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.