Through love, all is possible
Crescent City is a series of Urban Fantasy novels by Sarah J. Maas.
Lunathion, more commonly called Crescent City, is a major city in Valbara, a territory on the planet Midgard. Following the horrific murder of her best friend by a demon, half-Fae gallery assistant Bryce Quinlan is forced to team up with Hunt Athalar, an enslaved Fallen angel who works as an assassin for Micah, Crescent City's ruling Archangel, to solve the murder when killings with a similar pattern start up again. Their investigation begins to uncover information about the darker elements of Crescent City and starts to threaten their very identities.
The series consists of:
- House of Earth and Blood (published March 2020)
- House of Sky and Breath (published February 2022)
- House of Flame and Shadow (published January 2024)
The Crescent City books contain examples of:
- Amputative Sentencing: One of the ways an angel is punished is by having their wings cut off. They do grow back, but the process is excruciating and takes weeks.
- Arc Words: "Through love, all is possible"
- Big Brother Instinct: Bryce and Ruhn don't get along, really, but Ruhn is very protective of his sister.
- BFG: The Godslayer Rifle, which Jesiba Roga keeps disassembled and mounted on the wall of her office.
- Born into Slavery: All of the descendents of the sprites who fought on Shahar's side in the Rebellion are slaves from birth.
- Chekhov's Skill: Bryce's training as a sharpshooter.
- Corporal Punishment: One of the ways an angel is punished is by having their wings cut off. They do grow back, but the process is excruciating and takes weeks.
- Doorstopper: All three books are pretty hefty, with all of them being over 700 pages long; House of Earth and Blood is 816 pages, House of Sky and Breath is 768 pages and House of Flame and Shadow is 848 pages. Usually with Maas' books, the first few novels are shorter and the page count doesn't balloon until later installments, although Crescent City is her first series aimed explicitly at an adult demographic rather than young adult, so that could explain the increased length.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Autumn King is often referred to by his title, rather than his name, Einar Danaan.
- Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Bryce and Danika both love to drink, and if there's a drug out there, they've probably taken it.
- Hates Their Parent: Bryce and Ruhn really, really don't like their biological father.
- Heroic BSoD:
- Bryce's reaction after Danika's murder and fighting the kristallos demon.
- This happens to Hunt every time he's forced to kill someone for Micah.
- Immortality Seeker: Almost all beings with the potential to have an incredibly long lifespan make the Drop, which allows them to "drop" into near-immortality. This grants them enhanced healing and regenerative abilities as well as an extended lifespan.
- Made a Slave: The fate of all of Shahar's surviving soldiers, including Hunt Athalar.
- Our Werebeasts Are Different: Shifting between forms is easy for them, and there are many species of shifters, including wolves, leopards, lions, and even butterflies.
- Power Tattoo:
- Inverted with the halos tattooed on Fallen angels, which actually limit their power. Hunt's tattoo only allows him to access about 10% of his total power.
- A straight example is Bryce's back tattoo - it was inked using witch-ink and Luna's Horn ground into a powder. This makes her the bearer of the Horn, meaning only she can wield it and therefore open the rifts between worlds.
- The Reveal: "I am Bryce Quinlan, Heir to the Starborn Fae."
- Theme Naming: Each book in the series is titled House of X and Y, with the X referring to a natural element and the Y usually referring to something essential for life (with the exception of the third book's title). The first is House of Earth and Blood, the second is House of Sky and Breath and the third is House of Flame and Shadow.
- Undignified Death: After Bryce shoots Micah in the head with a golden bullet fired from the Godslayer Rifle, she dismembers his body, burns it, and then vaccuums up his ashes and dumps them in the bin out back.
- Urban Fantasy: While the series is not set on Earth in modern times per se, there exist modern technologies like cell phones, computers, cars, and surveillance cameras, which coexist with magic and supernatural beings.
- Winged Humanoid: Angels are one of the species of fantasy creatures and have the large, bird-like wings typically depicted in drawings of angels.
