For a long time I’ve had a liking for Sarah J. Maas‘s writing style. But with the Throne of Glass series not being 100% my style of book, it was difficult for me to be fully addicted to many of Maas’s books. I still read the Throne of Glass books just out of love for fantasy and Maas’s prose, but they don’t always scratch my itch.

Until last week, A Court of Mist and Fury was my overall favourite of Maas’s offerings. It had everything I needed as a fantasy lover: deep world-building, action, poetic prose, a compelling story and a well-developed romance.

But although I have Mist and Fury as a five-star book, I still felt like Maas was either holding back or hadn’t reached the potential that I knew she could. And now we have House of Earth and Blood: Crescent City, and after the first 100 pages, I’m already convinced this is Sarah J. Maas at her finest.

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Because this is adult fantasy and there’s not a younger audience to consider—although, let’s not kid ourselves, they’ll still be reading—I feel like Maas took her gloves off and dug into the deepest and darkest crevices of her writer brain, extracting a brilliant unhinged masterpiece. It’s because Maas was writing for adults first this time around; and with Crescent City she was able to get gritty enough to give us the full scope of how real shit can get in a city where humans live among magical species who only give a shit about themselves.

Crescent City carries over Maas’s signature prose and combines it with an edgy urban fantasy aesthetic. The book is the perfect blend of everything that I love in both fantasy and noir. And I now realise that what attracted me the most about Maas’s writing all these years was that I knew she had the perfect diction to pull off the epic novel that I’d longed to read.

As a writer myself, who’s taking a stab at writing fantasy, I can say that Sarah J. Maas makes this look easy. But it really isn’t. Her descriptions are well constructed and plant vivid images in the mind. This skill enhances the story significantly, even in it’s slower moments. Each time I finish a chapter of Crescent City, I feel motivated to pick up the pen and paper for myself. And that’s the exact kind of motivation a writer needs to pen their best work.

I’m not writing off the Throne of Glass or ACOTAR series by any means. Both series’s have their target audience and they’ve accumulated maas fan bases. But the writer that has graced us with House of Earth and Blood: Crescent City has transcended to new levels. And although she’ll still bless her YA and New Adult fan-bases, I’m happy that she’s now serving a new base of readers who were eager to see her unleash her pen with no limitations. Congratulations to Sarah J. Maas for another New York Times #1 Best Seller, this one certainly deserves it.