Reviews - Fate of the Sun King

2.96k reviews for:

Fate of the Sun King

Nisha J. Tuli

3.96 AVERAGE

happybunnyreads's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

ryder_cunningham92's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous dark emotional tense

juanitawashere's review against another edition

4.25

adventurous emotional hopeful lighthearted 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: Complicated

caval_olson_lepage's review

3.75

adventurous challenging funny informative tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

jsreyes's review against another edition

4.25

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

bananathemuffin's review against another edition

2.5

fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I haven’t even gotten to chapter 1 yet and I’m already pissy. Tuli has included a Glossary of Characters that is just really really making me angry. So she’s mentioned ACOTAR, knowingly, and keeps listing her feelings towards her own characters instead of just listing facts about them. ONCE AGAIN like I kept complaining about last time, she can’t just let her readers form their own opinions. There's only ONE correct way to view her books and that’s HER’S and she’s going to make sure you see it!!!

I mean just fucking read this. I don’t even know how to explain how much this annoys me or why it just does.

You can really tell that these books were self-published, I guess is what I’m going to say about it.

Do you think you’re funny?

I think she thinks she’s funny.

“Omg we like Gabriel for some reason???” and then chapter 1 is from his POV and we learn that everything he’s done thus far as a henchman has been 100% completely and totally against his will and he will quite literally die if he disobeys Atlas.

You can tell Tuli thinks being “not like other girls” is a morally superior stance, because every time in book 1 and now here in book 3, every time we mention “that bitch Apricia” we have to mention how overdone her looks are. Because apparently being vain is her sole personality trait, and not only that, but she’s also bad at being pretty.

She’s supposed to be 10 years old in this flash back. Is it asking for too much to say that she shouldn’t be using the same kind of language her adult self would be using?

As opposed to…what? Do they have industrial kitchens in this medieval-inspired fantasy world?

You “don’t understand money” but you know that 100 silvers is an "exorbitant sum” for entering a brothel? Bitch you tried to kill someone over a bar of soap that you had to sell yourself for. Do not tell me you don’t understand how commerce works.

King Hawthornes chapter was dumb. It felt like an amateur prologue but it’s chapter 13, a quarter of the way through book 3.
“Show Don’t Tell” but show me in a way that isn’t inserting a random flashback to a totally unrelated character in the middle of your story. I can clearly see that something is wrong with the land by the rumors that have been dropped of “natural disasters in the other provinces.” That’s fine. A little Show, but with our FMC having been locked up or hidden away for her entire life I can understand why we have to reveal the world through exposition. But this is just bullshit. Someone take this woman’s keyboard away, she can’t be trusted.

Someone read the Crescent City series.

YOU ARE FUCKING FAE

YOU HAVE NEVER NOT BEEN FAE

Just because you have been disguising yourself as a human for 24 years doesn’t mean anything because YOU ARE A FUCKING HIGH FAE JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE.

Bryce Quinlan got away with it because she’s half-human and had no Fae magic for the first 25 years of her life. She was raised by human parents and lived in the human world among other humans until she went to college in the city. She gets the fucking pass of not seeing herself as part of the Fae. YOU, miss Lor, do not.

And here I was thinking that the book was running out of things to make me annoyed.

ONE ROOM ONE BED TROPE
“There were only two rooms left so we saved one for my brother” Okay so you didn’t think to rent both and save it for when he gets here???

This bitch author has 0 subtlety.

Edit to add later: They didn’t even fucking use the bed.

I’m sorry, Lor, but when have you had time to read history books about your grandmother? You were a child and then in prison for 12 goddamn years. You’re lucky you even know how to read.

I have never ever heard this phrase used before wtf. Weak as milk???

I’m so serious when I say that this author is not funny. This is not humorous, this is dumb. It’s so out of place with the tone of the 3 books thus far.

Slow burn my fucking ass!!! The dream was supposed to “not count” but they can boink in their dreams for realsies, people!

This is something I want to know, too. Why is every male in this book series a sexual predator? Except for Nadir and his friends. Everyone else tho is awful and horrible.

Tuli has a lot of characters that have been sexually assaulted, and keeps adding in minor characters who have intent to do more.

You would think she was talking to a child here, but no, this is a fully grown man who is at least as old as Nadir (hundreds) if not older.

I don’t think that’s how semicolons are supposed to be used.

I suppose magic could make this happen. I guess. If I must believe as such.

How does she know about these foods. I thought they were eating nothing but grey slop in Nostrasa, and anything from her childhood was “homemade,” which gave off the implication of “homely and humble.” Venison tartare my ass.

She’s not wet enough, sir.

I guess we’re just going to ignore the revelation that your brother is the Primary of the Woodlands? Not important, I suppose.

Tentacle porn. The scene continues with more tentacle porn as he uses “his magic” to touch her.

Side characters seem to only have one action available to them. The server “tips her head” apparently that’s the only thing she knows how to do. She’s done it twice in one page and will probably do it again.

I know that we the readers already know that Atlas isn’t the Primary, but Lor shouldn’t be privy to that information at all, and I’m sick of this author giving meta knowledge to all of the characters in every setting. There’s no fucking sublety in this series at all.

The most egregious use of modern slang to date.

????

She’s so fucking bad at exposition info-dumping these two characters are literally getting blow-jobs while talking about rebellion and reminiscing about the past.

Is the head really that bad?

“It says here that at the Beginning of Days, when the Artefacts were formed, other objects of power were also created,” Nerissa reads. “Each was intended to pair with an Artefact and could be used to both amplify and channel the magic of its realm.”

“That has never been a part of the origin stories of Ouranos,” Nadir says.

Nerissa shakes her head. “Because it seems like they were purposely hidden.”

“What do you mean?” Nadie asks. “Why?”

“From what I can tell, Zerra’s priestesses were actually created to retrieve them from each realm. When they tortured and killed in her name, they were trying to get their hands on the arks.”

Nadir folds his hands under his chin. “For Zerra?”

“So one might assume,” Nerissa answers. “It was all so long ago, but I suppose when the rulers realized she was after them, they hid them away well enough that they were mostly forgotten.”

“This is the story we all know about the Beginning of Days. The one in which Zerra brought all the rulers together and bestowed the gift of magic and the artefacts she’d created on each of them. “
“Right?” Nadir asks, leaning forward and clasping his hands between his knees.

“Well, I found this,” Nerissa says, holding up another book. “It talks of an alternate history. This suggests that what we know as the story of the creations of the Second Age of Ouranos isn’t entirely the truth.

I’m so glad that this random lady they’ve been staying with has access to history books that have been hidden from the public eye for centuries. No one else knows about this, not even the rulers of the different Kingdoms, but Nerissa? Shit, she’s got an ancient hidden library at her disposal.

—

My mate. My heart. The man I fell in love with despite the rivers we had to cross to get there. The hurts and betrayals we had to overcome.

What? You okay? He asks through our bond.

The romance in the second half of the book is so fucking cheesy. I could have screengrabbed a hundred of these little lines, but I didn’t want this document to be hundreds of pages long. It’s just. Where’s the spark? Their romance was never one of my top favorites, but at least it had something. Now that they’ve banged (omg finally!!!!11!!!!!!!!11) and gotten their initial feelings out of the way, it’s like YAAAASSSSSSSSSS COME ON GIRL GIVE US NOTHING!!!!

Also I’m a fucking crank but the “you okay?” “you alright?” “everything good?” and checking in on each other every FUCKING time they had one of these moments drove me insane. Let your lover daze out for a fucking second, god.

—

Our kiss is slow and unhurried, tongues slicking together and soft moans rumbling in my throat. I forget the press of bodies around us as I melt into him, savoring the smell and taste of arctic wind, cold winter nights, and the sweetness of what it feels like to finally be where you belong.

I know I said I wouldn’t fill this page with there. But fucking read this one. They’re all just as bad, too.

—

The strange between Gabriel and Erevan is wearing a pair of glowing cuffs around his neck and wrists. He’s thin and frail, his gait shuffling and his shoulders rounded, though there’s a purpose in his expression that speaks to something noble. Like a once-grand castle where you can still hear music playing through its halls, but that has been abandoned to the decay of time and loneliness.

Gabriel, Erevan, and the warders all shuffle down the carpet as murmurs ripple through the gathering. There are gasps and small cries of surprise as people start dropping to their knees, their foreheads pressing to the ground in supplication.

Once again, Lor knows too much meta knowledge “without” knowing anything. She’s seeing a man who has been broken and imprisoned for decades, who his closest friend says that he’s a shell of his former self multiple times, and Lor is all “omg I KNOW there’s something noble about him I can tell from a mile away.” Girl be so fucking for real. I’ve had it with this series.

—

Also I would like to point out that the author flips back and forth between Male and Man for the high fae. I don’t’ know if this is an editing problem (or lack thereof) or what, but as much as I can’t stand the “omg they’re males, not men!” freely switching between the two is worse.

stassi888's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous funny 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

I will be coming back to say more, but I love that this book didn't hit through weird third book slump many series do. This gave background Lor (lol), and I learned so much about the world of Ouranos

ok my full review:

This book delivered. Fate of the Sun King took everything that was building in the first two books and turned it up several notches. The pacing, the tension, the emotional payoff, it all came together in a way that made this the strongest installment of the series so far.

Lor really came into her power here, both literally and emotionally. Watching her finally start making decisions from a place of confidence instead of pure survival was so satisfying. She’s no longer just reacting. She’s owning her choices, even when they’re messy. And the romance? Whew. That slow burn paid off and then some. The chemistry had me flipping pages like my life depended on it.

There were still a few moments where I wanted more depth or clarity, especially around certain plot twists or side characters. But honestly, those moments didn’t take away from how immersive and intense the story was. The stakes felt real, the world felt lived in, and the emotional beats landed hard.

This book gave me the drama, the magic, the betrayal, the tension, and the payoff I was waiting for. If you’ve made it this far in the series, you won’t be disappointed. Tuli stuck the landing and made me even more excited to see what comes next.