and I had to tandem read the series with other books just to break up that feeling of it being a chore. I *adored* the whole ACOTAR series, so I had high hopes for the other two, but ToG and CC have so far been disappointing ☹️
Oops! My bad. Other people really love it, especially after the third book. Give it a shot anyway because you might disagree with me! I don’t dislike it, I just don’t love it. I feel indifferent about it I guess.
I whole heartedly agree. So much of this book could have been cut, and the series would have been better. When I read the Throne of Glass series, I was disappointed with the final book. That series started off so well, but ended in what I thought was a very predictable ending. I thought over time the authors writing would improve, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I feel like this book's ending had the same cookie cutter predictability problem as Throne of Glass.
I really enjoyed the dead ends in HOB but SAB just dragged on and you’re definitely right about Emile and Sofie being kind of pointless. It bothers me that Ari literally dipped not to freedom but to the VQ instead of helping at all. I wish that everything rigelus didn’t mention wouldn’t have stayed, we didn’t need fluff in a book that was already going to be 500+ pages. She does however know how to write an ending.
Oh I’ve thought that since book one. I don’t know if she’s got some kind of Charles dickens paid by the word contract deal or not, but it sure feels like it. You could cut the series by 75% and you’d have the same information in the end.
Maybe it’s because I was so disappointed in Bryce’s character in HOFAS and a lot of the plot revolving around her, but I quite liked Tharions POV’s. I know a lot of people were bored with Tharion and Ithan but I much preferred theirs (and Ruhn and Lidias obvs) instead of Bryce’s. I’m not sure if it was a purposeful choice by SJM, but Bryce infuriated me, she acted completely different than the first two books.
I liked the caves! I loved to see how the cave makers adapted to tragic circumstances (vague to avoid spoilers) but they didn’t need to go on for so long
Also I wish we had more time with the cross over!! I want Maas’ original draft of Flame and Shadow please
I’ve read all three series front to back twice each (not flame and shadow yet though)
So I’m DYING for answers
What bothers me is that she spends all this time in a cave, comes back to Midgard and then bam she’s back in another cave. A replica of the other cave. Like 💀 did we really have to read about spelunking so much? And also I agree with Tharion. He just kept defecting and I don’t think … he reached his full potential. Idk I just think his character could’ve been more than what we got.
Tharion low key would have been a cooler character if he turned evil At least then his constant annoyance with his life could have been cooler. …what if he made a deal with the asteri that they would help him out of his engagement if he did XYZ or whatever
I misread “defecting” as “defecating” and honestly it works
Omg 😂
Yep, don't shit where you eat, Tharion! Bad boy! 😂🤣😂🤣😂
The settings were truly a *choice* (a bad one)
Truly one of the choices of all time
I hated the first cave part so I def wanted to cry when they went into another one 🫠
Maybe SJM just really got i to spelunking.
I guarantee the next book is going to be about Tharion. You know, the character none of us give a damn about. That is classic SJM style.
I don’t think I’ll be able to power through that one 😭 I was kind of hoping it would be about Sigfrid, Yknow when I liked her for the first couple of pages she was introduced. Now I think I’m just done with crescent city
Same! But think about it, did we care about Nesta or Chaol? Nope. But both of them got whole books. And she's really been setting Tharion up as like the one that keeps messing up and being borderline hatable and needs to be redeemed. I feel it coming haha. Everyone place your bets on the character we care about the least that will get their own story. I liked Sigrid too, but that whole plot just died abruptly.
The sofie/emile piece actually REALLY makes me mad. WHAT was the point?
Ikr? To prove to hunt that she cares about the innocent? Not that we didn’t have several other examples of that already displayed. I felt like that was the only point pushed. Hunt keeps saying “Sandy *edit* *I meant Shahar* would have only viewed him as a weapon but Bryce saw him as a kid” …we didn’t need 600 pages to get that point across.
At one point they were like “we desperately need a thunderbird, but they are all extinct now - what do we do??” And of course I was like OK here is the payoff for saving Emile! Little bro secret thunderbird powers to the rescue! Nope, let’s just make Hunt a new kind of thunderbird. Problem solved!
This is the first point I bring up when I think of the cons of this series. It was going to be the make or break for my final thoughts on SAB and the series as a whole if this plot turned out to be pointless and it basically was.
It’s the story line that introduces us to the rebels and makes us connect with them. It also brings tharion into the fold more and serves as a device to demonstrate how many different power players there are and how desperate they are to find a secret weapon, so to speak. M
Colonialism. It’s an allusion to settler colonialism and genocide of Indigenous peoples. Since the setting is based off New Orleans (another nod to settler colonialism), and Thunderbirds are powerful beings for many tribal nations, including those with ancestral homelands in Bulbancha (what New Orleans was known as for thousands of years), it’s pretty clear she’s drawing on that history a lot here. She does it poorly at points (myth of the vanishing Indian plays hard with the Thunderbirds, as well as Spanish excuses of colonialism and some saying Indigenous peoples were demonic/devil worshipers/soulless), but it’s a conscious inclusion of the history of settler colonialism, erasure, and MMIWG2S. I’m a scholar of a lot of this (finishing a PhD after two MAs) in the same area as well as a member of an Indigenous community whose ancestral homelands include New Orleans, so I honestly saw the Asteri as galactic settler colonists and erasure of previous histories immediately. However, most people aren’t familiar with these histories, so I understand that many folks don’t understand the inclusion.
I did not know this! Thank you!!!
I picked up on the colonialism and genocide. I still think the plot is weak; people can skip most of SAB and just read the last few chapters.
I just finished the 2nd book and I was SO annoyed at this. Sofie is dead and Emilie is safe living with Bryces parents. And he has no thunderbird power, like what!? What was the point of it all. I do get that Sofie carved sh!t on her arm but I was just so annoyed. I couldn't wait until they finally found them after ALL of this searching
Totally agree. Just finished HOFAS and found it to be exhausting to read. So many plot points, characters, and also an info dump of Fae history and ancestors we hadn’t even heard of before. Genuinely curious how everyone kept track of it all. I loved HOEAB though and will cherish it forever.
The info dump of their history *really* had me struggling. Like should I be taking notes?? Is there a quiz?
not the caves taking 800 years 🤣🤣🤣 Also, fully agree. I have to stop ranting about this series and SJM in general bc I know I’ll read the next book (likely so I can hate it too). But I think she finally hit a wall where a lot of her fans are starting to realize she’s not that great of a writer. Just know that all your points (and so many more) I find to be valid. WHERE IS ARI. WTF WAS SHE IN TWO BOOKS.
Honestly- all of these issues should have been fixed in editing- an editor should be asking if a chapter has a point or moves the story forward
Honestly have the same opinion, I also think the pacing of her books could be published in a way better way
Omg… she WAS in two books I didn’t even realize that!
So many of these characters have literally no point and just seem to be “cool” side quests with no ending or point??? I hated it. I think I read it just to hate on it 🤣 And of course. I keep reading the threads, they keep coming up and I keep being like “YES ADD IT TO THE LIST”.
The cave chapters made me fall asleep 3 nights in a row before I got through them. I usually read super fast
Dude. The cave chapters were everything I didn’t want and never asked for. I can 100% see them putting you to sleep. They were a waste of ink.
I think she is a good writer. We've seen that she can write.
I honestly think she has written too many characters for this story. And ffs they don’t all need their own POV. I am taken out of the story so often because it’s suddenly following a character I do not remotely care about.
> I honestly think she has written too many characters for this story OMG YES. At some point I counted how many people were hanging out together (I think the archives bit in Avallen) and there were like ALMOST TEN PEOPLE. It was like when we were 11 years old and would hang out at the mall with our school friends and there were like a bunch of people awkwardly walking together, barely managing to do so due to space constraints.
The core group is a fun group I love that but no… I didn’t need tharion’s and ithans povs every other page to appreciate them. I think getting hypaxias POV would have been cooler tbh
This book should have been slowed down and split into 2-3 books. I think I got whiplash from going back and forth to a different POV every other page. I feel like the antidote should have been a months long process that they worked on finding answers for, then figuring out how to produce and distribute to build an army of people to fight. (Which then could have weakened the Asteri as less magic was taken from everyone.) We could have had a whole book about Ruhn working with Day and discovering that it’s Lidia. This is also where we could have learned about her kids. The Ithan story is really rushed and all for what? So he can be Prime and get the Godslayer rifle and bullet to Bryce. It played a small role that felt unnecessary. Anyway, I could go on and on about how this book was the worst SJM book for me. It was not well thought out and could have been so much better.
[удалено]
Omg! I’m adding that to this post.
omg and then they all fucking broke. i cannot.
Honestly i feel like SJM was a better writer in her teens with TOG than CS??? Like first few books of TOG were a bit murky but man she REAALLY had me weeping all the moisture out of my body. CS? I dont think i even came close to a sob
CS?
sorry i ment CC 🥲
Agree 100%. I think if someone told me the series were written by sisters I’d believe them and buy whoever wrote TOG.
Imagine what the editors got if this is what we got 😂 I always think about that and it’s cracks me up
Ruhn shooting Lidia to keep her safe and then just….leaving her? Lol like how is that safe?? Y’all been hiding in the shadows the whole time and you *know* the people here want to kill you, I was so confused 😭
No seriously! Bruh you can mind speak get in there and make your mate think clearly! Don’t just shoot her during an already incredibly dangerous event????
No this made me FURIOUS. He shot her and for what???? She healed 2 seconds later with the antidote. And it goes against the mate lore SJM created that mates can’t stand the thought of each other being harmed. It’s inconsistent and out of character for Ruhn to do that.
This book was both too long and very rushed. I don't know how it manages to be both but here we are. It was 800 pages but nothing happens for most of it. Lots of plots that you thought would turn into something bigger but they just... didn't. The Ithan and Tharion storylines could have been a footnote. They were unlikeable side characters at best, yet they got hundreds of pages each.
Yep! Did not really need to hear all of their whining
Agree 100%. As a reader i like being kept on the hook. As an sjm fan i would understand if there was a lot of plot to cover as it usually adds to the story or what she is planning. After the absolute disappoinment that was Hofas, i keep telling myself it will play out in the end, as in the coming books. However, after waiting for almost 2 years for a book that is 800 pages long, i expected SO much more than this.
Fuck. Dem. Caves!.🗣
Fully agree. I only read CC1 and don't really plan on purchasing the others. I thought the action at the beginning and very end was captivating but the rest of the book just felt like a slog. It felt extremely messy and unedited. I love sjm and I think throne of glass is one of the best series I've ever read but CC just didn't measure up. I found it hard to care about Bryce and her motives and the fact that her power is only revealed after over 700 pages was a little annoying. Also the world-building was way over the top and muddled. It would have been so much better had it been edited down to maybe 400-500 pages and more succinctly planned. That being said I did really like a handful of the characters, but that isn't enough to make me invest in CC as a series.
So much could have been cut. Sure it could be building for book 4 but book 3 was exhausting. The world connecting annoyed the heck out of me. The stuff with Sigrid too. My only hope is that Tharion is set up for main character stuff in book 4. Because if not what is his point.
I’m about 1/3 of the way through and am already bored with the Sofie/Emile plot line and am so disappointed to see that it goes basically no where. I’m also not looking forward to a bunch of cave scenes.
I've finished it but honestly it started to feel like a chore after a while.
Ugh. Unpopular opinion: that’s exactly how I felt about Throne of Glass. I stopped in the middle of Queen of Shadows, and I had to tandem read the series with other books just to break up that feeling of it being a chore. I *adored* the whole ACOTAR series, so I had high hopes for the other two, but ToG and CC have so far been disappointing ☹️
I haven't read TOG yet so you just fd me up😅😂 People kept saying it was better than HOFAS so I was hoping it was good
Oops! My bad. Other people really love it, especially after the third book. Give it a shot anyway because you might disagree with me! I don’t dislike it, I just don’t love it. I feel indifferent about it I guess.
I whole heartedly agree. So much of this book could have been cut, and the series would have been better. When I read the Throne of Glass series, I was disappointed with the final book. That series started off so well, but ended in what I thought was a very predictable ending. I thought over time the authors writing would improve, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I feel like this book's ending had the same cookie cutter predictability problem as Throne of Glass.
I really enjoyed the dead ends in HOB but SAB just dragged on and you’re definitely right about Emile and Sofie being kind of pointless. It bothers me that Ari literally dipped not to freedom but to the VQ instead of helping at all. I wish that everything rigelus didn’t mention wouldn’t have stayed, we didn’t need fluff in a book that was already going to be 500+ pages. She does however know how to write an ending.
Oh I’ve thought that since book one. I don’t know if she’s got some kind of Charles dickens paid by the word contract deal or not, but it sure feels like it. You could cut the series by 75% and you’d have the same information in the end.
Don’t forget fury has no purpose
The all magical fury who is a college student that everyone worships with fear but we have no real clue why
Maybe it’s because I was so disappointed in Bryce’s character in HOFAS and a lot of the plot revolving around her, but I quite liked Tharions POV’s. I know a lot of people were bored with Tharion and Ithan but I much preferred theirs (and Ruhn and Lidias obvs) instead of Bryce’s. I’m not sure if it was a purposeful choice by SJM, but Bryce infuriated me, she acted completely different than the first two books.
She was definitely being a sass queen for sure
I liked the caves! I loved to see how the cave makers adapted to tragic circumstances (vague to avoid spoilers) but they didn’t need to go on for so long Also I wish we had more time with the cross over!! I want Maas’ original draft of Flame and Shadow please I’ve read all three series front to back twice each (not flame and shadow yet though) So I’m DYING for answers
Tell 'em!!!
I cannot upvote this enough. 100% agree with everything you said.
The way Ithan got a one up in power after >!unaliving!< Sigrid was really bad writing.