Scan barcode
starrysteph's review against another edition
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
A Zorro-inspired vigilante who can shapeshift into a panther, torn between her role as the Spanish heir to the throne and her half-Indigenous identity? What a delicious concept.
The ideas in Sun of Blood and Ruin were phenomenal, but the execution unfortunately made it a very challenging story to read & enjoy.
Pantera is a warrior sorceress, but underneath that bold identity is Leonora, a charming young lady who is promised to the heir of the Spanish throne. While Pantera fights to protect the Indigenous people from Spanish tyranny on the streets, Leonora wages a war of politics inside the palace.
But Leonora knows she’s been prophesied to have a short life, and to die in battle. And when the earthquakes begin - signaling the changing of a Sun and tons of destruction - she is ready to fight until the bitter end.
There is so much happening here, from palace politics to fights in the street to ancient gods to promises of paradise to anti-colonialism escapades to a budding romance … and truly so much more. There are so many intriguing elements, especially when you bring in real (slightly and fantastically altered) history and folklore. But it turned into total chaos.
I love a large cast of characters, and mythology, and lots of different threads. Here it felt like the writing was bubbling with excitement and attempting to weave in every single brilliant idea. I just think it needed a lot more structure, more information around the main elements (most readers won’t know the intricacies of this mythology), and someone to cut some of the excess elements.
I was not in flow with the writing and not totally aligned with Leonora as a main character. She’s very immature and adolescent, and while she definitely has a bit of a coming-of-age journey, it just felt like she was too young & too flat to shoulder all the story elements. Her realization towards the end was just so simplistic, and much of the dialogue is cheesy.
I think I was far more into the first half, which had a lot less action, but more of a clear plot. When we get into the action scenes, people are just popping around and it felt impossible to envision what was actually going on half of the time. And then nonsensical plot twist after nonsensical plot twist after revelation after revelation after character death (!) where we’re just moving on. And the stuff between was all so murky. I wasn’t sure why this story was written and who the author’s intended audience was.
I am so bummed. I saw the vision!!
CW: death (parent), murder, religious bigotry, colonization, racism, genocide, xenophonia, grief, war, animal death, classism, guns
Follow me on social media for book recommendations!
(I received a free copy of this book; this is my honest review.)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Death, Genocide, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Murder, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
bluejayreads's review against another edition
Second book in a row with a fantastic historical setting but the writing just didn't do it justice. (I keep wanting to give historical novels a chance, but they're sure not making it easy.) I'm not against a good in media res but this story throws our protagonist into "hero of the people" scenarios without ever establishing that the people care about her, or even know about her. The writing was simplistic, the characters were bland and felt more like cutouts wafting through an admittedly interesting plot than real people with emotions and desires and flaws. For a supposedly anti-colonialism story, the protagonist has a lot of positive words for her colonial-ruler father and so far nothing but criticism for the Indigenous resistance movement. She seems to be doing Zorro-style, Mesoamerican-superhero kind of things without any real motivation to do so - it's cool, to be sure, but I never get the sense that she has any reasoning to do so. And it seems an awful lot of harm to put oneself in the way of without having some very clear reason, either emotional or moral, to go to all the trouble. Which is disappointing because the world is interesting and South/Central America is woefully underutilized as a fantasy setting, especially when history provides so many rich opportunities for mythologies and/or historical events to integrate into the narrative. Unfortunately, it ends up being very much like Neferura - a great idea with mediocre execution.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Blood, Colonisation, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Gun violence
Minor: Death of parent
Execution, arranged/forced marriage
More...