Cover by Carlos Quevado

Bryce Quinlan is half fae, with just enough fae blood to make her ears come to a point and her nails hard as daggers. She also has an intense sense of smell. Besides these small physical attributions, she’s lacking any sense of the power that courses through full blooded fae. She navigates society as a half-breed, not belonging to either human or fae society fully; an outcast in many ways. To cope, Bryce parties. Her small but close-knit group of friends join the hazy, drug- and dance-fueled nights. Until every one of them is suddenly, abruptly, murdered by a demon that hasn’t seen the light of day for a millennium.

Hunt Athalar is a fallen angel, enslaved to the Archangels he once tried to overthrow. Hunt is known as the Angel of Death, the Umbra Mortis, due to his immense strength and the literal lightening coursing through his veins. He is the deadliest assassin in Crescent City.

After the attack that kills Bryce’s friends, she and Hunt are paired together by the Archangel Micah himself to piece together what happened that night, and discover who unleashed such a dangerous creature. As Bryce and Hunt dig deeper into the case, they uncover a dark plot that runs much deeper than they once thought. A force powerful enough to end life as they know it brews beneath the surface, and they have to figure out how to stop it.

Sarah J. Maas has created yet another hit novel. My eyeballs hurt from reading this so quickly. I literally inhaled the chapters and while I tried to savor it, I simply couldn’t put it down.

It has all the right ingredients: romance; magic; and a mystery. The character development and world building were fantastic. I loved the small details and idiosyncrasies that really brought each character to life. Even small characters, like the fire sprite Lehabah and her love of trash TV, brought such life to the pages.  I quickly became attached to them and could easily understand the world they lived in, thanks to the rich detail Maas provides.

I hadn’t read Maas’ earlier work, and I really enjoyed her writing style. It’s unique and engaging. She deliberately leaves important pieces of the story unexplained, which is frustrating at first, but a few chapters later she surrenders the missing information in great detail. It cemented these important facts into your brain and makes the entire world come alive in HD. It has all the regular players in a magical world, but I felt like I was being introduced to them in new ways.

Not being familiar with Maas’ previous work, I may have missed similarities to her other story lines and backdrops, but I for one was impressed and engrossed. I immediately went out and bought the entire Throne of Glass series, which should keep me entertained a bit longer than just one book!

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Caitlin is the COO of Workbox in Chicago. With the bulk of her career based in hospitality at luxury-level resorts, her path has been an interesting one! No matter where that path has led, building great teams has always been at the core. Caitlin acquired a multicultural perspective through her many experiences traveling and living abroad in the United States, Europe and South America. Her last review for us was Cries From the Lost Island by Kathleen O’Neal Gear.