# House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas

### House of Earth and Blood

**Sarah J. Maas** · Crescent City, book 1 (ongoing) · [https://houseofareader.com/books/crescent-city](https://houseofareader.com/books/crescent-city)

Urban fantasy with a murder investigation at its centre and a half-fae party girl grieving her found family. Eight hundred pages, a genuine mystery, and a slow burn that takes almost all of them.

- Spice: 4/5 — Explicit. Explicit, but late and infrequent relative to the length. Most of the book is restraint.
- Romance prominence: 4/5
- Plot: 4/5
- Worldbuilding: 5/5
- Darkness: 4/5
- Writing craft: 3/5
- Burn: slow
- Tropes: slow-burn, found-family, touch-her-and-die, forbidden-romance, he-falls-first
- Creatures: fae, angels, demons, shifters
- Setting: Lunathion, a modern city ruled by angels
- POV: third person, dual
- Ending: happy ever after, ends on a cliffhanger
- Audience: adult
- Content warnings: grief, graphic violence, drug use, torture
- Best for: ACOTAR readers who want a real plot to hold the romance up.
- Last verified: 2026-08-28

## Sources

- https://openlibrary.org/search?q=House+of+Earth+and+Blood+Crescent+City+Maas

## What to read next

- [A Court of Mist and Fury](https://houseofareader.com/books/a-court-of-mist-and-fury) by Sarah J. Maas — spice 4/5. Readers who found the first book slow and were told to keep going. They were right.
- [Ninth House](https://houseofareader.com/books/ninth-house) by Leigh Bardugo — spice 2/5. Readers who want dark academia where the darkness is the point, not the aesthetic.
- [The Serpent and the Wings of Night](https://houseofareader.com/books/the-serpent-and-the-wings-of-night) by Carissa Broadbent — spice 4/5. Fourth Wing readers who want the tournament structure with sharper prose behind it.
- [Quicksilver](https://houseofareader.com/books/quicksilver) by Callie Hart — spice 5/5. ACOTAR readers who want the same shape with the heat turned up two notches.

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Ratings are editorial judgements applied against a published scale at
https://houseofareader.com/lessons/spice, not aggregated reader scores. Editorial policy:
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