The Crown of Gilded Bones
Ratings193
Average rating3.9
Honestly I used the first two books to fall asleep to at night for a week and you could sleep for an hour and miss zero plot. Made the mistake of listening during the waking hours to finish this one and DNF'd with an hour of the audiobook remaining. 😩 The whole series gave me the ick but I was being brave trying to power thru
Did I enjoy this book? Yes! Could they have cut it in half without you missing any important details? 100% yes! Geez I started skimming over Poppy's inner dialogue and recaps from the last two books.
This took me soooo long to read. I'm DNFing the rest of this series. I like it, but not enough to keep going
Wow
I should've known the meeting with the blood crown wasn't going to go well, but DAMN I was shocked by what happened.
As soon as it was said that Nyktos had 2 sons, I knew Malec wasn't Poppy's dad, but I'm glad it was confirmed.
I love how characterized all of the different characters are. You can tell each of them are their own person with their own traits. I love how defining it is of their personalities. Very good characters.
But WHAT THE FUCK
Me and these books have a toxic relationship, so I am going to take a break and reconsider my life choices before picking up the next one if I ever do.
Contains spoilers
1/3 of the book could be edited out due to repeated redundant scenes emphasizing how amazing
Poppy is and how much Cass loves her. It just got to be too much
I persevered and now I've got to the intense ending I HAVE to move in to the next book to find out what happens
I enjoyed the first 2 of the series. This is where it got a bit too Mary-Sue for me. It became obvious and kinda of repetitive.
This was not my favorite book in the series. It felt like a filler book to get to the next book in the series. The characters spent a lot of time asking what others thought and it was too much. Unpopular opinion alert there were just too many sex scenes that it really took away from the plot. I wanted more Kiernan then we got. I was hurt that there wasn't more Poppy and Veneta friendship. I am signing up for the Willa Colyns book club. The story was good and I am interested in reading the next book.
3.5 Rounded to 3
Where do I start ... this is a difficult one for me to review because I absolutely loved the first book in this series, From Blood and Ash. It has humor, romance, strong female lead (surviving all sorts of crazy) and man oh man those fight scenes!!
Enter Book 2, and the love died just a tad. I could only take so much of the relentless references to Poppy and her love of stabbing. It got old fast.
Then here we have The Crown of Gilded Bones, and it started off with a BANG. I was hopeful for this installment but that quickly soured as it just went on and on, with the same old tired dialogue and repetitive jokes and formula from the first 2 books. I was honestly hoping for much more with regard to Poppy and her evolvement but alas it took almost the entire 500+pgs for that to really come out. Made for a pretty boring read for about 90% of this book.
Honestly, a couple hundred pages could have been cut out and this would have been fine. Makes me wonder how in the world this is going to drag out into 5/6 total books.
I will say, this author can write a fight scene and those are my favorite parts. It's hard to sit still when the action hits the pages. I also love Kieran. He is a fun character and it was nice to connect with him more as he begins to play a larger role.
Also, the ending??!! Now THAT'S the Poppy I want to see more of and I'm hoping STAYS. Her constant affirmation-seeking from Cas was tiresome. I mean it's Book 3 and they have come a long way. SHE has come a long way. She should be confident and strong with or without him by her side. Hopefully that flows over into the next book.
Filler. Get an editor and stop milking your series. Book could've been 400 pages shorter without literally losing any plot. Should've been 0 stars but goodreads won't let me rate it that.
I CAN'T BELIEVE I HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL MARCH NEXT YEAR FOR THE NEXT BOOK! and there will be 6 OF THEM UHBGFVDLJNLZFDJK
I LOOOOOOVE the political scheming and the twists. There are some parts that felt a little dragged but it only made like 5/10% of the book. I wanna read what happens next!
At least the prequel about Nyktos is coming soon!
I am loving this series. Can not wait till the next book. Come on how can it end like that
Not as much fun as the last two books, but it was still pretty enjoyable. I thought it was just going to be a trilogy, but this book ends on a cliffhanger. Now I have to wait for the next installment.
2022 Reread - I loved this so much more on a reread!! I still think its a smidge too long and could do with the questions/chatting/inner monologue cut down, but I still really enjoyed it.
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My thoughts on this one are very much the same as the previous books in the series - I enjoy the story and the characters but the pacing just kills it for me. Again not a great deal happens for 400+ pages, there's a lot of musing and talking and sex and more of the same which is all fine, then EVERYTHING happens in 200 pages, which is of course amazing but still. I still have enjoyed the series as a whole but it's so badly paced I can't say it's a new fave and can't give it a higher rating.
whoa! what an intense last three chapters... ugh, why do we have to wait so long for the next one!