House of Earth and Blood

I have such a complicated relationship with SJM where I'm like, this is always so epic and sprawling and nonsense and all the stuff I generally don't like in fantasy, and I can never keep the characters straight or remember any plot points, but I'm also always just like



So I was excited to get my hands on her first urban fantasy book, hoping it would cut down on some of the fantasy nonsense, and.....it somehow all just felt more strange and more surreal than her pure fantasy? Like this is a world where the internet is unironically called “the inter-web”?? and allegedly snarky, world-weary characters have a whole conversation about “mer murders” without ever pointing out the hilarity of “mer murder”??? Is....Sarah J. Maas an Earth creature??? I would not be shocked to learn that she is of another realm.

Also it's weird that some concepts here seem to be from Norse mythology (Vanir, Hel, etc) but then also fucking whatever SJM is horny for (angels, Fae, vampyrs, etc). As in her traditional fantasy books, there's a bunch of weirdness about alpha males and slavery and like, whatever. You could write a dissertation about the problematic horniness of SJM. Probably someone has.

But I'm still gonna keep reading her books bc the trash is somehow so compelling to me!!!



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upon re-reading this for the podcat I mean IDK if I stand by the 3 star rating I originally gave it but whatever. i have devoted so many hours of my life to this woman's nonsense.

https://www.frowl.org/worstbestsellers/episode-250-house-of-earth-and-blood/