House of Sky and Breath

With the Asteri's grudging tolerance holding, Bryce Quinlan and Hunt Athalar try to return to something like normal life in Crescent City — but normal has never really been an option. Rebel forces chipping at the ruling powers draw the pair into conflicts that force a choice between safety and conscience. The second Crescent City novel expands the series' world considerably, pulling in threads from Maas's other series and building toward a convergence that makes this both a sequel and a pivot.

Elizabeth Evans narrates with the same assured intimacy she brought to the first book, and the romantic and action sequences benefit equally from her command of register shifts. The novel's length — nearly 28 hours — is characteristic of Maas's recent work, and Evans sustains both energy and emotional specificity throughout. Goodreads Choice Award winner for Fantasy in its year of release, this is the series at the height of its powers.