CBR18 Book 21: "Black Sun" by Rebecca Roanhorse

Page count: 453 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Dark Corner selection - February 26

Defeat the Goblin - The pebble book - a book that was gifted to you

Monthly Keyword 26: Sun

Nowhere Book Bingo 26: A book with multiple POVs

Read the Rainbow: Black

This is a book with a number of different POV characters. There is Serapio, a blind young man whom we first encounter as a child, being horribly mutilated by his mother (who subsequently throws herself off a building). All this horrific violence is to make him a suitable vessel for the Crow God. He is trained by three mysterious individuals who continue his grooming to fulfil his mother's twisted goals. There is also Xiala, who is a Teek sea captain, tasked with taking Serapio via ship to Tova, the capital city of the empire. The other sailors on the ship seem sceptical about Xiala, but all Teek have a special connection to the sea, and because of this, she can get the ship through storms and other dangers, and they are forced to accept her as their captain. Our third major player is Narampa, who was the unlikely candidate to succeed the previous Sun Priest, and who now wants the priests to make a difference in society. Some of her fellow priests can only be said to be rather hostile to her ideas of reform, and plot behind her back to get rid of her. Our final protagonist is Okoa, son of the Crow clan matriarch. He's called back to Tova from his warrior training after his mother dies, and he has to take his place as his sister's chief bodyguard, basically. 

I finished this book in mid-February, so my memory of all the intricacies of the plot is now rather vague. The opening chapter was almost a deal-breaker for me (I just cannot with children in peril), but because several people I trust had assured me that this book is worth reading (I was gifted my paperback copy of it by the lovely Rochelle), I persevered. The first third or so was rather slow, and I found Narampa's chapters, especially, to be hard going. I liked Xiala from the start, and she is one of the reasons why I will probably continue with the series, even after there were bits that I wasn't wild about.

We had an interesting book club discussion about the book, and while the majority of the people who came in February liked it, I don't think any of us loved it. We appreciated the unusual setting; it's always nice to read something a bit different from the Eurocentric medieval fantasy worlds we often find in the genre. Since I am literally one of only two members in the group who has a child, none of the others was as bothered by the brutal mutilation of a young boy as I was. There was general agreement that Narampa was the dullest character, and that both Serapio and Xiala might technically be adults, but they have both had such weird lives that it's no wonder they make some truly inadvisable choices. While I liked Xiala, she seems rather self-destructive and Okoa and his giant crow (who he can ride on) may be my favourites of the lot.

I probably will continue the series (I own all three books, after all), but I'm not in a hurry to read the sequels. Some of the others in the book club continued, and seemed to think book two was a bit slower, but that the series ends well in book three. So we'll see.

Judging a book by its cover: I don't like this cover, I think it looks bad, and the UK publishers have chosen to go with exactly the same ugly image, so I don't even have the option to get an alternate one.  The Broken Binding special editions are absolutely gorgeous, but they also cost an arm and a leg, so that's not a suitable option, either. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR16 Books 17-18: "The Kingmaker" and "The Rebel King" by Kennedy Ryan

Total page count: 711 pages

Rating: 4 stars

CBR16 Sweet: Binge

Kennedy Ryan's All the Kings Men Duet, as she calls it, spans more than a decade and contains a lot of passion, danger, and drama. I'm reviewing both at the same time since they don't really stand alone. The Kingmaker ends on one heck of a cliffhanger, and The Rebel King would not be a satisfying place to start the series. 

Maxim Cade is still just in college when he travels with his father to the location of one of their planned oil pipelines, which just so happens to be on the land of an indigenous tribe. They are naturally less than thrilled about the destruction of some of their sacred lands, and there's a massive protest that Maxim's father wants to stop. One of the leaders of the protest is a young, beautiful native woman whose rousing speech and fierce defiance take Maxim's breath away, to the point where he runs to save her when the police arrive with tear gas and very aggressive dogs. He even gets bitten trying to protect her and spends some time in jail with the other protesters after being arrested with them. The passionate young woman is Lennix Moon Hunter, whose mother mysteriously disappeared some years earlier, after organising a different protest. Lennix is half Apache but lives with her white father, a college professor. He might be smitten, but once he discovers that Lennix is only seventeen, he wisely tamps down any amorous thoughts, even after being bailed out of jail, he can't forget her and her cause.

Maxim was never enthusiastic about taking over his father's giant oil company in the first place, and after the protest, he refuses to listen to his father and cuts ties with him entirely. He puts himself through college on money he inherited from a relative and barely speaks with his family, even years later, when he and Lennix meet again by chance in Amsterdam. Lennix is there for a week with her best friends from college, and Maxim is about to embark on an expedition to Antarctica for his post-grad work. He knows that Lennix will never speak to him again if she discovers his father's identity, so Maxim uses his middle name to introduce himself to her (he never told her his name while they were bonding after the arrest). Lennix is no longer a teenager, and the two of them spend a few days together, giving in to all the sizzling chemistry between them before Maxim needs to leave for his months-long stay on the South Pole.

By the time they meet for a third time, Lennix is working on the campaign of a liberal politician and has discovered who Maxim really is. He and his expedition mates ended up in a horrific storm in the Antarctic, nearly dying, and had to be rescued by Maxim's father. The news of the dangerous rescue is widely broadcast worldwide, and Lennix discovers that the handsome and charming young man she thought of as Maxim Kingsman is, in fact, the son of a man she hates. Despite all of Maxim's attempts to persuade her that he is nothing like his father and wants nothing to do with his family legacy, Lennix tells him to f*ck off and never darken her door again.

A decade later, Lennix Hunter is known as the Kingmaker. She and her best friend Kimba are among the best political consultants in the United States and have ensured victories for a large number of progressive political candidates. When Owen Cade, Maxim's older brother, runs for president, there is no one else he wants organising his campaign, but if they take the job, Lennix won't be able to avoid Maxim any longer. Having completely broken ties with his father, Maxim has achieved a lot of the goals he set himself in his early 20s. He's a self-made man, having pioneered a lot of technology to limit pollution and save the environment, and he's rich enough that he never needs to rely on his father's money ever again. There is only one more thing Maxim has left to achieve, winning Lennix back and getting her to forgive him. 

These two books are intense, people. There is so much stuff happening here. The epic love story of Maxim and Lennix is told in three distinct acts, where the third one, while they're fully adult and very successful in their own fields, is obviously the longest. Did the sometimes sprawling story need to be more than seven hundred pages long, split into two books? I'm not really sure it did, although I respect Ms. Ryan's sense of the dramatic. By ending The Kingmaker where she did, she guaranteed herself another sale. I thought I owned both books in this series when I started reading. It turns out that the other book I had was Queen Move, which is about Kimba, and takes place after these two. As a result, I went online to purchase The Rebel King immediately after finishing book one (of course it turned up in an e-book sale only a couple of weeks later - isn't that always the case?)

There's so much plot here, though. Lennix' mother disappearing, the oil pipeline protest, their chance to take their relationship to a new level when they meet again in Amsterdam, Maxim's expedition in the Arctic and the dramatic conclusion to it. The fraught meeting between the two of them once Maxim's lies of omission have been exposed by the media coverage of the rescue mission is short, but significant. By the time we meet them again for the third act, the stakes are high and it feels right that Maxim has to work hard to convince Lennix that he's worthy of her. 

The path to their Happily Ever After isn't without further obstacles, involving Lennix in a very dramatic and dangerous situation and the lengths Maxim is willing to go to get her out of it. Even once they have decided to make their relationship work, their path isn't smooth. There are personal losses and grief, and both of them have to reconsider their priorities and dreams for the future. I can't go into more specifics, because I don't want to spoil all the twists and turns this story takes.

I'm adding these books to my CBR16 Sweet "Binge" category, because I originally planned to read these AND Kimba's book, which is a sort of unofficial third book in the series. I binged these two books in a very short space of time, but once I was done, and even began Queen Move, it turns out I was all Kennedy Ryan'd out for the time being. So that book will have to wait until sometime later this year.

Judging the books by their covers: I chose two covers that match each other for my image, despite the fact that only my copy of The Kingmaker has that cover. Since I got the first book in the series (free e-book, if I recall correctly), the covers have been redesigned, and instead of black and white images of people who are probably meant to be Lennix and Maxim, the books now have a completely different font, which looks hand-written and images of flowers on a black background. They seem very wistful and romantic, and don't really fit the dramatic, fairly high-spice and frequently rather angsty tone of the duology. At least they're not cartoony cutesy covers in pastel. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read