Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse is a queer fantasy inspired by the civilizations of Pre-Columbian Americas and the first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy (4/5 stars)

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse is a queer fantasy inspired by the civilizations of Pre-Columbian Americas and the first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy.

I did a blended read for Black Sun and borrowed the audiobook from my local library. There are four main characters in the book, and each have their own narrator. I honestly love this kind of structure; having different narrators for different POVs really helps my brain parse high fantasy. Even so, each character is very distinct from the others just in their personality and how they are written, which was even better for my brain to follow along!

Though the plot is established pretty early, this is really a character-driven story. There’s also a ton of political stuff happening within a group of high priests. I really liked the world building and magic system here, too.

I found the pacing to be pretty great; I inhaled this book within a day. When I’m reading longer books, this is really important to me, and I was really glad to not feel like it was dragging.

There’s also great representation here. Other than characters of color, there is a lot of casual queerness and one of the main characters we follow is blind. There are several people who are nonbinary. One of our main characters hails from a civilization of women sailors (sirens? mermaids? both?) and she’s pretty rad and queer.

As this is the first book in a trilogy, it’s unsurprising that Black Sun ends on a pretty big cliffhanger. But now all the books are out, (Mirrored Heavens just came out in June) so I can read them at my own pace!

CW: violence, blood and gore, murder, ritual sacrifice, suicide, loss of parent, child abuse, drug use, kidnapping

I received a copy of this book to review. Thank you to Saga Press for the complimentary paperback copy. All opinions contained herein are my own.

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