Blood & Ice by Ariana Nash

DNF @ 21%

I hate to give this a low rating because I loved SILK & STEEL and IRON & FIRE, and BLOOD & ICE was one of my hotly anticipated reads for October. I got it the week it came out with the expectation that it would bring my new favorite dark fantasy series to an epic close. Silk & Steel is an epic fantasy romance between an elf and a dragon. Their people are at war, and their hate-hate relationship gradually spins into something deep and meaningful against a tapestry of war, abuse, and violence.

Ariana Nash/Pippa DaCosta writes beautifully and I've liked almost everything of hers that she's written. Style-wise, she's a lot like Ilona Andrews, in that she strikes the perfect balance between smart snappy prose and quick readability, which is not easy to do.

I'm not sure what exactly went wrong in BLOOD & ICE, and I checked the other reviews to see if anyone else shared my feelings, but nobody did. Maybe it's just me, or maybe the book came at a bad time, but I found myself being so bored while reading this. The writing quality seemed to have gone down a bit and the pacing was so sluggish. I was invested Lysander and Eroan's future from the beginning, but this book made me not care what happened to either of them. It was that dull.

I'm pretty disappointed by the way this series ended. It was a fizzle when I wanted a bang. Maybe the pacing picks up towards the end, and it'll turn into the bang I wanted (in more ways than one), but I didn't want to read on to find out. Life is too short to read the books you don't enjoy. I am psyched for Akiem's book, though. He's a heartless bastard of a dragon and I look forward to getting to know his dark heart.

1 to 1.5 out of 5 stars