World Building Guide
HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE:
There’s a lot happening in the Crescent City series, so we designed this guide to help you keep track of what’s important.
Our guide covers key concepts and lore from House of Earth and Blood, and touches on the series’ overarching themes and conflicts. This guide includes minor spoilers for book one, but it doesn’t spoil major reveals or character arcs!
If we continue our deep dive into books two and three, we will add dropdown menus for information discovered in those books, clearly marked so you never accidentally get spoiled :)
A NOTE ABOUT THE “MAASVERSE”
The term “Maasverse,” refers to the connections (both canonical and theorized) between all three of SJM’s series: Crescent City, A Court of Thorns and Roses, and Throne of Glass.
It is canon that each series takes place in the same universe, but in separate realms or planets.
CRESCENT CITY’S MAIN TOPICS
Friendship: Maas grapples with the multifaceted nature of friendship throughout the series—not only through the protagonist, but through several supporting characters. Bryce’s relationship with Danika is central to her character development and the conflict in House of Earth and Blood. However, we also see how the various states of Bryce’s other friendships—from her stable relationship with Lehabah, to her fraught relationships with Fury and Juniper, to her disintegrating friendship with Ithan—play a role in her personal journey.
Not only are Bryce’s friendships explored, but Hunt’s self-imposed isolation and Ruhn’s fierce loyalty to his friends further contribute to Maas’s deep exploration of the topic.
Resilience: Crescent City maintains that the ability to contend with one’s grief plays a key role in building one’s resilience, primarily through Bryce and Hunt’s experiences. After Bryce lives through a traumatic event, she experiences a profound grief that nearly takes her life. Eventually, she works her way out of a serious depression and uses the memory of her loved ones to continue her to keep going. Similarly, Hunt’s role in the Fallen Rebellion and his subsequent enslavement shapes how he sees the world. While he emerges from his past with an immense sense of guilt and a need for stability, he works through these emotions and uses the memory of his fallen warriors to help him fight for a better world.
Power: At its core, Crescent City is about power. This series is Maas’s most comprehensive examination of power as a social, political, and cultural system. The events of the text posit that power is obtained and maintained by dividing and distracting the populace, and by propagating a controlled opposition. Below, you will find various descriptions of the power structures within the series.
GEOGRAPHY
Crescent City takes place on Midgard, a planet occupied by virtually every fantastical being (referred to as Vanir in the book) you could ever imagine. Many of these beings exist on other planets in SJM’s universe, and they entered Midgard thousands of years ago through a portal called the Northern Rift. At the beginning of House of Earth and Blood, the Northern Rift is closed.
While Midgard is sectioned into several territories, only a few are relevant in the series, and even fewer are relevant for book one.
Most important is a territory called Valbara, which is whereLunathion (aka Crescent City) is located and where the action takes place in House of Earth and Blood.
Across the Haldren ocean lies a continent called Pangera, where the Asteri live and rule from the Eternal City and Ophion, a human rebel group, operates from.
Hel is another realm in the Maasverse that becomes more relevant in later books. It is ruled by seven Princes of Hel, and events in book one suggest that this realm may not be as “evil” as Bryce has been led to believe.
HISTORICAL EVENTS
Lunathion, as we know it, would not exist without an event called the Crossing, which took place about fifteen thousand years prior to the events of House of Earth and Blood. The Crossing refers to the time period in which magical beings from various planets and realms entered Midgard through a portal at the Northern Rift. While no one knows how or when the Asteri arrived on Midgard, they are believed to have been on the planet for some time before the Northern Rift opened.
The Fae were the first to enter Midgard through the rift. A Fae named Pelias opened the Northern Rift using Luna’s Horn, an ancient Fae relic that was forged in the Fae homeworld.
As various magical beings entered Midgard, they tore across the land and fought against the humans to gain power over them—a period of conflict that is referred to as the First Wars. During the wars, the humans and Princes of Hel fought against the Asteri and the Vanir.
The First Wars ended when Pelias once again used the magic of Luna’s Horn to seal the Northern Rift, which also sent the Princes of Hel back to their realm and broke the Horn in two. Without the Princes of Hel, the humans quickly lost to the Vanir and became second-class citizens. From this moment on, Midgard has been an extremely stratified society.
Two hundred years prior to the start of book one, the Fallen Rebellion took place. One of the key actors in the Fallen Rebellion was Hunt Athalar, an angel who commanded the army that rebelled against the Asteri. Despite being led by an Archangel and aided by Hunt Athalar’s immense power, the Asteri quashed the rebellion in one battle. Those who participated in the rebellion were enslaved by the Asteri and are now forced to serve them.
POWER STRUCTURES & GOVERNING BODIES
Power—and the ways in which it is obtained and maintained—is critical to the Crescent City series as a whole. In book one, SJM introduces several political and social structures that determine how power works in Lunathion and beyond.
The highest level of power belongs to the Asteri— a group of six rulers said to each possess the power of a star. There were once seven Asteri, until one of the Princes of Hel, Apollion, ate the seventh (Gabi loves Apollion). The remaining Asteri rule from the Eternal Palace in Pangera.
One key power imbalance is between the humans and the Vanir, which are all the beings on Midgard aside from humans and ordinary animals. Most Vanir are civitas, or full citizens. Though humans were the first inhabitants of Midgard, they are ineligible for civitas status. Instead, they are part of the peregrini social class, which is just a step above the Lowers, or the enslaved population—fallen angels, sprites, and certain magical beings that are deemed dangerous and difficult to control.
The four Houses are another, more subtle structure in this world. An individual’s House is determined by their species. While these political and social entities grant citizenship and offer protection, there is also animosity between them. Understanding that the Houses play a role in covertly dividing the beings of Midgard is more important than memorizing which beings belong to which Houses.