Recently, I reread The War of Two Queens by Jennifer L. Armentrout, in preparation for the newest installment in the “Blood and Ash” series, A Soul of Ash and Blood. If you haven’t read any of the books yet and especially the first book From Blood and Ash, I stop you right here and now. Why? This book and therefore review is full of spoilers for that book.

• Title: A Soul of Ash and Blood
• Author: Jennifer L. Armentrout
• Series: Blood And Ash #5
• Publish date: July 18, 2023
• Publisher: Blue Box Press
• ISBN: 9781957568478
• Number of pages: 636
  Genre: New adult, Fantasy
• Read as: Ebook and Audiobook
• Narrator: Tim Campbell
• Length: 19 hours, 42 minutes

Only his memories can save her…


A great primal power has risen. The Queen of Flesh and Fire has become the Primal of Blood and Bone—the true Primal of Life and Death. And the battle Casteel, Poppy, and their allies have been fighting has only just begun. Gods are awakening across Iliseeum and the mortal realm, readying for the war to come. But when Poppy falls into stasis, Cas faces the very real possibility that the dire, unexpected consequences of what she is becoming could take her away from him. Cas is given some advice, though — something he plans to cling to as he waits to see her beautiful eyes open once more:


Talk to her.


And so, he does. He reminds Poppy how their journey began, revealing things about himself that only Kieran knows in the process. But it’s anybody’s guess what she’ll wake to or exactly how much of the realm and Cas will have changed when she does. 

This book is solely told ffrom Casteel’s point of view and the events from From Blood and Ash are mostly revisited. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to read this book since i was afraid it would be very repetitive. My fears became a little true, but on the other hand it was still a pleassure to read.

So, the story picks up right after the final events of The War of Two Queens. The transition into the Primal of Blood and Bone has taken a toll on Poppy and she falls into stasis. Casteel fears for the consequences and in the hopes of Poppy returning to him sooner, he begins talking to her about literally everything. From the first moment he met her, to him guarding her, to him taking her out of the palace. So this book is not really about character development, but we get some new information though. This new information contains puzzle pieces from the first book, but also from the fourth book. Now, we know how Casteel spent his time when he was not with Poppy and we find out how much of a dirty mind he really has.

Althought the story is not about character development, it was still interesting to read. However, I am not the biggest fan of revisiting old events told from another POV, but the bits and pieces of new information made up for it. The writing was okay too and so was the narration of the audiobook.

I’m sorry to break this to you, but you can’t skip reading A Soul of Ash and Blood by Jennifer L. Armentrout since it contains necessary info about the remainder of the series. It was a nice calm between all the high stakes, but honestly I want to go back to the full story as soon as possible.