Furious Heaven

736 pages

English language

Published Sept. 26, 2023 by Head of Zeus.

ISBN:: 978-1-250-86700-1
Goodreads:: 60784831

(4 reviews)

Non-stop action, space battles and intrigue abound in the second in a galactic-scale, gender-swapped space opera trilogy inspired by the life of Alexander The Great.

The Republic of Chaonia fleets under the joint command of Princess Sun and her formidable mother, Queen-Marshal Eirene, have defeated and driven out an invading fleet of the Phene Empire, although not without heavy losses. But the Empire remains strong and undeterred. While Chaonia scrambles to rebuild its military, the Empire's rulers are determined to squash Chaonia once and for all by any means necessary.

On the eve of Eirene's bold attack on the rich and populous Karnos System, an unexpected tragedy strikes the republic. Sun must take charge or lose the throne. Will Sun be content with the pragmatic path laid out by her mother for Chaonia's future? Or will she forge her own legend despite all the forces arrayed against her?

6 editions

enne📚 reviewed Furious Heaven by Kate Elliott

3 stars

This is the second (of three?) books in The Sun Chronicles. I'm having a hard time writing my thoughts about this book, because I didn't enjoy it as much as the first, but I'm also having a hard time putting my finger on why.

One thing is that, even for me, this book is a verrry long 700+ pages and it takes even longer than the first book to get going and with a lot more downtime. It may be that I don't have a historical background to enjoy the parallels, but for an epic tome I need more foreshadowing to make future events have the import that they are probably intended to have. One example for me is that the Trinity Coalition takes up a large part of the middle of the book, and yet there's no mention of them in the first book at all; I have no …

This is the second (of three?) books in The Sun Chronicles. I'm having a hard time writing my thoughts about this book, because I didn't enjoy it as much as the first, but I'm also having a hard time putting my finger on why.

One thing is that, even for me, this book is a verrry long 700+ pages and it takes even longer than the first book to get going and with a lot more downtime. It may be that I don't have a historical background to enjoy the parallels, but for an epic tome I need more foreshadowing to make future events have the import that they are probably intended to have. One example for me is that the Trinity Coalition takes up a large part of the middle of the book, and yet there's no mention of them in the first book at all; I have no sense of why they're important; as a reader it felt like a surprise that the plot went there at all and so it felt less impactful. (Give me a space map, even!) On a smaller scale, it's a similar issue to Persephone bringing five mystery things with her; it wasn't satisfying as a reader to (several times) only know a specific something right before it comes into play. As a comparison, I feel like Guy Gavriel Kay writes history with a fantastical edge that comes off to an underinformed reader much more as a cohesive standalone narrative.

I still wish we had more perspective on Sun herself. Despite being the "main character" in many ways, she's still held at a remote third person perspective. I know more about her indirectly from her wake than directly about her own motivations and feelings. I'm glad we got a little extra character background on James and Alika this time around, but I still feel like there's more companions than even this large tome has time for (adding even more in book two). Maybe I just expected to be more invested in Sun than I am, but it continues to be hard when we can't get close to her.

I especially enjoyed Zizou's perspective the most this time around. His desire to free people who aren't sure they want to be freed, and trying to find a path through life when everything he's previously held onto has been taken away or called into question made for the most enjoyable pov chapters for me. Apama's are a close second.

I really don't like leaving a bunch of negative thoughts about a book. I wanted to like this a lot more than I did, because there's a lot of really great pieces here. In the end, I just had a hard time getting into this and enjoying it as much as I did the first book.