A review by bojangles
Black Sun, by Rebecca Roanhorse
adventurous
challenging
dark
hopeful
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
5.0
Up till the 85% mark I was ready to give this book for stars. Three stars for the genuine innovation of the narrative. One extra star for the quality of the writing and the effectiveness of the narrative structure. I generally don’t enjoy fantasy books that are primarily about a journey to get to the important secret place. Lord of the rings just isn’t my thing and I found myself having the same sense of disappointment and boredom sometimes that I had when reading children of blood and bone. BUT THEN OH MY GOSH THE TWIST AT THE END WAS SO WORTH IT AND NOW THIS IS ONE OF THE BEAT BOOKS IVE EVER READ!!!
The reason I stuck with it though in the first place is because it was genuinely an interesting journey and the prose was plain in a way that reminded me a lot of what I love about Octavia butler. I love when I am in a very unfamiliar world with very straightforward, almost mundane prose. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that “clean” means that it’s not artful. What I’m trying to say Roanhorse has done well here is avoided that thing fantasy or science fiction writers often do of getting lost in a certain artifice of language in order to capture the otherness of the world they’re constructing. I love books like this one that are able to drop me into a fully realized and rich world without using a ton of random made up fantasy garble. Every single part of this entire universe felt thoughtful and real and spending time in this world was an exciting escape into a world where people of colour get to be magical and also disabled and queer and morally complex, and everyone gets to be an actual character and not just a bundle of tropes!!! This is what I am always hungry for, why I am committed to reading the the fiction of women of colour writers. Roanhorse has constructed a world that left me so deeply sated, in a deep and spiritual way.
This is a testament to the rigour of the world building. I think if you are a fantasy writer, even if like me you don’t enjoy epic quest fantasy, you should read this book as an exemplar of effective world building. As a genre convention I just don’t enjoy long journey fantasy. But oh my God. Wow. Just wow. Way to subvert expectations by doing things spectacularly well, you know?
The last five chapters of this book transformed this narrative into some thing that I genuinely was not expecting. I pride myself on being somebody who can catch a plot twist from a mile away. You cannot surprise me, you cannot pull one over my head, I will guess who done it halfway through your murder mystery, if you leave bread crumb trails of clues I will turn them into a whole meal and gobble them all up.
Roanhorse genuinely slapped me with one of the most rewarding, well thought out, and emotionally satisfying surprises I have encountered in two decades of avid fantasy reading. The set up for the next book has me excited, rather than vaguely dreading tolerating “second book syndrome” to get to the satisfying end. I think the second book in this trilogy is going to be fire and I plan to take the release day off of work so I can start reading it right away.
I was reading a world that I genuinely have never encountered before, although that is just as much a part of my own ignorance of pre-Colombian South America as anything else. But I am so used to epic fantasy that is essentially a riff on mediaeval England that I think I mostly have just given up on the genre. Turns out I just needed a writer like this one. Anyway, I am off to pre-order the sequel of this book.
The reason I stuck with it though in the first place is because it was genuinely an interesting journey and the prose was plain in a way that reminded me a lot of what I love about Octavia butler. I love when I am in a very unfamiliar world with very straightforward, almost mundane prose. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that “clean” means that it’s not artful. What I’m trying to say Roanhorse has done well here is avoided that thing fantasy or science fiction writers often do of getting lost in a certain artifice of language in order to capture the otherness of the world they’re constructing. I love books like this one that are able to drop me into a fully realized and rich world without using a ton of random made up fantasy garble. Every single part of this entire universe felt thoughtful and real and spending time in this world was an exciting escape into a world where people of colour get to be magical and also disabled and queer and morally complex, and everyone gets to be an actual character and not just a bundle of tropes!!! This is what I am always hungry for, why I am committed to reading the the fiction of women of colour writers. Roanhorse has constructed a world that left me so deeply sated, in a deep and spiritual way.
This is a testament to the rigour of the world building. I think if you are a fantasy writer, even if like me you don’t enjoy epic quest fantasy, you should read this book as an exemplar of effective world building. As a genre convention I just don’t enjoy long journey fantasy. But oh my God. Wow. Just wow. Way to subvert expectations by doing things spectacularly well, you know?
The last five chapters of this book transformed this narrative into some thing that I genuinely was not expecting. I pride myself on being somebody who can catch a plot twist from a mile away. You cannot surprise me, you cannot pull one over my head, I will guess who done it halfway through your murder mystery, if you leave bread crumb trails of clues I will turn them into a whole meal and gobble them all up.
Roanhorse genuinely slapped me with one of the most rewarding, well thought out, and emotionally satisfying surprises I have encountered in two decades of avid fantasy reading. The set up for the next book has me excited, rather than vaguely dreading tolerating “second book syndrome” to get to the satisfying end. I think the second book in this trilogy is going to be fire and I plan to take the release day off of work so I can start reading it right away.
I was reading a world that I genuinely have never encountered before, although that is just as much a part of my own ignorance of pre-Colombian South America as anything else. But I am so used to epic fantasy that is essentially a riff on mediaeval England that I think I mostly have just given up on the genre. Turns out I just needed a writer like this one. Anyway, I am off to pre-order the sequel of this book.