House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City, #1)

by Sarah J. Maas

[chillywilly]

This is my first SJM book. I loved this book and I cannot wait until the next one comes out. The story is about Bryce Quinlan, a half fae-human, and Hunt Athalar, a fallen angel. Bryce meets Hunt after her wolf shifter friend, Danika, and her pack are brutally murdered in the apartment that she and Danika share. Believing the murderer, who summoned the demon to kill the pack, is behind bars, Bryce goes back to work and moves into a new apartment but is no longer her old party girl self. 2 years pass and the demon returns to murder more innocents. The archangel, Micah, of the territory that Crescent City is located in, commands Hunt to head up the investigation into the murders and requests Bryce to assist Hunt because she lived with Danika and believes her to know Danika best. Bryce sets out to avenge her dearest friend.

After I read about 200 pages, I decided to read what other people had to say about the book out of curiosity. Some said the characters felt very similar to SJM's other books. I can't attest to that as I've never read them. Some said there was too much information dump. While I agree to a point about the information dump at the beginning, it was only an information dump in about the first 3rd of the book. I look at it this way that SJM created a world that is over 15,000 years old. There is going to be a lot of information with all the different races and cultural hierarchies and the main characters back stories. I did have a bit of an issue with all of the characters, there were a lot and it was hard to remember who knew who and which character was which. After the story got rolling some of the characters dropped off until later in the story, but there were way too many characters to start off with especially with all the information that SJM is throwing at you.

One review that I read mentioned all of the grunts, growls, groans, and hisses. There are a lot of those as both of the main characters are stubborn and hard headed. And they love their profanity. In the beginning I understood the reasoning for it. Both characters are, what I feel to be, angry especially at having to deal with each other. Later in the book, some of it seems unnecessary. The characters have grown and mellowed out, so the tone of the profanity seems harsh in the instances that it is used and not necessary for the situation.

But really the story is engrossing. SJM does a great job of giving you enough of the main story line with tiny clues to the mystery, to want more.

I have to say that I was very sad that Danika and the Pack of Devils had to die for the story to unfold. I really liked those group of characters. I would have really liked to see them develop into a story and I was really gunning for Bryce and Connor.