House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm of two minds on this.

The fact that it absolutely is an Urban Fantasy in all ways possible is something of a dual-edged sword. We're already far into the life-cycle of UFs in general so we tend to get kinda jaded and praying for originality when we pick up new ones. The fact that this one is a whopping 800 pages instead of being broken up into the first three books of a longer normal UF series is STRANGE.

Or not so strange, considering how many fans will eat anything that Maas puts in front of them.

That being said, I pretty much hated the first huge story sequence, almost prayed that everyone would just die in a horrible way, including the main character. Party this party that, sex, sex, sex, and WHO CARES.

But then big changes (wishes come true) happen and my interest finally perked up. And that was my start of actually enjoying the novel. And then it kinda slid around before getting interesting again. Suffice to say, we go through lots of story changes, plot changes, even basic description of MC changes. I don't mind that so much if the changes make sense and provide a depth of character. And they do. Mostly. And then the betrayals and the decision comes around and I got fully into the novel again and rode the rest of this huge honker all the way to the end.

Putting this side-by-side with Court gives it a sense of narrative style that is very familiar, even if the actual tale and setting are all the way different. And the story itself wasn't bad. By the end.



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