The 40-50 pages of straight smut was too much. The first 70% was so fast paced, and then things got sad and smutty. It did prove that what was done for Soul of Ash and Blood can be done in approximately 3 chapters. 

I’ve crushedd every book in this series so far. Good vibes and definitely better than FBAA. But this book was especially dissapointing. 

I didn't find the first part of the book to be slow like others have said. There was a fair amount of action, but it was so tough to read. Kolis was vilainified to the extreme. He became an abuser in the grossest way and it all felt like a weird watpadd story. Like Sera's first escape attempt? Come on what was that. Between that and the diamond, it just felt like there was no creativity for those Sera and Kolis scenes. At times, it felt as if there was a big theme around SA and overcoming trauma in this book. I respect that, but it bothered me. I read fantasy for escape and was not mentally prepared for the content to be that dark.

My other probelm was with the side characters. This can probably be blamed on me not doing a re-read of the earlier books in the series, but I could not for the life of me remember the back story on the other characters. There are so many--perhaps too many? And in this book, it seemed like they had no purpose other than to verbally provide world building. There was SO much of that. As much as I like the fun banter dialogue, I would have liked a little more action. 

The last 150ish pages were the slowest for me. Such a drawn out conclusion with Sera and Ash just going in circles saying the same thing. A lot of major events happened, but were written anticlimactically. It felt like the emphasis was on other, moments that were seemingly less critical to the plot.

I'm interested to see how this series will conclude. This book felt like it had a fairly closed ending. Here's to hoping there will be more revelations in the final book. This one didn't seem to give a lot, but might have possibly been a big set up for the end...of both Flesh and Fire and Blood and Ash.

Overall I enjoyed this installment.  I did find the middle to be a bit slow but this book has so many implications for the main Blood and Ash series that my mind was kind of blown for the intricacy of JLAs plotting.  

despite myself i really enjoyed this. i still think all of jl armentrout's work needs significant editing to improve the pacing -

sera spent way too much time imprisoned without that much progression of the plot.

HOWEVER the main couple are cute and ash is literally perfect