Spazzing over House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas
AKA: Review Part 2
*Please assume spoilers throughout the whole post.*
Normally, I feel like my reviews are really well structured. However, since this is going to be just the crazed chaos of my mind obsessing over the little details of House of Earth and Blood, we'll see what happens to the organization of this post. My guess is that it will be nonexistent. I can guarantee however that I will be going into details about the characters and the plot. So, as a final warning, please assume that there will be spoilers through this entire post. And cursing. I'm going to let myself fully curse in this post.
The Friendships
The first thing I have to acknowledge is how hard I cried when Danika died and how aching my chest was whenever Bryce thought about their friendship. Or even whenever their friendship was brought up because that intimate, yet platonic, friendship was so beautiful and precious. I could feel Bryce's physical pain in losing her friend the emotions of frustration and bitterness when people (*coughAmeliecough*) mocked her friendship with Danika and the pack. I really really love that SJM puts this value of friendship into the book. There are some glimpses of these sorts of relationships in her other series, but nothing like how it is a cornerstone in this book.
What's even better is that this friendship gets Bryce through her Drop. Like, I don't think we even know yet how incredible that truly is for this world. That Bryce would just do that, completely and wholeheartedly through her belief in the strength of her friendship with Danika, and have Danika push her up at the end. . . just wow. I wonder a little about what the repercussions will be, not just in terms of Bryce's power (we'll get to that later), but in terms of Danika's spirit being gone or whatever from the Bones place. This value in friendship though is clearly something super important in general however, and I think it will affect (a) her relationship with Hunt, and (b) her relationship with Aidas.
Crossovers and Easter Eggs
SO MANY EASTER EGGS AND CROSSOVER POSSIBILITIES I MAY DIE!
Let's count them shall we?
1. "witches with a threefaced goddess" - Gee I wonder who else worships a threefaced goddess and is a witch? Hello Manon and the ToG witches! They have the maiden, the mother, and the crone if I remember correctly.
2. The fae came from another world - At this point, SJM has talked a lot about how all of her universes sort of connect through a multiverse. My dudes, I am so, so, so, so hoping this means that the fae in this world originally came from either the ToG world or the ACOTAR world and not some rando third one that we don't know about yet.
3. "Shit--he was in such deep, unrelenting shit." - Duuuuuuude. Biggest Easter egg ever because this is almost exactly what Rowan says (thinks?) about Aelin when she walks out of the bathroom in Queen of Shadows.
4. THOSE BOOK TITLES WHAT DOES THIS MEAN (page 691) - Okay, so these books come from both Throne of Glass (like "The Walking Dead") and A Court of Thorns and Roses (like "The Book of Breathings") and before I thought they were just Easter eggs, but now I'm wondering if they're connected to some larger plot? Like, there's no way that Jesiba is hoarding these "precious artifacts" from different fucking universes and they aren't connected to what she and Aidas were talking about at the end. I'll need to expand on this elsewhere and I'm not sure where that elsewhere is yet-- actually, I think I'm just going to have to make a third post about crackpot theories. At the very least though, I don't think those books were just an Easter egg. I think they were a big fucking clue to something.
I wish I had taken better notes about these things ^^^ because not all of them have page numbers, but oh well. I also low-key wish there had been a comment about Hunt's wingspan, but that may have been pushing it too far lol.
The Starsword
I CALLED IT. See my Twitter thread of thoughts on the book while I was reading. I think a good portion of people saw this one coming, but of course Bryce has all the magical powers of the the starlight and the Starsword confirmed it. We saw it earlier on with vague mentions, and then later when Hunt kissed her, and then again when the Starsword wanted to glow in front of her, and finally when she just comes out and reveals it. This leads to. . .
Bryce's Power:
Holy crapola we're going to have so much fun in the next books exploring Bryce's powers, I just know it. However, even bigger than just Bryce's power (and the crap she's going to get from her father), I think her power is going to tie into the prophesy that Ruhn got from the oracle and the old fae saying. Reminders to what those are: (1) Ruhn was told he would be the end of the fae royal bloodline and (2) "When knife and sword are reunited, so shall our people be." Okay, SO, I don't want to get too deep into the weeds right now because I've officially decided to create yet another post regarding this book, except that one will be crackpot theories. The very poorly explained short version though, is that Bryce will somehow wield the starsword and something else which combined will do something to move the fae back to where they came from, OR, destroy their mini nation-state thing within the nation. Like I said, that's really poorly explained, but it's only meant to be a bite-sized bit until I write the longer crackpot post.
In essence. . . Bryce's power is going to fuck shit up in way that my delusional fangirl mind will connect to the other SJM books. (Maybe this is more just a crazy hope than an actual theory, but it'd be cool though.)Bryce and Hunt:
So.
Getting on to the ships.
I don't know how I feel about this one.
I will openly admit that I am one of the people that doesn't feel like BrycexHunt (Tumblr looks tied between Quinlar and Athalan) is endgame. I just don't see it playing out. I think somewhere along the way their personalities and life views are going to collide with each other head on and they will fall apart only to come back together as friends. (See above value of friendship.) I could be totally and utterly wrong on this one, but so far I have a pretty good track record when it comes to SJM ships. I don't think I've every had an unsuccessful ship, so we'll see what happens.
Aidas:
In regard to Aidas, a part of me wants to ship him with Bryce (Brydas? Aice? Pronounced like Ace?). Like, for real. There's the whole thing about how when he was summoned he didn't even notice Hunt was fucking standing right next to her. And then there's the casual way he's just like, "call me pls." Plus, he wanted to pick a form that she would find attractive. I doubt he would have done that just for the Hel of it.
Now, the shadier stuff. First, I both kind of like that he visited Bryce in cat form when she was 13, and I kind of am sleezed out by that. On the positive side of it, he has always known what she is and comforted her. On the negative side, why? This question of motivation is really what is preventing me from going into full on ship mode. We don't know jack about what his world is like, why he's working with Jesiba, what the bigger plan is for him, and if he's even into Bryce or if it's just because she's like the other one that used to have the starlight.
I. . . just realized I need four fucking posts about this book Jesus Christ. Because, here's the thing, I really want to delve into details about these ship possibilities between Aidas and Hunt. And this post is already getting so freaking long that I don't want the ships buried into the mix of everything else.
Next Plot:
I'm reallllllly not going to go into too much detail here because I need to break out my copy of House of Earth and Blood, reread it, take a crap ton of notes, and then analyze the shit out of it before I crank out my crackpot theory about the next book. Related to the starsword and Bryce's power, and the FREAKING BOOKS, I am sort of really holding tenderly onto a small flame of hope that this will be the series where we will get to see the universes in SJM's worlds converge and crossover. (Also, I want to check a scene from Kingdom of Ash before I write up my crackpot theories.) That's the nutshell and I'll go into a shit ton of more detail about it in my crackpot post. Thanks for reading this rambling mess! Stay tuned for two more posts related to this book!
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