Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky #1) by Rebecca Roanhorse
Synopsis
"A god will return
When the earth and sky converge
Under the black sun
In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world.
Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain."
My Thoughts
This book blew me away and I am now fully invested in these characters. I definitely missed the fact that this was the beginning of a series when I started it so the ending left me like "what???" but I got there. And this book really was wonderful. The world building in this was fantastic and wove together the four different characters stories in a way that I love seeing in books. Multi-POV books can get extra confusing, especially listening to the audiobooks like I do. But each character had such a unique perspective that it was easy to follow. There was also an amazing amount of casual queerness in this book which I also always love to see.
Xiala is by far my favorite and read, to me, like the definition of a bisexual disaster and I adore her. Serapio was the most interesting and mysterious character of all of them. I was so intrigued by his story and what came about with his character arc. I also really loved Narumpa who managed to work herself up from nothing. I felt bad for the political nature of things going on around her when I got the feeling that she really was trying her best. And you didn't get a whole lot of Ochoa's POV but but what you did was filled with a very interesting family dynamic which I enjoyed.
Definitely, definitely recommend with regard to some of the content warnings below. I listened to this one as an audiobook which had four different actors for each of the different character's POVs and it was phenomenal.
Genre: lgbtqia+, fantasy
Representation: bi, non-binary/gender non conforming, trans, BIPOC
Content Warnings: gore, body horror, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, death, murder, suicide, sexual content, misgendering, animal abuse, drug use
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