A review by kissingtinyflowers
The Sun and the Star by Mark Oshiro, Rick Riordan

adventurous emotional reflective 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

2.75

I was literally wavering between a 2.5 and a 3.5 rating all throughout this book because parts were incredibly grating and then others were actually kinda good and fun and I do like the overall themes and character development. I'm settling for the middle, but i have to say that I'm leaning towards the worse rating at the time of writing this simply because i'm left with such a negative feeling at the end because that just wasn't it, babes. I was fully willing to look past the heavy handedness and some of the clunkier plots on account of me being very much not the intended audience and so even though it didn't meet my expectations I can like judge this objectively. But also unfortunately a character literally repeating an action that should only happen once in consecutive sentences is a very objective sign of shoddy craftsmanship. I understand that sometimes there are mistakes in worldbuilding especially when there is more than one book (although there were certain mix ups in the pjo lore that are not that niche and just plain wrong but i won't get into them) but there is a line that this book crosses more than once (how did no one proofreading this catch the literal name of the magical river they had to jump into changing into another river with wholly different, also established properties within like ten pages??) and I cannot just handwave them off as this being middle grade because kids also deserve well written books. which this one sadly was not. It was clearly an addition to the canon made out of love and the want to be inclusive, but considering how mediocre it is i'm not sure that addition really was necessary :/