House of Sky and Breath

Guys, I don't even know if I'll be able to gather my thoughts on this one. I'll keep this kind of brief because I plan to go more in depth on my YouTube channel. I will skip a plot recap since this is a sequel.

First and foremost, this book could have been shorter. It was too long. Second, we followed way too many POVs. Not all of them really added to the story. I like that we got this crew together and created this fun camaraderie; however, we really didn't need separate POVs for all of them. I don't think it added to the story. I think that the plot dragged for the first half of the book, but the last 1/3 of the book really picked up and got interesting. There was some queer rep in this book, so maybe SJM is listening to some of the criticisms she's had for her previous books. There is a lot more mature content in this book for sure, and I'm not entirely sure if all of it was necessary. Some of it I do think added to the story, but some felt like it was just there to be there.

SJM also I think tried to fix some of the criticisms she got from her other series in terms of colonialism. She tries to address this head on in this book and really show the inequalities and privilege's that her characters face. They try to fight back against the powers that are holding everyone down. Was she successful? I'm not sure. I think someone smarter than me would have to say.

She still heavily leans on her tropes of “mates” and “alphaholes”, but I didn't think that was going anywhere.

The ending threw me. I honestly cannot decide how I feel. I'll leave it there for now to avoid spoilers, but was it necessary? I don't know yet.

Overall, do I recommend this book? I guess yeah, if you've read her other books and enjoyed them. I don't think this was her strongest work. However, I will say that Bryce and Hunt's relationship is probably the healthiest out of all of her main ships. And the book was entertaining for the latter half.

TW: alcohol, blood, child abuse (mentioned), death, death camps (briefly visited), decapitation, demons, drugs, emesis, gun violence, murder, profanity, sexual assault, sexually explicit scenes, skeletons, terrorism, violence