House of Earth and Blood

CW: alcohol and drug use, violence and gore, talk of past suicide attempt

For a while there, I thought I might not read this book despite loving all of SJM's books and Throne of Glass being my all time favorite series ever. I know all the criticisms about her books and I agree with most of them too, so I guess I was just uncertain for a bit if I wanted to spend so much time on a new series which might have the same issues and is also such a huge intimidating one on top of it. But ultimately I couldn't resist and it was a binge read without a night's sleep just like I've done so many times before for her books.

No one can convince me that she doesn't write an entertaining story because she really does and I get so invested that I don't wanna put it down at all, and it's what happened here. Once the initial hook got me in at about 9%, I spent the next 14-16 hours just binging the book except for small breaks for food and essentials. It's not exactly fast paced but it's quite engaging and holds your interest very well and is pretty entertaining with the right dosage of humor, angst, mystery and action. That's not to say the book was amazing from beginning to end.

There is a lot of info dumping at the beginning and it confused me so much, because no way was I going to remember all the different houses and creatures and history of them all. Thankfully, it evens out a bit after the first 10% and the world building becomes more relevant to what's happening to the characters making it easier to follow along. The book is also huge, so understandably the middle portion slows down a bit where we feel the action is lacking, but I never got bored and I think it just gave me more more time to get invested in the characters. But one thing I can't deny is how vast the author's imagination is because this book has so much - a wide variety of creatures and their dynamics, war, rebellion and oppression, a serial murder mystery at its heart and its investigation - it covers a lot of ground and I was amazed at the scope of it all. And I guess many of us fans were anticipating what an adult SJM book would be like, and while there's a lot of swearing, I promise you it doesn't have all the smut that everyone expects it to. And the last thing which unfortunately I can't not mention is the usage of the word “male” over and over again still grates me and I really hope the author rethinks that. Thankfully “mate” isn't that repetitive this time around