Maas’ new adult fantasy series is equal parts mystery, romance, and action drama.
Welcome to Crescent City, where all manner of Vanir—near-immortal magical beings—live together. If the Fae, animal shifters, witches, angels, vampyrs, mer folk, and so on don’t exactly live in harmony, they do all bow down to the powerful Asteri, the six godlike beings who rule the planet Midgard with an iron fist and are currently concerned with suffocating an uprising of humans who are sick of being oppressed by the more powerful Vanir. Bryce Quinlan, half human, half Fae, with barely any magic to her name, lives in Crescent City with her roommate and best friend, Danika Fendyr, the famously powerful wolf shifter who will one day lead all the wolves. After a fun night out, Bryce stumbles back to their apartment to find Danika and her whole wolf pack brutally murdered. When other victims are found dead under similar circumstances two years later, the angel who governs the city enlists Bryce to use her knowledge of Danika and her memories of the crime scene to help Hunt Athalar, a brooding angel with a tragic past, solve a mystery that will eventually concern a stolen Fae artifact, a rare demon, and Danika’s long-buried secrets. Readers who love Maas for her romances will find plenty to enjoy here: not only the story of Bryce and Hunt but several love-stories-to-come hinted at for the bevy of ridiculously attractive, wondrously powerful characters who populate Crescent City. But the mystery of Danika’s death and Bryce’s struggle to deal with her lingering grief as she investigates do just as much to speed the reader through 800 pages as the steamy romance.
An immersive new fantasy world that has something for everyone.