Ebook Review: House of Earth and Blood: Crescent City, Book 1

House of Earth and Blood: Crescent City, Book 1 by Sarah J. Maas

RBdigital ebook review by Jeannette

Bryce, half-fey, half-human and illegitimate daughter of the Autumn King of Crescent City, is living her life in accordance to her own rules. Sarcastic and stubborn, she couldn’t care less about statutes. During the day she works for an antique dealer selling magical artifacts for her boss, a sorceress, and at night she parties with her friends, flirts with a werewolf by the name of Connor and hangs out with her best friend Danika, a wolf shifter. When Danika is found murdered, after a night of parties and drugs, Bryce blames herself.

She is shaken out of her stupor, after another killing in the city; only problem is, that the alleged killer is already behind bars. Bryce is offered the opportunity to unravel the secrets that still surround the night her friend was killed in addition to solving the new mysterious killing. Hunt Athalar, a fallen angel, and personal assassin for the archangels is tasked to help and protect Bryce with her investigation. Neither of them is excited about this prospect but Hunt soon comes to realize, that he needs to find a way to work with Bryce if he wants to satisfy his own ulterior motive.

As Bryce and Hunt, struggling under the weight of their demons of the past, start to untangle the many secrets and mysteries of Crescent City, they fail to realize that those revelations cause a ripple effect running through the city, across continents and finally down to the darkest levels of Hel, the home of demons. It is there that “things that have been sleeping for millennia are beginning to stir.”

This book is a murder mystery in an urban fantasy setting. But issues such as slavery, drugs, personal rights and PTSD are also addressed and play a large part in this book. A world full of colorful supernatural characters all dealing with loss, love, power and magic.

There are a lot of characters and places right from the beginning and it took me a while to get on track with the story. My only gripe is that this is the authors first book in the ‘adult’ category, I am not sure she was able to bring that across realistically. Since it did not work so well for me, I decided to treat/read the story as a ‘young adult’ book. Voila, problem solved. Other than that, I thought it was an excellent read.