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Crescent City: House of Earth and Blood

"She kept whispering the words over and over again.  They morphed together into one sentence, a prater, a challenge.  My friends are with me and I am not afraid."

Bryce Quinlan is living a pretty great life as one of Crescent City's biggest party girls.  She works days at the gallery and spends her nights high and dancing with her best friend Danika Fendyr.  And while her half fae/half human blood doesn't always make her feel like she fits in, Dankia's pack adores her and her asshole of a father, the Fae Autumn King, leaves her alone.  All of that changes one night when Bryce comes home in a stupor to find that Danika and the Pack of Devils have been brutally murdered in her apartment. 

Bryce spends the next two years with guilt and pain eating away at her, not sure what to do with life anymore.  It isn't until she meets and enslaved angel that's just as broken as she is that things start to change.  With the help of Hunt Athalar, Bryce sets out to discover the true killer of her best
friend and uncover what really happened that terrible night.  

House of Earth and Blood, the first book in the new Crescent City series by Sarah J Maas, is just as fantastic as Maas' previous books.  It's full of mystery, fantasy, and romance and is set in the modern day world, which I loved. 

It took me a long time to get into this book.  I'd say close to one hundred pages.  I was even tempted to abandon it at one point, but I hate to do that, so I marched on.  And I'm very glad I did.  As with any new fantasy series, the beginning of the book is full of backstory.  And rightfully so.  It was also full of a lot of character development for Bryce that goes right out the window.  It drags a bit, but it needs to happen to fully appreciate the woman Bryce will later become.  She was a great character filled with sorrow and I really adored her attitude.

In her other books Maas creates drool worthy male characters.  Hunt lives up to the expectation.  I liked him from the start and liked him more as the story goes on.  He's faced with a lot of his own inner turmoil and he has Bryce pegged as a ditzy party girl.  It was fun to watch him evolve over the book.  

Another character I loved was Rhun, Bryce's full-fae half-brother.  I loved how protective he was of her despite not meeting her until she was thirteen.   I hope to see a lot more of him in the next book!


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