Well, well, well, so here we are once again, with me writing a review that takes a contrary position from nearly everyone else who read this.

I’ve actually been procrastinating my review of Black Sun for this exact reason, because I really wanted to love this book—and at first I did. On the surface, it seems like it should be an automatic win: an interesting, new take on the fantasy genre that, as countless others before me have observed, draws on nontraditional, non-Eurocentric sources, contains a greater number of important, strong female characters than is typical of fantasy novels, and includes more modern characterization (non-binary characters don’t even raise an eyebrow, for example).

So with this as the foundation, we should be on our way to a completely fresh take on the fantasy genre, right? Well, sadly, no. Instead, nearly all of the standard fantasy tropes make an appearance, which means there is plenty of....guess what? QUESTING. Yes, the most overused trope in the history of fantasy writing makes up the majority of this book, with any sort of actual plot grinding to a halt while nearly everyone travels somewhere for reasons that I’m sure are very important.

(Something does actually happen during the last chapter or two, but by the time I got there I really didn’t care anymore.)

This could be overlooked if it were used to help us get to know the characters better, but that isn’t really what happens here. Each character is largely interchangeable with every other character, and the emphasis on pre-Columbian American civilization that is so hyped in descriptions of Black Sun wasn’t really evident to me (it’s possible that, as I don’t really know much about pre-Columbian American civilizations, I didn’t really know what to look for, and that’s on me rather than the author). I couldn’t really chart any sort of growth or development for any character here. Connecting with them emotionally was not really possible.

Most tellingly for me, however, is the fact that I had to increasingly force myself to return to reading this book until I was finally just trying to make it through to the end. It isn’t that Black Sun was bad or poorly written. It was just dull. So while I didn’t hate Black Sun, it is unlikely that I’ll be reading the other volumes in this series.

*I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This is it.*