A review by boilingintrigue
The Sun Runners by James Bow

adventurous dark emotional tense fast-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? It's complicated

4.0

This book blew me away. It's a deep, rich story of the struggle to survive on Mercury amid deprivation and unforgiving conditions, initially focused on a teenage girl who is disabled in a horrible accident while she's still trying to figure out who she is, who she can trust, and what her adult life is going to look like, and intertwining her story with that of her grandmother, who was not much older than herself when the planet lost contact with Earth, and who became one of the colony's key figures due to her leadership and scientific contributions, all of which came with heavy costs. The two women don't always understand each other, but they do love each other, and you can see many ways in which the older woman's experiences with hardship influence the life she tries to give her granddaughter, even while her granddaughter is trying to break free of the past and find her own way forward. I loved it. The biggest flaw in the book is that the shift in tone between the two stories is so jarring. Adelheid's story is grim and desperate, full of dangers like forced culls and cannibalism. Each of her sections ends in a hair-raising cliffhanger, then the next section opens with Frieda upset, despite being surrounded by luxury and people deferring to her, because she isn't treated like an adult. I felt like the structure of the book did a disservice to Frieda, because her feelings about her situation are legitimate and would make a compelling story on their own, but contrasting her problems with Adelheid's at her age makes them seem silly and trivial. It isn't until the end of the book that Frieda's story starts to match the intensity of Adelheid's, and I loved seeing Frieda come into her own, but I felt like it almost came too easy to her. The track their city runs on is damaged, which seemed like a huge problem that would almost certainly end in disaster, but Frieda and her teenage friends easily deal with it while the adults around them, with decades of experience, are lost and helpless without someone to tell them what to do. The weakness of the ending prevented me from giving it 5 stars, but I enjoyed it a lot and would recommend it to anyone.
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