Reviews with content warning for Torture - The Last Sun

Reviews tagging 'Torture'

The Last Sun by K.D. Edwards

25 reviews

xaniya's review

adventurous emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

For a book so incredibly dense with action and heavy, deep world building, it felt like glimpsing a city through the window of a bullet train: fast enough for glimpses, rushing from one thing to the next.

I never got bored, but there was so much information and things moving, getting picked up and put down and thrown around, that it's a mystery I ended up finishing this book calmly instead of annoyed by all the loose ends. If anything, Last Sun feels like the longest prologue ever to an action-urban fantasy series.

Still, though fast-paced narrative usually isn't for me, I'm tempted to know what happens next. I like the characters, as quick as I had to be to learn them all (and there are A Lot). Brand is my favorite.

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comfycryptid's review

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adventurous dark funny tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.5

I might be an outlier when I say I think this book is a mess. From the convoluted plot to the unlikable characters to the world-building; it all felt like one giant, overwhelming infodump. You will spend most of this book confused and not sure what's happening but not in a way that felt at all rewarding by the end.

This book is extremely fast paced but that may be it's downfall because it made for a lot of confusion and throwaway world building. K.D. Edwards does excel at dialogue, I will give him that! His banter is funny and it made me exhale harshly out of my nose a few times. Reading the action and the explanations of the magic system, which I STILL don't feel like I understand at all, felt jarring and overwhelming in comparison.

Also there's some quirky little body shaming moments, misogyny, and a little racist throwaway line which was very cool of this white male author to do.

The book leaves you with a StIcK aRoUnD aNd FiNd OuT for MOST of the interesting/infuriating(see spoiler) plot points. And there was so many untied and badly executed threads I truly don't even care to read the rest of the series.

Spoilers ahead (trigger warning for graphic sexual assault and rape of a minor):

The villain reveal barely felt like a reveal. My friend put it well when they called it a "Scooby-Doo ass reveal." I had to go back and recheck who was who because some of these characters were so forgettable or swept away in other explanations of other things that I genuinely didn't know who they were.

Also soulbound soulmates is my favorite trope and SOMEHOW I still hated the "romance". They had no chemistry and it leaves you on an unexplained cliffhanger that I don't even CARE to try and read the second or third book to find out. You literally create a universe where characters' souls are intertwined and you mAyBe intertwined the 2 characters who have 0 chemistry. Nice.

Then we come to my BIGGEST gripe. The rape plot. The rape as a plot device was handled poorly. In fact, it felt barely handled - just thrown at you a few times. Then it slaps you with the weirdest couple of sex scenes to drive the point home that Rune is extremely traumatized some more I guess? It doesn't truly get resolved in this book so if you need a resolution or some sort of unpacking you don't get it in this book. I don't need to read the next 2 books to know this plot point will get stretched out even more and that feels really inappropriate.

I do feel bad ripping into this book so hard because it is very obvious that the author put his heart and soul into it. HOWEVER, the execution was not there for me. Maybe it's me, because I've read so many glowing reviews that I genuinely wasn't sure I was reading the same book as everyone else.

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welgan's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Trop young adult et trop centré sur l'action pour mes goûts de lecture actuels, je pense. La partie "romance" est très légère et manque d'introspection pour ce que j'aurais voulu, mais ne dénote pas dans l'ensemble.
Il y a cependant des idées intéressantes dans le lore et les relations de personnages (j'ai bien aimé la relation d'Acolyte et la manière dont elle s'exprime entre Brand et Rune) ou la mise en scène et des personnages que j'aime beaucoup (Quinn et Cieran particulièrement), donc ce n'est pas impossible que je lise la suite si je peux me la procurer d'occasion ou en prêt.

Je note aussi la quasi-absence de personnages féminins, au grand nombre de 0 dans les protagonistes principaux, et uniquement mère, domestique, ou soeur écervellée anorexique dans les personnages secondaires.

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abelh's review

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adventurous dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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frostfeather's review

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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styleofdress's review against another edition

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Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No

3.5

it's a fun interesting story but oh my god there are only 5 female characters with names and they are: grandmother

who kinda curses MC

, landlord/house organizer, secretary, mother, and sister. None have more than one personality trait.

For a book praised so much I had expected a more inclusive cast, like at least a *single* two dimensional female character (not even three, I won't even ask for that, just two dimensions)

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exlibriskai's review

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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usually_sleep_deprived's review

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adventurous dark funny sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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blynecessity's review

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This was much closer to Gideon The Ninth than the YA I thought this was going to be! In the best way, the NA queer fantasy/mystery genre was fun! There are a LOTTT of trigger warnings on this tho. Like a looot of explicit and graphic stuff.

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readundancies's review

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adventurous dark funny mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

I wasn’t actively seeking out any urban fantasy when I picked this up, so this one was a delightful surprise considering since I’ve finished I’ve ordered a physical copy along with it’s sequel and just picked up the third novel in the series / conclusion to the first trilogic arc within it.

Basically, there’s a lot to like.

I liked the characters, I liked Brand’s effervescent snark and impatience, Rune’s sass and never-ending walls that he’d built to protect himself. Their friendship was volatile but also so strong and endearing. Max and Quinn were sweethearts, Addam was a snack, the Tower was very domineering in this untouchable sort of way and I was into it. I dug it. I dug it hard. All of the characters had this depth to them, but it wasn’t not explored to any great degree, and yet it was enough to know that the potential was there.

The world building did not build in a conventional sense because the Tarot and Arcana are not so much the heart of this fantasy world, but rather the framework. There were no info dumps, no sweeping descriptions of setting, no deep dives into culture or history or customs. The reader has no one to hold their hand to introduce them to the world they’ve entered; there is simply plot and the barest amount of context from a world building perspective. Things just simply are as they are and plot ensues whether or not you comprehend what is happening or even how. This works for such a plot driven narrative but it also means that exposition is at a bare minimum and that the pacing is beyond fast. It wasn’t rushed but it did feel like I was unintentionally not getting the whole picture.

The world building is also rather choppy. Which is to say, it was very vast in what it aimed to encompass and because of that, there were entirely too many aspects of the world that could be referenced back to. But because there was so much potentially to cover, the callbacks that were chosen felt disjointed and lacked fluidity. They were just not as tightly structured as they could’ve been. Nothing was reinforced in a manner that felt natural, almost as if key aspects of the world were forgotten about and then all of the sudden were remembered and inserted back into the plot in a seemingly haphazard and inadvertent fashion. They were not actually forgotten about though, but rather as if they’d been set aside for later use except when they were reinstated it was not where they were initially intended to be and thus it felt off. A perfect example of this was whenever the Companion bond between Rune and Brand was mentioned. It didn’t natural to frame it in the way the writing did, but it wasn’t ineffective at progressing the plot either. It’s a strange writing choice from the author and it takes some getting used to. By the end of the novel I felt more acclimated towards it but I was also just so aware of when it occurred. It was not inherently wrong, but it also just didn’t feel wholly right either.

The writing style itself was very blunt, which lent itself well to the urban fantasy genre. There were no minced words or flowery language to lull you into a false sense of security before truth bombs obliterated the plot with a twist. It was all very upfront and non-apologetic and I enjoyed it immensely.

I liked this, and I enjoyed my time with it in spite of my mixed feelings on the world building and how it affected the pace of the novel.

And you know, for the majority of this book, like we’re talking the first 75% of the thing, my heart was sitting in this well of indecision about what I was going to rate this thing. I was initially going to settle on 3.75 stars but then that last 25% set some really interesting plot threads that I can’t wait to follow up on and see where they lead.

If you’re looking for a fast paced urban fantasy romp with found family vibes and queer romance, you can’t go wrong with this one.

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