A review by acopytopy
Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

adventurous 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

The main issue with this book is the way it is told through multiple viewpoints, jumping back and forth through time. One of the characters' viewpoints feels nonessential to the plot, and having so many different viewpoint characters prevents the reader from growing easily attached to any of them. The jumping through time also necessitates that some information is told twice so the reader doesn't get confused. Off the top of my head, I remember a scene near the beginning of the book that is told twice through two different perspectives in two subsequent chapters. The scenes the author chose to dedicate time to could have been chosen with more care.

Aside from that, this book has LGTBQ+ representation and a fantasy setting based off of countries outside Europe. These are things to appreciate, though I will note that the fantastical/magical aspects of the story aren't as strong as I expected.

Minor spoilers:
SpoilerI understand that this is the first book in a series, but the climax and ending were anticlimactic. I would have liked to see a satisfying conclusion to any of the characters' arcs. The event that is mentioned at the beginning of every single chapter happens... and everything happened nearly exactly as I predicted it would. I wouldn't describe this book or its ending as "bad", but they didn't impress me enough for me to continue this series.
 
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