It's more of a 3.5 and I won't lie, I skimmed most of this. But I think it's good to have to refresh your memory if it's been awhile since reading the original books. There's also some helpful information in here (specifically the word "ascension" and how it's used so many fucking times in different ways!!) and awesome art depicting the characters which was fun.

I skipped a few chapters to refer back to later, like some of Miss Willa's diary entries and bonus scenes (I know what that is going to entail and ya girl is working right now. Likely NSFW.)

It’s not so much a book rather than a cute collectable. Cute is the only way I can describe the writing but I loved Willa’s perspective on everything. Gives you a good dive back in after a year of waiting for the new flesh and fire book releasing in may

Visions of Flesh and Blood is a comprehensive guide to the From Blood and Ash series and Fire and Flesh Series. Was there something in a previous book you were hoping to get more detail on or didn’t fully understand? Then this book is for you! It gives a lot of insight and clarity on things you might have missed or didn’t fully understand on your first read through. It’s broken down character by character, which I think helped organize all the information. With each character, we learn more of their background and get a recap of everything that’s happened in the series so far.
It’s told through Miss Willa’s point of view as a seer and we get some fun bonus content. Overall I’d say this is a great companion to the series but it is not a necessary read to fully enjoy all the books in this world.

I am extremely frustrated after slogging my way through this book for the last month. It is trying to be too many things and ends up coming off like a repetitive, poorly written, detailed summary of all the events of the blood and ash and flesh and fire books. The way it is divided up into characters without any combinations for events that overlap mean you end up reading sections over and over again under each character. For example the section on Sera was over 80 pages. And then in the 50 pages on Nyktos there are sentences that appear exactly as they were in Sera’s section. Utterly infuriating. I also really hated the Miss Willa angle. I like a nonfiction book and have enjoyed many a history textbook over the years so if this book had stuck solely to reviewing and clarifying the events and characters of the two series accompanied by the beautiful illustrations (seriously, best part by far is the art in the book) I would have enjoyed it much more. Trying to make it as written by Miss Willa means we get commentary that often gave me the ick, sections supposedly of her diary written in the most unreadable and horrendous font that in no way needed to be in the book and there are chunks missing because Miss Willa points out she doesn’t know everything. My eye rolling is eternal.
I really love both the Blood and Ash and the Flesh and Fire series. They’re fun romantasy and Jennifer L. Armentrout has created a very engaging world full of colourful well rounded characters. However this book presented as it is was just annoying. I finished the whole thing but my recommendation is that if you need a refresher on previous books before going onto the new ones just look up detailed book summaries online: they’ll be more fun to read than this.

I’d love an actual, real storytelling book to read. Instead of this. Or the retelling from a different POV.