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A review by e_lace
The Sun and the Void by Gabriela Romero Lacruz
Did not finish book. Stopped at 0%.
I think i really wanted this book to be good but it was just really boring. This was an adult fantasy novel written as if the author is too embarassed to publicly inhabit a world in which she herself says she is very proud to have created. As most reviews point out, the strongest point of this book is the worldbuilding, but that doesnt really hold up when basically every other quality of the writing is bad.
The author is really bad about telling instead of showing so basically all world building elements are presented as exposition by characters to the main character that's designated as like the reader stand-in. Most of the characters are pretty flat which is a shame because there are enough of them that the author felt a dramatis personae was necessary. Because theyre so flat, sometimes characters have these sort of discordant feelings and actions. Like we learn early on that Reina's father, Juan Vicente, was once very close friends with a character we meet very early in the book but when they talk about him they only call him by his full name, Juan Vicente.
After Reina is attacked by monsters in the forest at the beginning of the book, her grandmother builds her a magic iron heart powered by an incredibly rare and expensive ore only found underneath her house. Reina goes back and forth almost every page, at first referring to the heart as her slaver (i wish i was lying), then remarking that it's finally given her freedom, and then going back to despising it. Even if we as a reader are to assume that she just has complicated feelings about the heart, she's way too flat of a character for us to even know why should would feel this way other than that we have established that her species is of the lowest caste due to imperialism by humans.
The dialogue is so stilted. Like so so so stilted. I noted multiple times that almost every conversation feels like you're reading the script of a jrpg translated by a group of amateur fans. Sometimes the flow of conversation literally feels like a poptropica dialogue tree where reina will sit upright, unfeeling just asking investigative poptropica-ass questions.
Anyway. I obviously couldnt stomach another 400 pages so I DNF'd. For what it's worth, I think that if you are a fan of Karlach in BG3, you are kind of new to fantasy, and you maybe want to try out some queer fantasy but you're not sure if you like more fantasy than Game of Thrones on HBO or like Harry Potter, I think you might like this.
Oh! Also, one thing I did really like was the author did her own character portraits and chapter illustrations which appear inside the book. So that was cool. I hate to dog on Gabriela like rhis I'm sure she's so nice but I really think this one could have spent like 5 more years in the slow cooker honestly...
The author is really bad about telling instead of showing so basically all world building elements are presented as exposition by characters to the main character that's designated as like the reader stand-in. Most of the characters are pretty flat which is a shame because there are enough of them that the author felt a dramatis personae was necessary. Because theyre so flat, sometimes characters have these sort of discordant feelings and actions. Like we learn early on
The dialogue is so stilted. Like so so so stilted. I noted multiple times that almost every conversation feels like you're reading the script of a jrpg translated by a group of amateur fans. Sometimes the flow of conversation literally feels like a poptropica dialogue tree where reina will sit upright, unfeeling just asking investigative poptropica-ass questions.
Anyway. I obviously couldnt stomach another 400 pages so I DNF'd. For what it's worth, I think that if you are a fan of Karlach in BG3, you are kind of new to fantasy, and you maybe want to try out some queer fantasy but you're not sure if you like more fantasy than Game of Thrones on HBO or like Harry Potter, I think you might like this.
Oh! Also, one thing I did really like was the author did her own character portraits and chapter illustrations which appear inside the book. So that was cool. I hate to dog on Gabriela like rhis I'm sure she's so nice but I really think this one could have spent like 5 more years in the slow cooker honestly...