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btg 's review for:
House of Earth and Blood
by Sarah J. Maas
challenging
dark
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
So first of all, this book is extremely well structured. I give my hat to Sarah J. Maas, I DID not know where she was going with this until 3/4 of the way through, but then she seriously sucked me in with the way the ending took all the threads she had seeded for the whole book and wrapped them up into her huge emotional action sequence of an ending. The character arcs are so absolutely well done and Bryce's in particular is enough to make you start sobbing. Maas obviously has masterful control of story elements as well as the written word; the whole piece from start to finish is just stunning. There's so many twists and turns to keep readers who don't want to know what's coming next engaged.
It is down to four stars for me due to the complexity of the world building; however, I will note that if you are a fan of anything like LoTR, you're going to the love this book and objectively from a writer's perspective the whole world is well conceptualized and deeply disturbing. Due to the sheer complexity of the world building though, Maas has to spend a lot of time dissecting world pieces and laying down complex story threads, which slows the pace of the novel significantly. I have ADHD; I regularly found myself getting confused with the amount of information getting covered and struggling to remember minor characters. If you hyperfixate on high fantasy you'll love it; I would just not rate it as an exceptionally executive function friendly book.
It is down to four stars for me due to the complexity of the world building; however, I will note that if you are a fan of anything like LoTR, you're going to the love this book and objectively from a writer's perspective the whole world is well conceptualized and deeply disturbing. Due to the sheer complexity of the world building though, Maas has to spend a lot of time dissecting world pieces and laying down complex story threads, which slows the pace of the novel significantly. I have ADHD; I regularly found myself getting confused with the amount of information getting covered and struggling to remember minor characters. If you hyperfixate on high fantasy you'll love it; I would just not rate it as an exceptionally executive function friendly book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Slavery, Grief
Moderate: Drug use, Gun violence, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Suicide attempt, Murder, Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Self harm
Slavery: institutionalized slavery is inherent in the world building. Multiple major and minor characters are enslaved throughout the book.
Body horror: a drug that heavily impacts the plot causes individuals to rip themselves apart, in a very disturbing and graphically described way
Grief: a major theme of the book and the trigger for the main character's character arc
Violence: hoo boy. Think typical high budget R rated action film. There's a lot.
Gun violence: a main character uses a gun in the climax, guns and her skills with them are regularly mentioned throught the book to seed her ability to use one Xe is using the gun in an extraordinary situation and towards aggressors.
Suicide: A main character is stated to have attempted suicide before the book begins. in the climax, she almost refuses to come back from the Drop from the same thought process, which would have resulted in her death
Mental illness/self harm: unsurprisingly from the above, the main character is heavily implied to be depressed which makes up the main conflict of her character arc
Fire: a club that the main characters are in is bombed and described. All characters are ok and make it out with minimal injury.
Drug use: the main character is described as a party girl and regularly uses fictional drugs onscreen for the first several chapters. She stops after the inciting incident, but her past is regularly referenced. A major portion of the plot is the search for an antidote to prevent fictional drug overdoses which is very helpful when a main character is forced to take said drug against her will .
Muder: a major character is murdered in the inciting incident along with several other people. The main driver of the plot is finding the murderer. A main character finds the bodies and the whole incident is described in detail on screen as well as referenced repeatedly. A minor character is also nearly killed by the antagonist in the climax of the book, but is saved at the last moment
There is a lot of fantastic racism in the book. While no mention of discrimination through skin color is made, the actual processes of both prejudice and institutionalized racism are described in depth as they related to the main character, who is discriminated against and underestimated for being half human