By Amie Kealy
*potential spoilers for BOTH Flesh & Fire and Blood & Ash series*
I recommend reading my review on Blood and Ash before reading this review as it will help contextualise the Flesh and Fire series!
I read the Blood and Ash series a few years ago and really enjoyed it, although I did think the plot was quite hard to follow at times and wasn’t explained very well. So when it came to reading the Flesh and Fire series, set in the same world as Blood and Ash, but set thousands of year prior, I was apprehensive thinking it would be riddled with the same convenient plot twists and chaotic, at times, hard to follow, plot. But I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised.
Flesh & Fire is based on the characters of Nyktos and Seraphena who are introduced in the third and fourth books in the Blood and Ash series. Seraphena is promised as Nyktos’ consort, due to a deal her ancestor made, and so she’s primed from birth to embrace this role but with one catch- rather than submitting to Nyktos, she is to kill him instead. Nyktos is the Primal of Death, a being elevated above gods in the novels hierarchy. So rather than focusing on the modern vampry and werewolf (wolven) trope, and many other things we see in Blood and Ash, the Flesh and Fire books focus more on the gods and creation of the world we see in the Blood and Ash series – which I thought was pretty cool!
One of the things I couldn’t stand with the Blood and Ash series is how meek and submissive Poppy is in the first and maybe some of the second book. I know it’s necessary for her overall character arch, but I find her character annoying because of it. In Shadow in the Ember (book 1, Flesh and Fire), although we get the idea that Seraphena is also meant to be this unseen, unheard character, but from the beginning we can see she has a backbone. Sera has more tenancity than Poppy initially which makes her interactions with Ash (Nyktos) more thrilling and tension-filled because she defends herself rather than just bowing down to whatever he, or anyone else, says. I also like the deception at the start of the novel where Sera doesn’t realise that Ash is actually Nyktos so that her interactions with him are genuine and we see an authentic connection between them, rather than one initially formed because of the deal they’re both sworn into.
Whilst I love Ash and the male lead in the story, I think my favourite, or close second, is Nektas. A drakon, a dragon that can transform into a human and vice versa, his snarky yet protective personality makes him a much loved character, one I think many would hold dear to their hearts. It’s also interesting to read his back story in context of how he is portrayed in the Blood and Ash series.
Whilst I enjoyed these books more than Blood and Ash, because I think they’re more well-written with less convoluted story lines, it does feel like not a great deal happens across each book. Each book is between 600-650 pages each (so around 18,000 pages in total!!) so I would have liked a little bit more action or for the books to cut out some scenes that didn’t add much to the overall plot. Like in book 3, when Sera is Kolis’ (this series’s villain), I don’t think it needed to take up as much of the book as it did. Most it felt like she was just sitting in her cage and we were waiting for more action.
That being said, I’m really excited to see how the next book will play out. The next book in the series is the last one, so it will be interesting to see how Armentrout ends this book in relation to the Blood and Ash Series. With the revelation of Sotoria’s soul being inside of Sera (at the end of book 2) but then her not actually be the re-born Sotoria, it’s obvious that when they recycle Sotoria’s soul, Poppy will be the reborn Sotoria they have all been waiting for. For those who haven’t read the series, Sotoria is meant to be the only person that can kill Kolis, the false Primal of Life, and is described exactly how Poppy is described in Blood and Ash. So my theory is that book 4 of Flesh and Fire will end with all the Primals, Ash, Sera (spoiler alert: Sera becomes the true Primal of life at the end of book 3), and Kolis, going into stasis (a very long sleep). At the end of War of Two Queens (Blood and Ash book 4), it ended with Sera and Kolis waking up and wreaking havoc on the mortal world. So I think in the next Blood and Ash book, Poppy discover that she is, in fact, Sotoria, and it will be her who finally kills Kolis with help from Sera.
Book 4 comes out in May so we won’t have to wait too long to see how the series ends!