received a copy of this book in advance to review. Thank you to the author and the publisher. 

Really enjoyable, possibly better than the first?

In Godkiller, the book slowly collected a cast of characters and tied them together on a singular journey, creating a lovable found family in pursuit of a goal. In Sunbringer, the main POV from book 1 is separated from the other characters, believed to be dead, and the POV of the king was added in. 

This book was constantly shifting alliances and assumptions. I wanted to root for Kissen and Inara even as they were (unbeknownst to them) working against one another towards opposite goals. I loved the further development of the magic system, the introduction of more gods, and the way all of the moving pieces finally settled together in the end for a push to the third book. 

The only thing quibble I had was the pacing. I think this started SO strong but got a little bogged down in the middle for a while. there was a lot happening and it was overwhelming at times. this had just a touch of book 2 syndrome but I suspect that when book 3 comes out, all of that maneuvering will prove necessary. 

I will say that the author did a good job of keeping the characters voices distinct and developing each. If you loved the found family in book 1, book 2 will let you learn a lot more about them individually but unfortunately loses some of the interactions of them together. I was also hoping for maybe a bit of romance with Kissen & Elo but I’m not sure that’s where the author is going and it certainly wasn’t hinted at in this book. All in all, I am happy with that installment and will be preordering book 3. 

The writing, on a sentence level, was quite poor which made it hard to enjoy. Honestly though, even if the prose were decent, it was still a very surface level book. The main relationship didn’t feel developed at all—the FMC just started having feelings for the MMC basically out of nowhere and based on him treating her with a bare minimum of decency. The plot was very minimal, the character development was minimal. Just a sitcom with vampires. 

I have to say, I absolutely loved it. the characters were complex and their relationships between one another felt so relatable and deeply human despite the completely wild setting. I didn’t mind that you weren’t given all of the answers to everything you might wonder—sometimes I feel like the trend is the YA-ification of fantasy to the point where no one trusts their readers anymore. I really appreciate an author that just says, listen, here’s the world. if you get it, great. if not, || have some eye stealing jokes 🤷|| it really felt like the worldbuilding gave me only what I needed but there is probably so much more in the author’s brain rather than a situation where things are missing because they aren’t well thought out. 

it was funny, I felt absolutely devestated by Kai at times, and I loved how the two timelines paralleled and played off one another. this was just written for me 🤷

I liked this better than the first in the series but I can see the similarities. Found family, very sweet MMCs who are unfailingly loyal, disabled characters & some level of dealing with grief. The hockey part of this hockey romance was just a backdrop, with the FMC’s autism taking a much larger stage. 

However, the references to Harry Potter were totally unnecessary especially with the characters themselves talking about how she is transphobic. How do you include that and then have 30% of a character’s personality be HP? Also, that angle got completely dropped in the last 50% of the book or so. Just unnecessary. 

Not nearly enough snake women swallowing people whole 

Very enjoyable but too long. I think it would have been absolutely perfect if around 10-15% had been cut, including the bonus epilogue.