HOUSE OF EARTH AND BLOOD

Getting the horn

RELEASED 3 MARCH 648 pages | Hardback/ebook

Author Sarah J Maas

Publisher Bloomsbury

Bigger, better, faster, more? The first and last of those definitely apply. House Of Earth And Blood – the first in Sarah J Maas’s new Crescent City series

– is your standard urban fantasy, with a world similar to our own, a wish-fulfilling assortment of glamorous non-human races, and a pretty half-fae heroine with issues to deal with and a mystery surrounding a missing magical artefact (a horn) to solve. The only thing that really sets it apart from its genre mates is its size.

This gives Maas the chance to really dig into her world’s history and geography, which are clearly well thought out beyond “Angels are hot, let’s have some of those”. You do get the sense that the angels, vampires, werewolves, mer-menfolk and so on were included precisely because they’re appealing to fans of all things pretty, and their reason for being all in the same world is a little unconvincing, but once she’s got them in place Maas has thought hard about how the cultures of the races differ and have intertwined over time.

Possibly the weak link among them is the human race which, aside from heroine Bryce’s mother, adoptive father and wealthy boyfriend, seems there simply to fill a slot labelled “downtrodden minority”, and so conforms to the usual stereotypes. Likewise, many of the sidecharacters feel like slot-fillers, for all their extra on-page time.

The book’s wordiness does undermine one of its genre’s great strengths: the speed at which it darts from thrill to thrill. If a typical urban fantasy is like a really good burger, something to wolf down even though you know it’s bad for you because it’s so damn tasty, this is the Man V. Food equivalent – and halfway through you may well find yourself wondering if you really want to finish it. Filling, but not thrilling. Miriam McDonald