A romantasy with world jumping, war and awkward timing intimacy, Sarah J. Maas’s next installment of Crescent City, “House of Flame and Shadow,” was published on Jan. 30 and has some serious mixed reviews.

“House of Flame and Shadow” follows where book two, “House of Sky and Breath,” left off. Bryce Quinlan falling into another world. She has no idea where she is, who she can trust or how to get back home. But she will fight all her worst fears to get back home to Midgard, to her mate, her family and her friends.

Meanwhile, Hunt Athalar, Bryce’s mate, has found himself enslaved again and in the hands of the Asteri, but he is not alone this time. Bryce’s brother, Ruhn Dannan and angel Baxian are by his side and are fighting to stay alive while wondering where Bryce has disappeared too.

This story will follow all your favorite characters and some you didn’t know you needed to care about, as they find a way to save their world during its brink of collapse.

While this book series has been all the hype this year, I was left extremely disappointed for many reasons. “House of Flame and Shadow,” is the first book in Maas’s multiverse that connects two of the three series together.

However, the way she did this was a little bit of a letdown and made the book harder to follow.

Instead of doing a chapter or a couple of chapters here and there for Bryce’s storyline, then Athalar’s, Maas went a half a page or more and then switched point of view.

And not just with two characters but six different POVs. They were Bryce, Hunt, Ruhn, Lidia, Tharion and Ithan.

While I am all for getting the story from everyone’s perspective, I think switching so frequently was a little hard to follow and made it hard to keep reading.

Character development was another aspect that threw me in a loop. When a main character acts a certain way throughout two books and in the third acts like a switch has been flipped somewhere, it kills that character for me.

Bryce Adaline Quinlin was a party girl at heart. She was not known for being in many wars and kicking butt – she was your typical goes out dancing with girlfriends and staying out all night drinking girl.

Until her world came crashing down around her and we see her slowly start to get stronger and change her ways in book two, “House of Sky and Breath.”

However, in book three Bryce acts like she has been in the military since she was a baby and it doesn’t matter what anyone else has gone through, you better buck up and fight.

The entire thing just made me feel disgusted.

Unfortunately, Bryce’s character isn’t the only one she does this with and it broke my heart to see some of my favorite characters get dragged through the mud to get to their progression point.

Then we have the timing of intimacy. Maas is known for her “smut,” as the cool kids call it these days, and she is typically good at knowing when the right time would be to add some into her books.

Unfortunately for me, the smut made me a little uncomfortable. When you are racing to save someone or thinking someone is about to die, I would think your mind would be on saving that person not getting a quicky in before a fight.

I know it seems like such a small detail to pick apart, but it just made it feel so rushed. As if they didn’t do it at once then their story progression just would not move forward.

Per the usual with Maas, the last 100 pages were fast paced, extremely rushed and fully packed with action and forced resolution.

I didn’t think not having a cliff hanger at the end of a book would irritate me so much, but Maas has said that this isn’t the last book in this series so why would you rush all the character storylines like it is?

I like feeling the frustration of having to wait a year to find out what happens. To spend that time thinking about all the possibilities that could happen and then to finally see if I was right or not.

I personally feel like Maas has turned into a money hungry author and not the sixteen year old who was excited about reading and writing for the joy of it.

That is why I had to give this book a 3.5 out of 5 stars.