House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas Series: Crescent City #1
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA on March 3, 2020
Genres: Fiction / Fantasy / Epic, Fiction / Fantasy / Paranormal, Fiction / General, Fiction / Romance / Fantasy
Pages: 648
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781635574050Bryce 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.
I have a lot of complicated feelings surrounding SJM and her books. I first read Throne of Glass in 2013/14 when I was an undergrad in college. I raced through the first three books of the series. They were a great escape from all the reading I was doing for my political science and English classes.
Then I went to grad school for English and once you do that, your brain sometimes won’t let you just read a book for fun. It just loves to ruin everything! That along with growing, learning, and listening to Black readers made me see the problems in SJM books (not just ToG but also ACOTAR).
When I read House of Earth and Blood the first time, I had already owned it for a while and the love for SJM was waning. After finally finishing Tower of Dawn and Kingdom of Ash, both took me ages to read, I wasn’t sure I wanted to jump into another SJM novel. But friends who had read it assured me that it was great, and I trusted their opinions.
I hardly remember anything about the book. Don’t be worried, I’m not reviewing a book that I first read over 4 years ago. I re-read it for a romantasy book club I’m in with my local bookstore. However, time and age haven’t improved the books for me.
Before I go further, I want to say that I did find the book enjoyable. The beginning was interesting, the banter was fun and funny, and as usual, the last 100-200 pages was so action packed that I’m on the edge of my seat. Yet, I wasn’t as impressed with this novel as I was when I read my first SJM novel.
I don’t want to bash anyone’s favorite book, author, or characters. If you enjoyed the books, I am honestly happy for you. I’m known for my sarcasm and dry humour, but I’m not using sarcasm or joking right now. One of my favorite things to do is seeing people passionate and happy about the things that makes them happy. For my reviews, I generally take into account four different areas: writing quality, plot, characters, and enjoyment. While my enjoyment was a middle to high rating, the rest of the areas are lower for me.
Writing Quality: Let me get something out of the way, I don’t think SJM is that great of a writer. She overuses em dashes and fragments, to the point that they are meaningless. Her world-building is pretty basic with one or two unique features, but for the most part she regurgitates her past books. The only part that was interesting about Crescent City was how the city is powered by people puncturing themselves on the gates in the city. That part was actually quite cool and could’ve been tied back into the whole idea of slavery and colonization. I don’t know if it will be because I’m still debating whether I’ll read the other two Crescent City novels. Another part of the writing that drives me crazy is how much info dumping is included. The info dumping either interrupt’s the story, so I forget what’s going on or it’s after multiple chapters of nothing happening, and all of sudden there’s paragraphs of information that could pertain to the plot (sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t), and I need to start paying attention. Also, why do authors who write children or YA books think that when they move to adult fiction they need to have every other word be fuck or damn and have every conversation about sex? I felt the same way about The Casual Vacancy (so much so that I stopped reading the book in the first few chapters). I understand wanting to move away from what you previously wrote but adding what people view as “adult” words doesn’t make it an “adult” novel. On the whole, HoEaB does not hold up to the standard of writing that fantasy novels should be.
Characters: I honestly have a difficult time differentiating SJM characters from one series to the next. Aelin/Feyre/Bryce, Rowan/Rhys/Hunt, Aedion/Ruhn all of them are so similar that I honestly don’t know the difference between any of them. I will say that while I’m reading the novel, the characters are fun, but again when my brain gets involved it all goes down hill. Yes, authors will repeat characters from their own novels but SJM overdoes it to the point of each character being unrecognizable. Each main female character has once-in-a-generation powerful abilities, all male characters are seemingly in love with the main female character, and they have a brother/(male)cousin/(male)friend who is a tortured soul but lovable. There’s slightly different worlds for each novel, but HOEAB was so similar to her other novels (and unnecessarily longer) that the characters didn’t make it different enough.
Plot: As with the characters, the plots are recycled as well. The main female character is unaware or hiding her abilities, she goes through a series of trials to buck up her strength (both physical and mental), she’s betrayed by a friend or love interest, lead female has to come to terms with her difficult/traumatic upbringing/childhood, lead female reconnects with lost family member (brother or male cousin), and the lead female (by herself or with help from every single male who is seemingly in love with her) goes up against the evil king/queen. There, that is HOEAB and pretty much each of SJM’s previous books. Yes, fantasy has similar tropes and plot points, as do many other genres, but SJM’s plots and writing makes it too predictable. I’m also thoroughly annoyed by the concept that everyone knows that SJM’s books start badly and you just have to push through to get to the good parts. If I have to read through the first 500 pages to get to the meat of the story, then your plot and writing needs to be worked on.
Enjoyment: I know it might not seem like it, but I did enjoy reading this escapist fantasy novel. I’m not sure if I’d recommend it to others. It was candy reading for me.
I’m positive the stans will come after be for daring to critique THE SJM!! Critiquing a novel doesn’t necessarily mean I hate it, nor does it mean I love it. One of my favorite duologies (King of Scars/Rules of Wolves) I heavily critique for how Bardugo writes one of the characters (Nina) and completely washes away her trauma and loss in only a few weeks time. Yet, I still highly recommend the books to others. I do not wish any ill will to SJM or her fans. Again, I’m happy you enjoyed them and hope you continue to do so. No one will read the same book as I do, and my critiques say something about me, not anyone else.
Sounds like it’s a good thing I didn’t read it. lol