A Soul of Ash and Blood

I picked up A Soul of Ash and Blood because I wanted to know if Casteel had anything new to say. Jennifer L. Armentrout published it with Blue Box Press in 2023, a 656 page entry listed as book five in the Blood and Ash series. It is not a sequel in the normal sense. Poppy lies asleep, worn thin after everything through The War of Two Queens, while those around her hold a city under threat. Casteel sits with her and starts talking. What follows is mostly From Blood and Ash retold from his side, cut with new frame scenes at the start, between parts, and near the end. If you loved Hawke and want his version, you will get it. If you hated repetition, you should know what you are walking into.

The frame matters, so I will start there. Poppy sleeps and does not wake easily. Her body heals but her mind stays under. Kieran stands guard in his own way. Others come and go with reports of armies, supplies, wounded. Casteel feels helpless in a way fighting never made him feel. He cannot cut this enemy. He cannot bargain with it. So he does the one thing he can do. He tells her the story from the beginning, from his beginning, hoping his voice reaches her. Armentrout uses these present scenes to remind us the retelling has stakes. This is not just nostalgia. He is trying to anchor her.

He starts long before Masadonia. Casteel Da'Neer, prince of Atlantia, son of Valyn and Eloana, brother to Malik, bonded to Kieran in a way that is more than friendship. Atlantia believes Poppy, the Maiden of Solis, may be more than Solis claims. Casteel volunteers for a grim job. Go into enemy land under a false name. Get close to the Maiden. Learn what she is. Take her if the moment comes. He expects a sheltered holy girl who believes every sermon. He finds Penellaphe Balfour.

That gap between expectation and person drives the whole book. In Poppy's version, Hawke Flynn shows up after guards die and charms his way into her guard. In Casteel's version, we see the planning. How he killed the real Hawke or took his place in the chaos, how Kieran watches from the trees as a wolf, how Casteel practices looking bored and young and harmless. He tells Poppy in the frame that he felt sick the first time he saw her veiled in a hall. Not because she was holy. Because she was caged and everyone acted like the cage was an honor.

Hawke with his mask off

The early Masadonia chapters are familiar but funnier and sadder once you know who speaks. Poppy sneaks to the Red Pearl with Tawny. Hawke teases her. Vikter glares. In book one, Hawke reads as bold. Here he reads as careful. Casteel notes exits, counts guards, watches the Duke's men watch Poppy. He flirts because Hawke would flirt, but also because Poppy lights up when someone jokes with her instead of bowing to her. One scene I liked retold is the first training talk. Poppy demands he teach her to fight. In her telling, he agrees fast and it feels like chemistry. In his telling, he hesitates longer. Teaching her means disobeying her own laws and risking his cover, yet leaving her helpless feels worse. He shows her grip and stance in a courtyard while Kieran pretends to nap nearby.

Armentrout adds small new beats that were off page before. Casteel and Kieran arguing at night about how close he gets. Kieran warns that using Poppy to get to the Ascended will cost them both. Casteel says he knows what he is doing. He does not. Another addition is Casteel writing reports he never sends, or sending short coded lines to Atlantia that leave out more than they say. He tells a contact Poppy heals with touch and senses emotion. He leaves out that she laughs when Tawny mimics a priest, or that she reads adventure books twice, or that she asks if Atlantians really have fangs like stories say. Those omissions tell you where his loyalty starts to split.

Vikter looks different through Casteel. In Poppy's eyes, Vikter is a kind older guard who bends rules. Casteel sees a man who suspects him from the first drill. Vikter tests Hawke with questions only a Solis soldier would answer fast. He stands too close to Poppy when Hawke jokes. Casteel respects him and hates what his own plan will do to him. He admits in the frame, speaking to sleeping Poppy, that he liked Vikter and killed him anyway by bringing danger with him. That guilt sits through the rest of the retelling. It makes the banter less light. Every laugh in a tavern or hallway has a man outside keeping count.

Tawny also gains color. Poppy loves her as a sister. Casteel sees a girl who believes in Ascension because belief gives her days shape. He is gentle with her in a way Hawke the character would be, bringing sweets, teasing her about suitors, listening to gossip he could use and choosing not to use most of it. One new short scene has him stopping Kieran from scaring Tawny on a path. He says she is innocent in a way few in this city are. It is a small moment, but it shows Casteel still sorts people into those who chose cruelty and those who just live inside it.

The Duke is worse here because Casteel knows what the Ascended are. Poppy sees a cruel lord who whips and lectures and summons her to private audiences that leave her shaking. Casteel sees a vampry feeding hierarchy, a creature wearing a lord's face, hurting Poppy to keep her afraid and small. His rage in these chapters is hard to sit with. He describes wanting to tear the Duke apart in a throne room and having to smile instead. He hates himself for standing in line while Poppy is punished. He tells her now that he counted the seconds until he could get her out of that room, then counted the reasons he could not act yet. That helplessness will be familiar to readers who disliked how passive Hawke seemed at court. The retelling explains it without excusing it.

Lessons, kisses, and lies that grow teeth

Training becomes the spine of the middle, just as in book one, but the meaning shifts. Poppy wants skill. Casteel wants her alive when his own people come. He teaches her to hold a dagger low, to slash and run, to fall without breaking wrists, to breathe when fear spikes. He praises her fast hands. He corrects her footing with a touch he lingers on too long. In Poppy's telling, these lessons spark desire. In his, desire scares him because it was not in the plan. He keeps saying to Kieran that it is an act, that bedding or kissing her is cover. Kieran stops answering, which is answer enough.

The romance scenes will feel very known if you read book one recently. First kiss in a stairwell, hungry and angry. Late talks in her bedroom where he asks about scars and books. Rides where his hands stay proper until they do not. Explicit scenes arrive around the same points and use much of the same dialogue. Armentrout does add Casteel's inner spiral after each one. Did she want this or did the uniform want it. Did he push. Should he pull back and lose access. He asks Poppy for clear yeses more carefully here, and the book shows him stopping once when she freezes. I appreciated that clarity, though readers new to the series should know this stays open door and frequent. The heat that some skimmed in book one cannot be skimmed here without losing pages.

What is new and worth reading in this stretch is Atlantian context Casteel could not share as Hawke. Short asides explain wolven bonds, how Kieran smells lies and strong feeling, how Atlantian princes feel the pull of a heartmate, why Casteel first thought Poppy's hum called to him. He also explains Craven differently. Poppy fears them as monsters in mist. Casteel knows how the Ascended make them, leaving bitten third sons and daughters to turn hungry, then using attacks to justify tithes and control. One ambush on a road, told in book one as chaos, is told here as Casteel spotting wrong details. Why this path. Why no ravens. Why the Dead guards fall in a pattern. He fights while shouting orders Poppy thought were instinct. They were training.

The mission pressure tightens. Messages from Atlantia grow short. Bring the Maiden. Stop waiting. Alastir questions delays. Casteel answers with half truths about needing her trust to get her out alive. He is not lying exactly. Taking her by force through mountains full of Craven and Ascended patrols would likely kill her. But he is also stalling because he likes who he is around her. Hawke the mask starts to feel more honest than prince the truth. He admits to sleeping Poppy that he started picking fights with patrols just to stay near her another day. That is a soldier failing his orders in slow motion.

I should be fair about repetition here because it is the main criticism and it starts in this middle third. If you read From Blood and Ash, you will reread conversations almost word for word for long stretches. Tavern talk. Lessons. Duke audiences. Bedroom jokes about Princess. Armentrout trims some travel and town stops, but not enough that the book feels lean at 656 pages. I found myself skimming dialogue I remembered well, then slowing for Casteel's private paragraphs after Poppy leaves the room. Those paragraphs are good. There just are not enough of them to carry every familiar scene. New readers who start here will not feel this. Returning fans will, and should plan for it.

Road, blood, and the turn

The final act moves to the road to the capital, the planned abduction, and the truths about Ascension. In Poppy's book, the turn lands as shock. Hawke vanishes. Casteel appears. The Dark One was her guard all along. Here the turn lands as dread because we watch him choose it. He drugs her drink or her food depending on the night, hates himself while doing it, carries her from an inn while Kieran holds the horses. He tells her in the frame that her weight in his arms is the thing he remembers most, more than battles before or after. Light, breathing fast, trusting him even drugged. He says he knew she would never trust that fully again. He was right for a long time.

Captivity scenes also read differently. Poppy spits, fights, tries to escape, demands answers. Casteel gives some and withholds more to protect Atlantia and his family. He explains the Ascended are vamprys, that Solis history is a lie built on murder, that Atlantians did not start the war as told, that her blood and gifts point to old power, not gods giving blessing. He does not tell her everything about Malik, or about what Atlantia will demand of her, or about how his parents may use her. Kieran fills some gaps with dry honesty. Delano and others watch her with curiosity that unnerves her. The marriage talk that follows in later books starts here as custom and protection, not love, and Casteel knows how bad that sounds after kidnapping her.

The ritual and battle near the end stay brutal. Ascended arrive. Craven press. Poppy's power breaks open in light and fury. People she loves are hurt. Tawny suffers in a way that still hurts to read. Vikter is gone. Casteel bleeds trying to keep Poppy breathing while lying about enough to keep his cover with his own side. One strong new passage has him seeing her eather flare and realizing the prophecies his parents trade in may be about her in a literal way. He fears what that will mean. A girl who wanted choice becomes a symbol others will carve claims into. He vows in the frame that he will not do that to her, even if crowns demand it.

Then the book returns fully to the present. Poppy still sleeps. Casteel finishes the story where book one ended, with separation and a vow and war ahead. He asks her to wake. He says he told the truth this time, including the ugly parts, so she can judge him with full sight. Armentrout does not cheat with a sudden cure. Poppy does not sit up healed because he confessed. The siege continues. The threat remains. What changes is Casteel. Telling it in order forces him to look at where charm stopped and care started, and where care still led him to use her. That honesty gives the retelling a reason beyond fan service.

So who should read this 656 page book. Read it if Hawke and Casteel are your favorite and you want his fear and guilt on page. Read it if you like villain to lover stories where the lover admits he was the villain in her story for a while. Read it if you want Kieran's side jokes and Atlantian lore filled in without starting a wiki. Skip or delay if you just finished book one and remember every line, because large parts will feel copied. A better path might be to read books two through four, then come back here before book six, when distance makes the echoes feel like memory instead of repeat. I came in worried it would be filler. I left thinking it is half frame story with real feeling and half familiar road, and the half that is new earns its place even when the familiar half drags.

A last note on craft. Armentrout writes Casteel's voice close to Poppy's, teasing and blunt, which keeps series feel but sometimes blurs who tells which book. I wished for more prince in Hawke, more strange detail only he would notice, fewer repeated jokes. The frame scenes have that strangeness. Cold camp, wound smell, war maps, a man talking to keep fear down. When the book stays there, it is strong. When it returns to Masadonia dialogue we know, it coasts. That split explains reactions online. Fans who live for these two forgive coasting for extra nights and talks. Readers who wanted plot movement call it a pause. Both are right. I forgave more than I expected because guilt looks good on Casteel, and because hearing him say he chose her before he understood her made the early banter land softer on second pass.