⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

House of Earth and Blood is the first book in Sarah J. Maas‘s Crescent City series. It starts off slow with heavy world building and is so dense with characters I felt like I needed a chart to keep them all straight. Thankfully it picks up about a third of the way through the book once the major world building is out of the way. I loved that the primary focus is on a detective story with plenty of twists and turns. The romance takes a backseat and is allowed to grow naturally. In fact, there’s only one smut scene and the word “erection” only pops up once, 98% of the way through the book. There are engaging action sequences, the dog-like creature does not die, and there is plenty of snark. On the other hand, this is obviously a cisheteronormative world. This is emphasized by constant use of the terms male and female to the exclusion of more natural synonyms like man and woman. There is momentary queerbaiting between the main character, Bryce, and her best friend, Danica. (I loved Danica so much!) There’s also a very brief throwaway mention of a minor character being gay. And that’s it. As a nonbinary, pan- and greysexual person, it grated on me. So even though this book made me cry twice (LIGHT IT UP! —IYKYK), it gets only 4 stars. I will be continuing with the next book in the series.

This was a buddy read with the lovely Jadzeea . I also read it for the lore quest in the Orilium Magical Readathon.