Black Sun Rising

Executive Summary: I have mixed feelings on this book. Sometimes it was a 2 star, sometimes 4, and in the end I settled on 2.5 rounded up. I wanted to like it more than I actually did.Audiobook: One of the things that attracted me to doing this book was how much I enjoyed [a:R.C. Bray 6478373 R.C. Bray https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1424045813p2/6478373.jpg] as the narrator of [b:The Martian 18007564 The Martian Andy Weir https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1413706054s/18007564.jpg 21825181]. He's quite good here, but at some points he's “too good”. What do I mean by that? Well his voices for some of the characters are so spot on the description as to be jarring, and I'd spend most of the time focused on my irritation at the voice over what was being said. Thankfully those characters didn't talk very much.The rest of the time he was quite enjoyable as a narrator. I don't think those voices were enough to detract from his narration as a whole. I think audio's a good option here. Hopefully you won't find those same voices as grating to your concentration as I did. Full ReviewThis one wasn't on my radar at all before a friend suggested it for a buddy read. It sounded like an interesting mix of Sci-Fi and Fantasy. I was thinking maybe something along the lines of Star Wars.This book may as well have been straight fantasy however. There is very little science to speak of. Apparently humans have settled another planet and found a way to harness it and some of the creatures who live there as a form of magic. Technology as we know it seems pretty non-existent.After a pretty intense and interesting prologue, I found the early parts of this book quite slow. Things did pick up later, but then I'd find myself growing distracted/uninterested in what was going on. This made for a very uneven pace to the story. That may be in part due to my general dislike of most of the characters. The book describes Damian as a warrior, but in truth he's a paladin. When paladins aren't off heroically saving people in need, they seem to spend their time judging everyone else who can't live up to their lofty standards. Damian isn't quite this bad, but he does have his moments.I initially was the most interested in Cianni, but her character development throughout this book was not to my liking. Her assistant mostly got on my nerves.The most interesting character was the Hunter, but he's was very hard to like for many of the same reasons that made him interesting.I'm very much a fan of character-driven story, so when I don't connect well with the characters, it almost always hurts my enjoyment of the book.The world building, and the magic systems were both pretty interesting. They felt pretty unique from most fantasy I've read, and that's always hard to do.Overall I felt like the pacing issues and my general dislike of the characters cost this book at least a star, possibly more. A strong ending and interesting world building helped to make up for things.I'm still unsure if I'll continue on with the series. The ending has peaked my interest to know what comes next, but for now I'm not going to be rushing out to pick up the second book.