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A review by graculus
Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
medium-paced
5.0
This year looks like being a good one for new books and Black Sun is no exception to this rule. To be perfectly honest, it had been on my radar for a while and I'd been waiting to see if my library would pick it up, since I can't possibly buy all the books I'd like to read (and have also been burned a lot by buying books I'll never want to read again) - so far, I've been pretty lucky.
The basic premise of the book is that it follows three main characters - a man we first meet as a boy while being scarred and blinded by his mother for religious purposes (not massively graphic, given my issues with eye trauma, I'm glad to say), a female sailor with a magical relationship with the waves and another woman who's become the Sun Priest but whose lowly background leads to her underlings scheming against her. The man is, as we discover, the vessel for a god whose followers were killed in an act of genocide, led by the Sun Priest at the time.
All of this and it's only book 1, with everything converging in the city-state of Tova at the time of an eclipse. Well written, with excellent world-building and strong characterisation, which meant that I blew through it in pretty much one sitting. Yes, it's that good. I can't wait to see where the rest of the trilogy takes us, as this book ends with a massive cliffhanger for at least one of the main characters.
The basic premise of the book is that it follows three main characters - a man we first meet as a boy while being scarred and blinded by his mother for religious purposes (not massively graphic, given my issues with eye trauma, I'm glad to say), a female sailor with a magical relationship with the waves and another woman who's become the Sun Priest but whose lowly background leads to her underlings scheming against her. The man is, as we discover, the vessel for a god whose followers were killed in an act of genocide, led by the Sun Priest at the time.
All of this and it's only book 1, with everything converging in the city-state of Tova at the time of an eclipse. Well written, with excellent world-building and strong characterisation, which meant that I blew through it in pretty much one sitting. Yes, it's that good. I can't wait to see where the rest of the trilogy takes us, as this book ends with a massive cliffhanger for at least one of the main characters.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse and Medical trauma