Black Sun

3.5/5 stars

This was interesting and I am not sure what to make of it. It's hard to accurately rate this book since it felt much more as a first act than a book that can stand on its own. On it's own I can only give it 3.5 stars since I am not a fan of stories that end in a cliffhanger and this one ends with a big one.

We experience the story mainly through 3 characters.
Naranpa - The Sun Priest (think pope)
Xiala - a half human, half teek sea captain
Serapio - a young man groomed to fulfil a prophecy

I liked Xiala und Serapio, they have a nice dynamic and are interesting characters and interesting to read. Naranpa I did not know what to make of her. She is rather naiv bordering on dumb and it's a bit frustrating to read her parts and I am not sure if its intended but she comes of as a villain, kind of.

The story is overall somewhat predictable in great parts which did not negatively influence my enjoyment though, there were enough surprises to keep me interested. What is very cool Is that I have not figured out who the ‘bad guy' is in the story. Everyone has their comprehendible motivations, minus one annoying side character maybe.

This books makes use of the Xe/Xir pronouns, as a non American, non native English speaker I had a hard time getting used to that, it was very confusing at first. I thought Xe was a name and Xir was a typo but when it was repeated I had to look it up. Turns out it's a twitter thing ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Broke my flow and pulled me out of the story every time I encountered those since I had to reread the line to understand it, at first. Got a lot better near the end of the book when I got used to it, I expect to have internalised it by the end of book 2, which I instantly preorder after finishing this.

One great thing to mention here is the settings. It's influenced by South American culture which is refreshingly new and unique to read, at least for me who mainly read western themed fantasy. In my opinion the author could have used a bit more time to describe the world and people to a greater detail though, the book was very much focused on the story. But the description that we do get paint a wonderful, interesting and, to me, foreign picture of a world I want to know more of.

Lots of open questions, lots of untold lore lots to look forward to in book 2.