House of Earth and Blood

This review is just to help me remember key points about the book. If you find it helpful or relatable that's cool too.
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Please work through your trauma instead of having sexual fantasies in the kitchen during breakfast.
– My thoughts while reading this.


2.5 Stars ⭐️
4 Spicies

I feet a bit ashamed. I had so many issues with this book, that it is hard to count. Characters, plot, world-building, literally about anything. And then you what I did? I stayed up till 5 AM because I just needed to finish this book.

What was good in this book:
- parts starting from around 70% of the book. That's where everything picked up speed and all the plot twists were were coming at the speed of a motor vehicle instead of the snail-slow pacing of the beginning. And it was even engaging.

What I didn't enjoy:
- Characters. I couldn't discern between them if not for the color of their hair. Here we have the most beautiful angel, there is a striking medwitch, somewhere over there is the most gorgeous wraith and so on. No matter how small mention of a character we got, it is always the same - He/She was the prettiest male/female ever seen and his/her power was unparralled to any other. Because had I mentioned that god save us the character wouldn't have a special superpower.
- Unnecessary swearing. Like for real. The book would've been a 100 pages shorter if the word “f*ck” was edited out.
- Bryce is such a Mary Sue. Despite being told throughout the whole book that her power level was low, but of course till the end of the book she had more power that any other being in the city. And I didn't even mention what a special beautiful and curvatios snowlake she is. And how every “male” was ready to take her right there.
- That scene where Bryce tried to take Hunt's place. OMG, I so waited for the reveal of some clever plan. I just couldn't believe the sheer stupidity of what she intended to do.
- Portrayal of drug use. Especially in the beginning. That was disgusting.
- No logic in acquainting readers with the world. It was either a blatant infodump (which for me is a preferable option) or we see something, it gets mentioned again in 15 pages, and again in 20 pages and after that it gets explained in the way we already had to understand what is going on. By the way, I still don't know how this planet of Midgard looks and what all the random names belong to, and the author already gone into establishing parallel words and realms.
- If this book had an editor - he did a poor job. This book is overlong but at least 300 pages. And so confusing.

At this point, I'm tired and have no inspiration left for this review.

But you know the worst thing? I will still read a next book.

There is a LOT of world building in this one, but the story was so emotional and... well... worth it. I adored this book so much. Sarah J. Maas wove such a fun buddy cop, close proximity adventure into her complex fantasy world and it was a journey that I can't wait to continue.