Monday, July 6, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse


Note: This review is based upon an ARC (Advance Reader Copy) won through a Netgalley giveaway (a "Wish"), and this book is scheduled to be released on October 13, 2020.  This did not affect my review in any way.

 Black Sun is the start of a new epic fantasy series by Astounding Award winner Rebecca Roanhorse.  Roanhorse's prior novel work has been fascinating - SF/F inspired by her Native (Navajo/Diné) heritage, whether in her dark hybrid SF/F "Sixth World" series or in her Middle-Grade work "Race to the Sun."  It's all been really great stuff from a background not typically used in the field (although it's getting better).  Black Sun takes a different tack - it's epic fantasy inspired not by Roanhorse's native heritage, but instead by the pre-Columbian cultures of the Americas.  It's Roanhorse's first venture into epic fantasy and I was really excited to see what she'd do with it.

And it's really an interesting start to an epic fantasy, taking some very familiar devices of the genre and using them in some rather different ways.  So you have multiple character viewpoints, magic, gods, and religions of various kinds with different levels of power, and a cast of characters acting in very different places of a very large world all leading up to a major impact everywhere by the climax....what you might expect in an Epic Fantasy, it's all here.  But the cultures shown are very different from the classical European or Tolkien-inspired epic fantasy stories, and while the book has characters as deep and as enjoyable as the beset of any of those, it also has a story that manages to be both interestingly dark and grey without actually being grimdark.  It's not perfect, but it's a strong start to a new series and I definitely look forward to its continuation.


-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
Ten Years ago, Serapio's mother carved the iconography of the Crow onto Serapio's body, stitched shut his eyes, and sacrificed herself to imbue her god into his body, for a grand destiny.

Ten Years later on the Day of Convergence, Naranpa, the Sun Priest who leads the religion of the city of Tova, lies immobilized, wondering how it all came to this.

Twenty days earlier, a Teek woman named Xiala is rescued from prison by a mysterious Noble benefactor with a simple mission:  Use her sailing skills - and her hidden Teek magic - to carry a single passenger over an incredibly dangerous route to Tova.  But the passenger, a strange blind man who seems to have the presence of a crow, is far more than he seems, and Xiala can't help but be drawn to him, as she desperately attempts to keep in line a distrustful crew on a voyage where a single storm could lead to disaster.

At the same time, in Tova, Naranpa struggles to maintain her authority because of her origins not coming from noble stock, among other priests who have their own agendas, even as she desperately tries to reassert her religion's relevance and importance with the people.  And Okoa, the son of the leader of the Carrion Crow clan, returns to Tova upon discovering his mother had been murdered, only to find the Crow Cult that challenges the Sun Priesthood has been growing, along with general unrest like the one that led to a massacre by the Priests years ago.

When the Day of Convergence comes, the actions of Naranpa, Okoa, Xiala, Serapio and others will have massive repercussions.  And the world will never be the same.....
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"Epic Fantasy" is sometimes tricky to define as a "subgenre" - as most fantasy novels feature something that could be considered "epic" in scope, and yet not every one of these novels would consider itself to be "epic fantasy."   And many books that don't contain what we often think of as the classic tropes of "Epic Fantasy" do consider themselves as part of the genre, even if they focus on a small world and a single group of characters.  It's not an easy thing to define, and I usually hate using the term.

I start this review with this because Black Sun is unquestionably "Epic Fantasy" - it may contain a very different world than the type usually seen in the genre, but it definitely has the structure of what we're used to in the subgenre.  So we have a plot that jumps back and forth between a number of characters' viewpoints, with the characters frequently being in far off places and in different social/racial statuses (and nationalities).  Even further, the plot jumps back and forth in time, with each chapter helpfully opening with a datestamp to make it clear when things are happening.  Add in a world of multiple races, magics, traditions, and gods, and well, you very clearly have all the formatting tropes common in an Epic Fantasy here for better or worse.  And well, those formatting tropes work really well in the hands of a good author, which is why they keep on being used, and they can work really well even when the setting/characters don't fit the "classics" of the genre.

Roanhorse is absolutely one of those good authors, and in her hands the formatting works really damn well.  It helps that she does a masterful job showing a world unlike the typical Euro-centric, or Tolkien-centric at the least, worlds we see in typical Epic fantasies.  We have a number of counties with very different cultures and sensibilities - for better and for worse of course - and all of them are interesting and diverse.  Some are tolerant about personal choices of gender and sexuality - in one country, women are discriminated against and non-hetero relations are forbidden, whereas in Tova, gender and sexuality differences are utterly ordinary, with non-binary, trans, and queer characters being utterly commonplace.

Of course the cultures and peoples show more differences than that, and none are more simply morally better than others.  So we have a major religion in the Priests of the Sun in Tova who still want to impose power, but are still socially discriminating and reluctant to try to do more to obtain acceptance other than through brute force.  And I call them priests, but they genuinely are against any worship of gods, and insist their studies of the Sun and sky are based upon reason, not magic or the supernatural.  You have a people in the Carrion Crow clan who were once massacred by the Priests of the Sun and have resorted once again to worshiping more and more openly their alternative god; to say nothing of having a matriarchal culture in which they fly giant crows around.  You have the Maw, a slum-filled district of the Crow that is ruled by crime, and practices perhaps darker things in secret, which the nobles would like to pretend doesn't exist.  And this is to say nothing of cultures like that of the Teek - of whom we only see one character at present, and thus remain more mysterious and unrevealed.  Roanhorse makes this world come alive and feel real, providing a grand setting for the characters to take action and develop.

And those characters are largely fantastic.  We have essentially four main characters - as shown by them having point of view chapters, in Xiala, Serapio, Naranpa and Okoa, each with their own agendas and interests, and I grew to care about 3 of the 4 immensely, even though they are clearly from the start destined for collision course.  Xiala for instance, is a magic wielding brash woman captain of the seas, who gives no Fs about any other culture's sensibilities on the land...and thus runs afoul of them at times.  But on the sea, with her magical song, she finds herself alive and desperately tries to maintain control of her crew so she can truly live out there, using her superior knowledge of sea navigation to get her job done.  Still, despite all the above, her Teek heritage makes her an outsider (for reasons that would be a spoiler to go into) and make her a bit lonely, so when she finds another lonely outsider in Serapio, she gravitates to him.

Serapio meanwhile, was basically brought up by his brutal mother to be a sacrifice - a vessel for her god, complete with his mother scarring him at age 10 and then purposefully blinding him before sacrificing herself and arranging then for him to have brutal abusive tutors after she's gone.  He's already magically powerful and dangerous, but he's never known anything for himself - just for his supposed destiny.  So when he finds a magically gifted outsider in Xiala, similar to him and yet so very different, he can't help but be interested.  Serapio and Xiala's growing relationship (not to spoil anything) is an absolute highlight of this novel, with each being great on their own and together being tremendous.

The third great main character is directly opposed to Serapio, though she doesn't know it.  Naranpa was elevated to the highest position, the Sun Priest, despite coming from the Maw and not being of noble blood, and believes full on in the righteousness of her position.  But she sees the declining influence of her faith, especially after prior leaders of the faith used their influence and power to lead a massacre, and is desperate to take actions to try and assert their importance once again: actions that don't include more violence from a faith who very prominently carries a sub-division known as the "Knives" (and practice assassination).  Yet this is made more difficult by the fact that her co-equals mostly despise her low birth and seek not only to simply maintain their old status quo, but also to undercut her every move....and even her most trusted co-equal keeps doing actions without telling her.  The book showcases Naranpa's ending in the very 3rd chapter, but her conflicts and interactions kept me enraptured as she moves along the path that guides her to that ending.

The fourth major character - Okoa - is the book's only real weak point - and much of that is because we don't really get to see nearly as many pages from his point of view.  Okoa is in an interesting position: not only does he know his mother was secretly murdered, but his clan is both a part of the Sun Priest faith but also the one that was once massacred by them, and thus harbors cults that follow an alternative faith in secret....or not so secret.  As such, he has ties to both Serapio and Naranpa's sides which could lead to interesting decisions....but none of them come in this book, and he doesn't affect anything.  I imagine he'll, as well as other characters who are introduced but don't do much, become a bigger part of the next book, but for this first book I just never grew to care about him and wanted his chapters to switch to the next character as quickly as possible.

All of these characters propel a plot that hurtles back and forth through time but inevitably to a climactic moment named from the start as the "Convergence."  It's a plot where you can see the elements of what's going to come from the beginning, but the very details can still often surprise you.  It's also a plot which - unlike a lot of epic fantasies - does not give the reader an easy idea of who to root for.  As I mentioned above, Serapio and Naranpa are basically on opposite sides, with Serapio's whole life being geared towards the destruction of the Sun Priests, and Naranpa's being toward guiding those very same Sun Priests to a new direction and prominence in a forever changing world.  And neither side is clearly good or evil - Serapio's crow cult basically abused him into the blind man he is now and need him to literally sacrifice himself to become a god, and wish for him to massacre quite a number of people in the process; meanwhile, Naranpa's Sun Priesthood maintains an organization of assassins which have massacred "heretics" in the very recent past and in the present are firmly classist and unwilling to meet change with anything other than more knives.

Neither side is clearly good or evil; they just are, and the reader like myself may wind up rooting for both sides, despite them both prevailing being impossible.  And unlike a SoIaF/Game of Thrones, Roanhorse does not provide a clearly coming evil force to serve as the ultimate eventual enemy.  This is not a grimdark world or plot mind you - just one that filled with flawed people trying to make what they think is the right decision, along with people who would rather have no bone to pick with either - like Okoa and Xiala - and who just want to find a way to live their lives in a happy fashion.  Of course this plot, like life, doesn't make it that simple, and the way Roanhorse weaves it together is tremendous.

So yeah, great characters, a fascinating plot that I have no idea where it's going up till the end - minor spoiler, the book ends on a major cliffhanger which is annoying but not unexpected - and damn do I want to see more from this world as son as possible.  This is a hell of a series to watch, and well worth your time, especially if you like epic fantasy.
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