Crescent City: House of Earth and Blood

Synopsis

Crescent City: House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas is the first book in her new adult fantasy series. House of Earth and Blood is about a half fae, half human woman named Bryce Quinlan. She really had the perfect life, working hard all day, while partying all night. Until a demon murdered her closest friends. When the accused is behind bars, but the murders start again, Bryce finds herself at the heart of the investigation and she will do whatever it takes to avenge her friends.

Hunt Athalar is a notorious fallen angel, now enslaved to the archangels he once attempted to overthrow. Now his only purpose it so kill his boss’s enemies, no questions asked. But with a demon wreaking havoc in the city, he’s offered an irresistible deal. Help Bryce Quinlan find the murderer and his freedom will be within reach.

Non-Spoiler Review

Characters: Bryce Quinlan is a half fae, half human woman living in Crescent City. She works hard during the day and parties all night, at least until her life is thrown upside down. I know what it’s like to lose your closest friends and it hurts. I’m glad that Maas gave Bryce enough time to grieve and work through the trauma. There isn’t a quick and easy solution and I’m glad this book handled this properly. While I did not always agree with the decisions made by Bryce, I could understand them. Maas did an amazing job writing a very intricate but relatable and strong female character. I cannot wait to read more about Bryce Quinlan.

Hunt Athalar, the 2nd protagonist of this story, is a fallen angel, now enslaved to the archangels. Hunt is incredibly infamous throughout the city. Everyone knows about his past, but we as the readers do not. I loved slowly piecing his past together and understanding why he is so infamous. People are often scared of him but if they got to know the real Hunt, they would see he is good through and through.

Each and every character in this world feels real. They have their own voices, flaws, motivations and personalities and there wasn’t a single character I did not enjoy. Which for me is incredibly rare.

Worldbuilding: I am a huge fan of long adult fantasy books. Mainly because longer books usually have a lot more world building. It’s so much fun to me to just transport myself to a completely different world, but I need a lot of detail to do that. Crescent City: House of Earth and Blood definitely delivers on that, to the point that the details became a bit overwhelming. The worldbuilding is this book is both my favourite, and least favourite part. This mainly comes down to the placement. Almost all of the worldbuilding was cramped into the first 150 pages of the book. This completely overwhelmed me. So many names and places to learn about. This to me is the books biggest flaw. It would have been better to have the worldbuilding spread throughout the 800 pages, slowly getting more and more details as we go, instead of everything at the start. Now while the placement wasn’t great, the information itself was. After 150 pages I felt like I had known this world for a long time and I really could transport myself there.

Plot: How much plot do you expect there to be in an 800 page book? Double that, maybe even triple and you will have the amount of plot in Crescent City: House of Earth and Blood, and the majority of it was really good.

To me setup is very important. I don’t want twists that come out of nowhere and you couldn’t predict and to me every single twist had enough setup. Some things were a bit predictable but most of it came completely out of the blue. Because this is a non-spoiler review I cannot really go in-depth on the plot but believe me, it’s well worth it.

Conclusion: I absolutely loved this book and would recommend this to anyone who enjoys a good fantasy mystery. It’s been less than a month and I wanna reread it already.

The only criticisms I have is that the book could have been a bit shorter. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love long books, but those pages need to have a reason for being there. I felt like certain scenes were dragged out a bit too much and didn’t have a reason to be there. And as mentioned before, the worldbuilding cramped into the first 150 pages. Maybe if that wasn’t the case I wouldn’t feel like the book felt 100 pages too long, who knows.

I cannot wait for the 2nd book in this series which will come out somewhere during 2021, that’s too long for me 😂.