House of Earth and Blood

4.5 Stars

Through love all is possible.

All I can say is WOW. Not my first book by Sarah J Maas, but like always it left me feeling great. She is an artist and whatever she creates is simply a masterpiece.

House of Earth and Blood is book 1 in Sarah J Maas’s new adult fantasy series, Crescent City. Set in the fictional Crescent City, a city where vampires, witches, fae, humans live in harmony (or not) we are introduced to a whole new world that I definitely loved.

We meet Bryce Quinlan, a half-fae just trying make her way through life. She spends her day working and her nights partying. Her life is pretty much perfect till one night the brutal murder of her best friend leaves her reeling. Alone and lost she gives into her grief till another similar incident occurs and she’s called in to help with the investigation.

Like any other SJM character Bryce is fierce and beautiful but also broken and scared. At first, she comes of as a very superficial party-girl kind of person but the more you read the more you realise that all of it is just a farce to hide how truly broken she is underneath. The loss she experienced broke her and she didn’t know how to come back from it. I personally really enjoyed her character but at the same time I also felt that sometimes she was a bit too over-smart. I think she was meant to be this sly, seductive character at times it went overboard. I really felt that she was similar to Aelin in those ways, she also had a habit of not telling people her plans and just taking them along. What I did love about her was how loyal she was to those she loved. Bryce loved few but loved deeply.

Next up, we have Orion “Hunt” Athalar, the brooding, sexy enslaved fallen angel meant in charge of catching the killer. Hunt has a dark past. A past filled with love and war and mainly loss. He led a rebellion, which ended up failing and as a result he lost everything, from his dignity to his freedom. Now marked with a tattoo signaling his enslavement, he works as an assassin for his archangel masters. I actually really liked him from the beginning. Like Bryce, he is also lonely and broken. Suffering has become a constant in his life and I think he’s stopped expecting more. Meeting Bryce is like a breath of fresh air for him. Yes, he did some stupid stuff but I couldn’t really hold it against him considering that those stupid stuff could have potentially freed him.

When Bryce and Hunt meets like fire meeting ice. She’s loud, abrasive, does whatever she wants while he is restrained, angry, and literally enslaved. He likes to be in control of every situation (how much ever control he can get, that is) while Bryce is always dragging him off and throwing him into tumultuous situations without warning. There dynamic was something I savoured. Their bickering was super fun to read and some scenes (I can never forget JJ) were downright hilarious. But what I liked most about their relationship was how it changed. How over times they grew to care for each other and become the one thing the other needed but never had.

Now onto the story, it was amazing!! I mean, yeah it’s Sarah J Maas, you can’t expect anything less but I was a bit hesitant after learning that this book wouldn’t be like her usual ones. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with the adult content and the modern, technological era but she surpassed all my expectations. There were a lot of twists and turns, some of which will make your jaw drop and go like WOAHH but few which I felt were kind of boring and not as “twisty” as they were supposed to be. Another aspect that I loved were the side characters. There were quite a few, some barely for quarter of the book, but man did they steal my heart. But in the end, the way he fought for Bryce kind of melted me.

The writing as usual was phenomenal. I always say, Sarah J Maas writes the way we feel. Her words are literally like our thoughts. Like the ToG series, House of Earth and Blood is told in multiple POVs, though most of them being Bryce’s. I’m not sure if it’s just me but I think Sarah J Maas put in all the f-bombs that she couldn’t put in her previous works, in this one and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Overall, this book is a complete favourite of mine. I would totally recommend it.