A review by whybeereads
The Sun and Its Shade by Piper C.J.

3.0

Gadriel: If you want me to train you I need you to understand it sucks very much, I was thrown off a cliff with my hands tied behind my back so you need to agree.
Amaris: totes, yeah, I'm all good.
Gadriel: ok, remember it's violent and awful but here's a safeword.
Amaris: yo man, do whatever you want to do, I am in full agreement.
Gadriel: *Does a violent and awful thing that Amaris totally agreed to*
Amaris: *shocked pikachu face*

The first book I rated at 4 stars when I felt it was closer to 3.5, partially I was annoyed at all the people who hadn't even read it giving it a 1 star review because of stupid tiktok drama so I shifted up. This time I'm shifting down, I still think it's a 3.5 but I'm less charitable where this book had more time for editing and the author should have been able to find her stride a bit more.

look, it's good...ish. it's not great. I'll start with the good. The sex scene was good once it got going. Nox's character development is progressing nicely. The newly introduced magical elements were fun, action scenes tend to work, the magical orb heist scene at the university was a fun little adventure. The revelation about Nox's identity was seeded well enough that it didn't come out of left field entirely, I had been suspecting it for awhile (which is good), but not so clumsily telegraphed that it felt too obvious. The temple scene was quite effective for showing the horrors of war and the blurry line between soldier and victim. The apple-induced visions were an effective and engaging form of exposition, I only wish the author trusted us enough to connect the dots ourselves without having to spell it out for us all over again exactly what we'd just seen. she does that a lot I'm afraid, I hope she learns to trust her audience a bit more going forward. It's not exactly Finnegan's Wake here, I'm sure if she stops over-explaining everything we're still going to manage to keep up.

Now the bad. Amaris. She behaved every inch the petulant and immature brat. First she's sulking for days because when he was actively bleeding to death Gadriel didn't wax poetic about the complicated nature of their relationship to a complete stranger. Next she's throwing a complete tantrum because he did exactly what she asked him to do in training her. I am really beginning to hate Amaris, Nox can do better.

Besides that, I still hear the author's voice far too strongly in narration and dialogue choices. Yes, consent in sexy-time fiction is good, but can you stop beating us over the head with the fact that this is what you're doing? 'are you sure? is this what you want? I need to hear you say yes if you want to be together. It's important to have a frank and open discussion about our feelings to make sure we're being healthy in this relationship. seriously though, do you consent?' ughhhhhhh. Same goes for when the story just pauses to discuss the nature of trauma and the different responses people have to it. Like I said before, you can trust you audience a bit more without having to spell things out all the time.

I guess as well we're just going to have to do a little 'the invisible guiding hand of the all mother' hand-wavium to explain how a crazed dragon-monster-demon thing just happened to drop Amaris and Gadriel at exactly the one place in the whole continent where they could get healed (rather than Gadriel being instantly killed for a demon) as well as the location of their current Macguffin hunt. whatever. it's fine.