SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS! Stay tuned at the end to see my take on Bryce and Hunt's favorite take-out order.
There was a wolf at the gallery door. Which meant it must be Thursday, which meant Bryce had to be really gods-damned tired if she relied on Danika's comings and goings to figure out what day it was.
When a horrible tragedy destroys Bryce Quinlan’s life, the notorious party girl can at least take ease at the fact that the man responsible for the destruction is behind bars. But when his crimes begin again while he remains put away, Bryce gets pulled into the thick of the investigation, her knowledge and insight deemed to be the key to solving everything.
Hunt “The Shadow of Death” Athalar, once a proud general in the rebellion, now a slave to the Governor, has been working as an assassin for his enemies for years. In order to gain his freedom back, Hunt made a bargain with his owner to make a kill for every life he’d taken in battle. A death for a death. So when the Governor gives him an opportunity to reduce that number, how could Hunt say no?
Teamed up, Bryce and Hunt find themselves in the midst of a two-year long mess with innumerable jagged puzzle pieces. Along with several suspicious murders, demons run rampant through their city and an ancient artifact has gone missing. As they get closer to solving the case, Hunt and Bryce discover a terrifying source of power threatening to rip their home apart. But with deadly secrets piling up around them, the truth has no choice but to burst out in world-shattering blasts.
A light had gone out inside her. A light had been extinguished.
It took me a hot, hot second to get into this book. Mostly, I was just so totally thrown off by the world Maas tosses us into. I was expecting a fantasy world like ACOTAR and ToG where people live in forests and wear corseted gowns-- where indoor plumbing doesn’t exist. However, we’re in the modern world here: people have phones and cars and say a LOT of swears (although I'm sure the swears are more due to the fact that this is an Adult novel). Every kind of mythological creature lives here in-- more or less-- harmony. For such a unique and special world, it makes sense that Maas went to a ton of trouble to create a very intricate system of government; our usual kings and queens don’t really make sense for this wildly modern setting. My issue was that rather than explaining the world thoroughly to me, everyone sort of just spoke about it as if I should already know how it all works. I absolutely understand that it's really hard to explain new systems to your audience, especially when your characters are already so submerged in their culture. How many times in casual conversation with friends do you explain the branches of government? Exactly. These characters already understand it all, so why should they explain it out in their narrations? Unfortunately, because of this, I just felt so behind for probably about half the book. After that, I kind of gave up trying to understand the hierarchies and just paid attention to the plot-- I figured it would all make sense eventually. And by the end it mostly did-- but I do think having a written out order of people's power rankings would help me immensely. I’m a visual learner!
She could have recited Connor's messages from memory, but it hurt more to see them. Hurt enough to feel through every part of her body, the dark remnants of her soul. So she always looked. Go enjoy yourself. I'll see you in a few days. The white screen burned her eyes. Message me when you're home safe.
For some basic context-- since I know I have friends who read my blog without having read the books I discuss-- Bryce is half human, half fae and her best friend Danika is a wolf shifter. We learn very early on that Luna's Horn, an artifact that legend says used to open portals to distant worlds, has recently been stolen. Within the first few chapters of the novel, Danika and her pack are brutally murdered in Bryce’s apartment while she’s out at a club with some other friends. One of the members of the pack is Connor, a boy Bryce has known since college, who has been interested in her since they first met. Hours before his death, Bryce finally agrees to go on a first date with him later in the week. It seems like a lot of good things are starting, but then Bryce gets too drunk and high on a cocktail of bad things, stumbles home, and finds everyone she cares about in literal chunks on the floor. Immediately after this, we cut to two years later where Bryce is trying and failing to pretend that she’s fine. She hasn’t touched a drink in years and has given up dancing, her greatest passion. I will be honest, it took me pretty much the entire book to decide how I felt about Danika. There were so many twists and turns to her story while Bryce was trying to solve the case, so it was hard to figure out what I should believe about her (which was probably the point). There was one moment where Bryce mentioned that while in college, Danika went home with Flynn-- Bryce’s childhood crush who she thought she would one day marry… It felt strange to learn that little bit of info, because it sounds like a very anti-Danika factoid. A real friend wouldn’t do that, right?? Especially because it STILL clearly upsets Bryce to think about. I had assumed that would be the first step to lead us down a dark path unveiling Danika as a bad friend and person. I’m still not sure what to think of that story about her, but if I know Maas’s writing well enough by now, it will probably come into play later. By the end of the book, though, I do think I understood Danika much better, which I will discuss later on.
"There's nothing wrong with being a party girl. I don't get why the world thinks there is." But she considered his words. "It's easier for me-- when people assume the worst about what I am. It lets me see who they really are."
If there’s one thing House of Earth and Blood made me really think hard about, it was how the world treats women. Anyone who knows me knows I will happily (aggressively?) talk about this kind of stuff for hours. Literally every single thing women do is judged-- too this, too that, nothing we do is ever perfect by society’s standards. But what really struck me about Bryce was that I had judged her from the beginning, too, just like everyone else. She seemed to only care about drinking and sex and partying, so I sort of rolled my eyes at her. But once I saw that everyone else was still treating her like absolute trash YEARS later for that behavior (which she was no longer even participating in), I realized that I was thinking like one of those jerks. Sure, my idea of a fun night is staying home and reading. But that does NOT mean I’m superior in any way or have any right to judge someone who wants to go out and have their version of fun. As long as they’re being safe (for themselves and others), what right do I have to think less of them? Everyone is constantly spitting out the insult “party girl” like it’s just as bad as “serial killer”-- now THAT’S someone we should be judging! And what the hell is up with this phrase anyway??? Why isn’t there a male equivalent to "party girl"? It’s certainly not because men stay inside and drink water every weekend. Anyone who’s been to college knows that men are capable of doing plenty of stupid, gross, or bad things while drunk or high. But for some reason, that’s just a rite of passage, huh? Boys will be boys, right? But girls, if they get too drunk or enjoy hooking up or accidentally get sick in the bathroom, they’re a slut or a whore or a mess-- they get branded a “party girl” which has never been used as a compliment. It’s gross and I’m sick of it. And I feel awful that I judged Bryce that way-- even more awful when I realized she tried to keep up the act after Danika’s death because she thought she deserved the harassment. Even typing this out has made me frustrated and angry. Seriously, my God, if there’s one thing we can ALL do, it’s just leave women alone. Let them enjoy their lives-- if you don’t like something, don’t do it! But don’t put mean labels on someone else just because they enjoy doing something you don't like!
"All your talk about the synth being a waste of my time to look into..." She could barely get the words out. "Because you realized the truth already. Because you lied." she threw out an arm to the crates of drugs. "Because you learned the truth and then realized you wanted the synth for yourself? And when you wanted to help the medwitch find an antidote... It was for yourself. And all of this for what-- to rebel again?"
Okay we’re gonna dive into all 900 of the plot twists right now. Actually, we’re probably only gonna be able to skim the surface because oh man, this book gave me whiplash. What’s sad is that I really thought I had figured it all out, too. For some ridiculous reason I was like “It’s gotta be Bryce’s ex boyfriend Reid behind all of this! She dumped him in the beginning and he was mad!” cause I’m a dummy. But oh no, Maas had a much, much bigger plan at work. She revealed that this WHOLE time, Hunt had been lying to Bryce and pretending to help her cause while secretly pursuing his own agenda. All he wanted was to get his hands on synth (a new drug they discover grants creatures with INSANE amounts of power). Bryce was devastated-- because she believed he chose his dead lover over her-- when it came out that he was working with the rebels again, but MY first thought was that he chose his own personal vendetta over her closure. He KNEW what solving Danika’s murder meant to her, what it would do to help put her back together-- what his friendship in general was doing to help her-- and yet he chose to be selfish instead. Listen, don’t think I’m making light of the fact that he was trying to rebel to gain his freedom-- obviously that’s a worthy cause-- but didn’t it ever occur to him, once him and Bryce became close, that maybe if he had told her the truth she could have helped him??? They could have helped each other??? Hunt strung her along for weeks. When the “truth” comes out, he tells Bryce that he solved the whole case: Danika was addicted to synth and was dealing in a bunch of shady business before she killed her pack and herself. So two freaking shots to the heart for Bryce; finding out her best friend AND the guy she now loves were both lying to her.
And then Lehabah hurled herself against it. Pushed her tiny body against the crack. She kept whispering the words over and over again. They morphed together into one sentence, a prayer, a challenge. "My friends are with me and I am not afraid."
Now for the second wild plot twist discussion, we find out that Hunt was WRONG. Like, fully wrong about everything he thought he figured out regarding Danika’s death. He thought she was doing a bunch of shady shit-- stealing artifacts and selling and doing drugs. Turns out, she did do the artifact stealing, but for good reason! She stole Luna’s Horn (able to open portals to other worlds when used by Starborn Fae) and ground it into a powder that she mixed with tattoo ink and HAD TATTOOED ONTO BRYCE’S BACK. Yeah, I also was like uhhh.. What? So now Bryce carries a broken magical artifact on her back, which can only be healed by (you didn't guess it!) SYNTH... And the REAL baddie behind all of the chaos is Micah-- THE GOVERNOR WHO OWNS HUNT. Does this mean Hunt is off the hook in my eyes? NOPE. But anyway, Micah wants to open portals to destroy all the rebels out there (the ones Hunt used to work with). He also admits that he has been summoning demons to find the Horn AND he injected Danika with enough synth to make her go crazy enough that she killed her pack and herself. He did that because she was explicitly going against him, trying to remove the drug from the streets. Once she figured out his motives, she did the whole Horn-powder nonsense, and here we are now, yaddah yaddah. SO he goes after Bryce, injects her with synth to make the Horn operational, and then tries to use her to open a portal, but it doesn’t work (so they think). After that, him and Bryce do a little fighty fight, and then… the saddest moment of this entire book, and I’m gonna assume the entire series: Lehabah makes her last stand with some AELIN VIBES. I haven’t mentioned her yet but she’s a cute little fire sprite and she was genuinely the best character in the whole book-- she had sass and charm for days. I loved her and she broke my heart, especially when she said “I am not afraid” which YOU SHOULD ALL KNOW HAS A VERY INTENSE EFFECT ON ME. Because of Lehabah’s last stand, she’s able to buy Bryce some time, which Bryce uses to her advantage: chugging an antidote to the synth, and getting a few weapons ready. She totally obliterates Micah. The best part of this is that there are cameras around the entire building while this is happening and EVERYONE of importance (all meeting together at a big conference) is watching it happen live. Luckily, like 97% of them were rooting for Bryce. Okay, and THEN (sorry this is less of a review and more me just trying to figure out what the hell actually happened) Bryce runs outside to find out that PORTALS OPENED THROUGHOUT THE CITY-- LETTING IN THE WORST OF THE WORST DEMONS FROM HEL.
Her eyes lifted to the Gate looming above her. The light between her hands grew stronger. Ruhn fell to his knees. "I am Bryce Quinlan," she said to the Gate, to the void, to all of Hel behind it. Her voice was serene-- wise and laughing. "Heir to the Starborn Fae." The ground slid out from under Hunt as the light between her hands, the star she'd drawn from her shattered heart, flared as bright as the sun.
Okay man, here we go again. Turns OUT, that the girl we thought had little more than zero magic flooding through her veins is somehow the Heir to the Starborn Fae! Well, “somehow” is wrong to say, because her real dad is the Autumn King (which we knew) and it comes from his line. We were just led to believe that Ruhn, Bryce’s half-brother, was the sole bearer of the Starborn title. But nope! Bryce has TONS of light within her, the light of a star, and when she unleashes it she is capable of blinding those around her. So she uses that light to try and close the portal in front of her, after ensuring she saved as many innocents as possible from the demons streaming in. And it works! But only for the one portal, and unfortunately there are a bunch more all around. So what does Bryce do?!?! She makes the DROP! The Drop is when an immortal creature falls into their immortality; it’s like deciding how old you’re gonna look forever. You age normally until you get to whatever age you want to stay in forever and then you’re like yeah cool I dig this, so you make the drop. The catch is that you need someone to anchor you, because you tunnel down into your power and someone needs to help motivate you to come back to life. Or something like that? I understand it to an extent. So Bryce decides to make hers here and now to provide MORE light to close the rest of the portals and uses the Gate in front of her (where the portal had opened) to contact ANYONE NEARBY to anchor her. AND WHO FREAKING ANSWERS???????????? WHO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DANIKA, BABY. LITERALLY, FROM THE BONE QUARTER (a little section in the city, ironically) WHERE THE DEAD RESIDE. MY HEART!!! CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS!!!! Anyway, more on that part later!!! While Bryce is making the drop in front of the Gate, she channels ALL of the power the Gate contains (it has taken a drop from anyone who has ever touched it-- it’s like the bull’s balls in NYC-- it's a weird tourist attraction that millions of people participate in) SO SHE BECOMES SUPER MEGA POWERFUL………..Honestly I’m not surprised, I knew she’d get there someway. Maas doesn’t write weak characters! While making the drop, the "firstlight" Bryce creates not only closes every single demon portal, it also heals the city and all the wounded people within it.
Bryce whipped her head around to look at the Gate as Danika's voice sounded again. "Light it up, Bryce." The onyx stone of the Bone Quarter glowed like a dark star... Bryce's face crumpled as she lurched to her feet, sprinting to the Gate. She didn't care how it was possible as Danika said again, "Light it up." Then Bryce was laughing and sobbing as she screamed, "LIGHT IT UP, DANIKA! LIGHT IT UP, LIGHT IT UP, LIGHT IT UP!"
I’ve gotten a little off the review track, so let’s reel it back in a bit. I wanna talk about what happens while Bryce is making her drop. She goes into this little inner part of herself which I pictured to look like a barren road. Danika is there and Bryce finally gets to have her final moments with her best friend. Bryce says she wants to let her body die out and stay in this little universe with Danika forever because life has gotten too hard. Danika does what any good friend would and reminds Bryce that she has so much to live for and that knowing everything could vanish in a moment is what makes life so special. This was where I made my mind up about Danika-- everything we’d heard about her was jumbled and biased and changed to fit other character’s narratives. This is the Danika that Bryce had been fighting to keep in her heart, fighting to do right by. I loved that they had this moment to say their goodbyes and know that the other was always there. Bryce’s emotions and reactions and motivations all suddenly made so much more sense when I could experience their true relationship-- not just the wild and crazy stories I was fed in the beginning of the novel. That just made them both out to sound like trouble-makers. No, this Danika, the real Danika, was brilliant, quick-thinking, brave, and selfless. She was 10 steps ahead of her enemies and saved Bryce’s life in a million different ways. Even in freaking death, their relationship was so strong that Danika was able to anchor her best friend’s drop. Since she is not alive, though, she uses up all of what is left of her to send Bryce home.
Sabine whispered a sentence to the room, to the Autumn King, and Declan's heart rose, hearing it. It was the answer to the ancient Prime's words. To the Autumn King's question of how, against every statistic blaring on Declan's computer, they were even witnessing Hunt Athalar fight like Hel to keep Bryce Quinlan's heart beating. Through love, all is possible.
Now, it's theory time! So we all know that Sarah J. Maas likes to jerk us around with male love-interests. It is quite well known that whoever we fall in love with in the first book will probably turn out to majorly suck in the next one-- or at least someone better will come along. Because of this, I was WILDLY afraid to get attached to anyone. However, in the beginning, I immediately fell in love with Connor. His death ruined me-- I'm such a sucker for what ifs, and since he died right before anything could happen between him and Bryce, it hurt. Part of me is still holding out hope for him to come back, someway, somehow. I also really liked Hunt, UNTIL he lied about everything and somehow got forgiven without doing anything to earn it??? Like, Bryce just waited a few chapters and then was like "yeah alright I forgive you, it doesn't matter anymore" as if he hadn't been lying to her through the entire book?! And then he ended up with his freedom at the end, which is great, but I'm still ready to give him the boot. I'm ready for a new love interest, Sarah!! I did find myself searching for who it could be, though I know usually Maas likes to add in a totally new character for us to fall in love with later on. I'm weirdly kind of hoping that Bryce will end up with Flynn or Declan... they were always really protective of her and also super flirty-- but any relationship with one of them could stir up a lot of drama since Bryce's brother is their best friend. I'm a bit worried that Maas knows we're all expecting a new hottie, so she's gonna make us stick with Hunt to throw us off... Hmmm... Also on the topic of theories, the ONE thing I guessed right about this series was the cute medwitch actually being Hypaxia. DUH. It was so obvious that I, the biggest dummy, even figured it out from her first appearance. Her and Ruhn are SO gonna fall for each other. An arranged marriage where neither party is interested but then they spend time together and suddenly become interested??? That's my middle name! But, the biggest theory that I have right now is that shit is about to hit the fan. The epilogue is ominous as hell and I'm petrified about what will happen... Eep! I'm mostly guessing that Bryce is going to lead the rebellion against the Asteri. But let's wait and see, folks!
Jesiba didn't speak again until the fifth Prince of Hel had stalked a few feet away. "Don't fuck us over this time, Aidas." "I do not plan to," he said, fading into the space between realms, Hel a dark song beckoning him home. "Not when things are about to get so interesting."
BRYCE AND HUNT'S TAKE-OUT ORDER
She just aimed for her room once more. So Hunt asked, "Want me to get food?" Again, she paused. She looked like she was about to say no, but then rasped, "Cheeseburger-- with cheese fries. And a chocolate milkshake." Hunt smiled. "You got it."
So as you can see, this was not a very difficult meal to construct. I didn't even need to use a recipe! I cooked up some frozen fries (no judgement, please) and made some homemade turkey burgers because I had a ton of ground turkey. I added a bunch of different seasonings to mine, but you're free to put whatever you want in yours! Finished both the burgers and fries off with some cheddar cheese and paprika (for fun) and they tasted delicious! The chocolate shake was just vanilla ice cream (I know! The store was all out of chocolate!) with a splash of milk and some chocolate syrup. Here's how it all came out:
If you didn't know, I bake something from a book every week and post live updates on my Instagram. Tune in to @picklesandpages on Wednesdays to check it out!
NEXT READ: Caraval by Stephanie Garber
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