Book Review: ‘Crescent City: House of Earth and Blood’ by Sarah J Maas

Title: Crescent City: House of Earth and Blood

Author: Sarah J Maas

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Publication Date: 2020

I’ve been a fan of Sarah J Maas’ young adult series Throne of Glass for a long time but I wasn’t aware of Maas’ adult fantasy series Crescent City until a friend recommended it. House of Earth and Blood is the first book in that series. The book is an intimidating 799 pages but so worth it!

The high fantasy world of Crescent City features an environment where humans, fae, shifters, vampires, angels, demons and much more all live together. The story follows Bryce Quinlan, a half human/half fae woman, who works at an antiques gallery. A party girl who enjoys drink and drugs, Bryce’s world is shattered when her friend is murdered. Two years later a similar murder occurs and Bryce is enlisted to work with the angel Hunt Athalar, aka the feared warrior The Umbra Mortis, to find the killer.

The story is a fusion of magic and high-level technology. It pairs epic and detailed world building with fantastic three-dimensional characters who have tons of development and growth throughout the book. In my opinion, one of the reasons for Maas’s success is due to her writing style where she can explain her fantasy worlds in a way that the reader never feels lost or confused in regards to what is happening. At the same time, despite the level of detail included, Maas’ also manages to avoid slowing her plot down and causing chapters to get stuck in exposition black holes. To be fair, the long world building sections won’t be for everyone but these are the aspects I enjoy about fantasy stories. Even though I’ve only read House of Earth and Blood once (at time of writing) I found the locations and characters very easy to imagine.

If I had to give the book one criticism it’s that the blurb gives away the key inciting incident of the story. Even though we feel Bryce’s pain during the turmoil of those earlier chapters, I think the reveal itself would have been all the more heart-breaking and shocking if we didn’t know it was coming.

One of the things I did love about the book was its epic plot. The stakes for Bryce and Hunt keep building and building. There are so many cliffhangers that would have made an exciting end to the story but instead it kept going. As I was reading I didn’t know how the plot could possibly have anywhere else to go (surely things couldn’t get even more intense!) but each time it did and the reveals were excellent. And as for the actual climatic finale – it’s rare for a book to make me feel that many emotions. So many fantastic moments!

Another strength of the book is its characters. Rather than typical heroes the series features flawed characters like Bryce, Hunt, and Ruhn who must overcome personal obstacles throughout the course of the story. There are also plenty of morally grey characters or people with mysterious backgrounds such as Danika, Fury, and Jesiba. They in turn are balanced out with the more pure-hearted characters of Lehabah and Juniper. All together this creates a fantastic mix of personalities who added to the realness of the world Maas has created.

House of Earth and Blood is definitely one of those books that falls into the ‘couldn’t put it down’ category. In fact I even went back and re-read some chapters purely because I enjoyed them so much. I can safely say that this is one of my new favourite books!

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