fantasy
Bryce is half human, half fae, living in a world inhabited
by many different types of creatures. Bryce works in a gallery owned by a witch
and lives with her old college roommate, a wolf shifter. As she navigates the various dangers around her, she is not afraid to live life to the fullest. When tragedy strikes, she
is forced to help an archangel discover the identity of the criminal who has
been summoning a murderous demon to their city.
The landscape of Bryce’s life was both gritty and flashy. It
was fun to get to know this “bad girl” with a good heart. Sarah Maas is a great
character inventor. However, it was sometimes difficult to fully grasp the
politics and alliances and allegiances in Bryce’s world. There was just so much
of it….so many different types of beings and so many layers to the rungs of
power. I give Maas credit for not laying out all the descriptions up front like
a dictionary but, rather, attempting to make them emerge more organically. Still, she left this reader in confusion through much of the early pages. This
tampered my enjoyment at the beginning. Despite this, I persevered under the
assumption that it would all make more sense as the story unspooled. And, for
the most part, it did. It just wasn’t a flawless or comfortable process for
me. Likewise, the ending had a lot of stuff going on that wasn’t
entirely clear. But I just went with it.
I’ve had mixed feelings about the previous Maas novels I’ve
read but she has been consistently great at building suspense. In House of Earth and Blood, her characters had swagger and were fun to get to know. You knew where certain plot points were going
to go but there was also a lot you weren’t expecting. Some aspects felt silly.
For example, powerful beings still had to use mundane tools like coffee makers
and a fae prince lived in a crappy house (by choice) with two roommates. It seemed that everyone was a rebel for the
sake of being contrary. And absolutely everyone was gorgeous. But I decided to
set my annoyances aside so that I could enjoy the ride.
I loved the brewing romance. And around the 80% mark, the
book became unputdownable! It was really hard to go to bed but my eyes stopped
working so I had to put it down and was really upset about that! This crazy
story actually also had a lot of heart and had me, surprisingly, tearing up a
couple of times! So I give kudos to Maas
for making me feel things in the midst of Bryce’s unlikely, kooky, horrible
world. And I look forward to reading the sequel!
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