House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City, #1)
Author: Sarah J Maas
Publisher: Bloomsbury
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Bryce Quinlan had the perfect life—working hard all day and partying all night—until a demon murdered her closest friends, leaving her bereft, wounded, and alone. When the accused is behind bars but the crimes start up again, Bryce finds herself at the heart of the investigation. She’ll do whatever it takes to avenge their deaths.
Hunt Athalar is a notorious Fallen angel, now enslaved to the Archangels he once attempted to overthrow. His brutal skills and incredible strength have been set to one purpose—to assassinate his boss’s enemies, no questions asked. But with a demon wreaking havoc in the city, he’s offered an irresistible deal: help Bryce find the murderer, and his freedom will be within reach.
As Bryce and Hunt dig deep into Crescent City’s underbelly, they discover a dark power that threatens everything and everyone they hold dear, and they find, in each other, a blazing passion—one that could set them both free, if they’d only let it.
With unforgettable characters, sizzling romance, and page-turning suspense, this richly inventive new fantasy series by #1 New York Times bestselling author Sarah J. Maas delves into the heartache of loss, the price of freedom—and the power of love.
TL;DR Review
House of Earth and Blood was just SO good. It features a well-plotted mystery, characters to die for, heartbreaking revelations, and a fantastic ending.
For you if: You like fantasy novels, and especially if you are a woman who is attracted to men. Heh.
Full Review
“That's the point of it, Bryce. Of life. To live, to love, knowing that it might all vanish tomorrow. It makes everything that much more precious.”
OKAY WOW. We have waited a long time, my friends, for a new book from Sarah J Maas. And she has not disappointed us. I haven’t read the Throne of Glass series yet, but even so I would wager that House of Earth and Blood is her best book yet. Breaking out of the YA genre into adult has given her a freedom to do what she truly does best: raw, unruly characters; hard, emotional plots; and steeeeamy romance.
The main character is Bryce Quinlan, a 20-something half-Fae-half-human who loves her friends more than anything in this life. Her best friend and roommate, Danika, is head of the city’s best pack of shifter wolves and set to become the most powerful wolf potentially in the world. They work by day and party hard by night, and they’re mostly happy. But then travesty hits close to home. Two years later, the head of the city taps Bryce to help him solve the not-quite-closed mystery and assigns his assassin and slave, an angel named Hunt Athalar, to help and guard her. And I think you know where that’s going.
Caveat: This book is quite cis and straight. This one may not be for my queer friends, since so much of the book is dedicated to a romance between a smoking hot cis woman and a smoking hot cis man. I have also never been a fan of the way SJM uses “male” and “female” rather than “man” and “woman,” even if most of them are not human. I get why she does it, but it’s just outdated and unnecessary.
And yes, you could cut the sexual tension in this book with a knife. But it also has so much more going for it. The plot’s central mystery kept me guessing literally right up until the end — SJM dropped hints so masterfully along the way and made such carefully timed revelations that it felt just outside my grasp the whole time. That kind of storytelling is really impressive when it’s done well, and it was. I can’t believe how far we travel, plot-wise, from beginning to end of this story.
Um, also, hello, my HEART. There was a major plot twist in the second half that had me absolutely FREAKING OUT all alone in my apartment with nowhere to put my emotions. I also knew that this book had made people cry, and I so when I got to a part near the end that was so, so sad, I thought that was it. But, dear reader, that was not it. The ending walloped me again and again until I was a heaping ball of emotion that would probably have exploded if my husband had tried to interrupt my reading. (Luckily, he did not.)
There’s a lot of heavy world-building in the first few chapters that makes for a lot of info up front. I had bookmarked a few early passages describing key players and their roles, and I found myself flipping to them and to the map a lot in the first few chapters. But don’t worry — that eases back as you ease into this world, and what a rich world it is.
I absolutely cannot wait to revisit this world and these characters in the next book.
Trigger Warnings
Death / grief
Dating violence / domestic abuse
Suicidal thoughts
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