Reviews with content warning for Xenophobia - The Sun and the Void

How much you will love this story comes down to one thing: your willingness to watch traumatized and abused people make bad choices from the very limited ones they have. If you want your abused heroines to be out here from page one owning their abusers with a witty one-liner, you will hate this.

This is a book about people making bad decisions under duress, and by the end I think it may be fair to say one of our PoVs is a villain protagonist. The story set into motion by these events is fascinating, and I want to watch these girls become both better and worse.

(I wanted to give this book five stars, but people constantly keeping secrets from each other + a really annoying love triangle dragged it down.)

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liliths_dreamworld's review against another edition

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adventurous dark sad tense slow-paced

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

4.5

Despite the slow pace, I loved it. I know that a lot of people call the book out for not being a sapphic romance between the two main characters, but it was never advertised as such.
Many also complain about Eva and Reina

being so openly manipulated...but they live in a world where their only hope is the hope others give them. Of course they wouldn't realize they are being manipulated at first because they wanted to fit in so bad, their original hopes not yet fully crushed. Not until the end at least

. This may be bothersome to many, but I never minded. I loved the book a lot, especially the Venezuelan/Colombian elements!

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gen_wolfhailstorm's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.5

Thank you to Black Crow PR for granting me a physical uncorrected proof of this title. All opinions remain 100% genuine.

Buddy read with Sharron Joy Reads.

I loved the depth of this tale. It was slow for the first 3rd or so with world building but once I pushed through, I found it to be worthwhile.
The setting was lush, tense and atmospheric, all at the appropriate times.

I appreciated all the contextual terminology being at the front. I find nothing more tedious than trailing through the end of the book, looking for what something means, with the fear of seeing a spoiler hanging over me like a black cloud.

The conversation of oppression, classim and the mistreatment of other species due to being who they are was so on point to how society still is in the real world.

The sapphic romance threaded through was great. I felt like there was a lot of manipulation in the romance though (as well as the platonic relationships) and it was hurtful to see characters I began to care about being strung along on the whims of others.

The magic system felt unique and unusual to me and though at times it went over my head a little, I was excited to see powers being mastered by various characters.

this is the 2nd book in as many with some weird incest thread, oh dear... I mean I wasn't expecting that and I still don't really get the how... I guess Celeste and Reina would be 1st half cousins?

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and can see how it can set up for a sequel, but equally would feel complete enough as a stand a lone.

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ladynavalon's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark inspiring slow-paced

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

3.0

I really enjoyed the world bulding, that's five stars, no doubt. But, I didn't like the pace, some characters seem not know what to doy and the plot is not clear for the first half of the book. In this sense, I feel like the characters needed more work. Also, I didn't like how the author writes... I admire her for writting almost 600 pages in a different language, but it is hard to follow her sometimes... but I insist, I love the world she created.

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hailstorm3812's review

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

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

3.75

I think my high hopes got the best of me with this one. I really liked the characters (especially Reina) and the world-building and that probably will entice me into reading the next one. I did have problems with the pacing and structure. It dragged in the middle for me and the fact that none of the characters even suspect the twist is baffling. I think my biggest issue is that Reina and Eva should be foils with a developing relationship and they just float around each other. The finale hinges upon the different yet same directions they wind up in but it lacks the emotional resonance since they don't care about each other. The only person it actually effects personally is Maior. My qualms aside I did still have fun and overall liked the book.

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bookedbymadeline's review against another edition

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Switching POVS between Eva and Reina (although there’s a heavy focus on Reina so it felt more like Eva was just another side character at times).

Heavily influenced by Venezuelan myth/folklore which is very clear-I loved the stories of the gods and learning that one of the plot points is inspired by the Bolivarian revolution.

Aside from the unique use of South American culture and history being used in this high fantasy novel, I also appreciated the uniqueness of the magic system/creatures! I don’t read a lot of fantasy but there are so few that use geomancy (metal magic) and feature creatures that aren’t fae, elves, etc so I really liked that.

A bit slow with the pacing so I wasn’t fully immersed and I was never motivated to pick it up. Some chapters are intense and really grabbed me while others felt like a lot of overly descriptive/passive details that didn’t pertain to the plot or world building.

I would prefer less flowery descriptive writing and more action, especially with a fantasy novel! I can do flowery descriptions sometimes I’m other genres but with fantasy I expect action and faster pacing

The chapters are long and not much is happening. It started with so much promise but for being a fantasy novel, it’s incredibly slow paced. It does more telling than showing and it’s a unique story. I love mythology/folklore inspired books and would’ve loved to have read one that wasn’t the usual Greek centered but sadly it’s not working for me. It could be much shorter and would’ve benefited from another heavy round of editing to cut a lot of the unnecessary detailing, fixing the pace, and making more equally balanced POVs.

I gave this book way longer than I normally do because I was so excited to read it and wanted it to work sooo badly 😭 it tackles issues such as racism, religious bigotry, and colonialism in such a unique way; it held a lot of promise but fell flat in its execution.

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bingsoojung's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

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

4.0

ARC exchanged for an honest review
The Sun and the Void is a book of magic, sinister magics, and two girls trying to seek power in a world which has disenfranchised them. If you are a fan of anti-colonialist fantasy and stories of power, identity, and how it’s wielded, then you’ll probably like the Sun and The Void.

Before I start my review, I want to give a spoiler-y note for other sapphic fantasy readers. While these are spoilers, this is to clear some things up about the description of the book.

Okay, so from how the book has been marketed, you would think romance is a big part of the book, and that the two POV characters are the f/f romance, like in the Jasmine Throne (because let’s be real if you’re reading this, you’ve read the Jasmine Throne). However if you expect that, you will be disappointed. The two POV characters aren’t in a relationship, nor will they likely ever be. I’m pretty sure one of them is straight.

The romance in the book is unrequited love for most of the book. In fact, the actual romantic aspects don’t even make an appearence until the final 1/3 of the book. If you are looking for sapphic fantasy, this book, while that, is incredibly light on the sapphic part of that. This is not sapphic in the way of the sapphic trifecta, or Gideon the Ninth. This is predominately a book more concerned with it’s plot and world and the growing non-romantic relationships between characters, than anything else. I still really enjoyed this book, but I was also disappointed at the lack of more queerness in the story personally. I really was expecting a more Priory-esque level of sapphic to the forefront, but that wasn’t what I got. So don’t expect that.

So! The Sun and The Void! Now I heard of this novel a few months ago by way of a friend, and because of that it’s been on my TBR for a while. Thus I was delighted to get an ARC of it. The Sun and The Void takes place in a world based on South America, which has just recently managed to drive away the colonial forces that previously subjugated it. However beacause of this the world has been left in turmoil, and power, and who wields it, is everything. As a premise this is honestly the type of book I adore. Gabriela Romero LaCruz did a fantastic job of building out her world in a way that felt incredibly engaging, and left me invested in what secrets it held. I really wanted to know what else we had to learn.

Reina and Eva are our POV characters, and both of them are incredibly fun people to follow. Sometimes you read a book with multiple POV’s and one of them falls short, leading to a large section of the book feeling unsatisfactory. But neither Reina or Eva lag behind the other, leading to the entire book being incredibly engaging. Both of them are complex people trying to make the best of terrible circumstances, and while not all their choices are good, you understand why they’re making them. In fact, that’s probably Romero LaCruz’s strongest point. All of the characters are incredibly well written. While many of them aren’t good people, you understand why they make the choices they make. There were characters who I hated to love and loved to hate, and Romero LaCruz knows how to make a compelling character for everyone.

The author’s ability to worldbuild around the reader is also fantastic. I’m personally a very big fan of being dropped in a world and just being confused, and Romero LaCruz does that, and does it excellently.

My major critique of the story, however, is the pacing. I think this is the first time I’ve ended a book truly thinking that the pacing needed some work. The book is split into two parts, part one, and part two, and part one is 1/3rd of the book and honestly too long. While I really enjoyed that section of the book, it’s pacing is incredibly uneven compared to part two, where the story picks up greatly and honestly change from being more of a family political drama story, to an adventure story. In all honestly the first half of the book should’ve been shortened to be a third of the book.

Secondly, while Eva and Reina both felt incredibly important as characters, due to the uneven attention given to Reina over Eva in part one, it honestly felt as if the story was more Reina’s than Eva’s. Which is a shame! Because I really honestly enjoyed Eva’s part of the story. She was clever and fun, and even though her life was incredibly different from Eva’s it was nevertheless incredibly engaging. Likewise, there are some plot elements that occur that felt implausible, and are honestly just idiot plots for the author to get from point a to point b.

While I enjoyed Romero LaCruz’s descriptors as well, sometimes she would put them in places that felt incredibly clunky. It’s like she’d remembered how flowery her writing style was, and then tossed one in at a place where she needed one. The descriptions, while decadent, were maybe just a bit too filling, and we could’ve used some more matter of fact wording.

At the end of it all, this was an incredibly enjoyable read and fantastic book, however it very much is a debut novel, and often falls into the traps of such. I look forward to reading the next book in the series though, and seeing where Romero LaCruz goes with this series!

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