A review by bluejayreads
Sunbringer by Hannah Kaner

4.0

I really loved Godkiller, the first book in this series. I've made no secret that I'm a sucker for unique and interesting takes on deities. But though that's what got me to actually pick up Godkiller, I ended up loving it for the characters and their dynamics with each other and with the world. When my library got a copy of Sunbringer, I checked it out immediately. 

Unfortuntely, like most sequels and middle-books-in-a-trilogy, Sunbringer definitely had some flaws, especially when compared to Godkiller. But before I get into those, I want to start with what the book did really well. First and biggest of which was move the story forward. What started in the first book as a deceptively simple "go to this place and do this thing" plot ballooned at the end into something much bigger with implications for at least one country and possibly the world. This book not only carries on that plot (including repeatedly raising the stakes and giving several chapters from the antagonist's point of view), it advances everything that was brought up in the last book. I was perfectly prepared to accept Inara and Skedi's connection as a suspension of disbelief issue, but not only does it have an explanation, it's much more dramatic and far-reaching (and just plain cool) than I expected. Plus it's incredibly plot-relevant. 

I also still enjoyed the characters quite a bit. One of my favorite things about the characters in Godkiller was their dynamics with each other, but since Kissen is massively separated from the others, Elo and Inara are generally in the same area but largely doing different things with different people, and Inara and Skedi's relationship is going through some weird stuff throughout the book, there's not as much of that. I still like the characters individually (Kissen especially is fantastic), but the dynamics range from definitely different to pretty much nonexistent. This isn't necessarily a change for the worse, but it's definitely a change to a big thing I loved about book one. 

The main thing that I really struggled with in this book was keeping track of what was actually supposed to be happening in this plot. Some of that probably has something to do with the fact that for the most part, the characters don't even know what the plot is here right now. I as the reader get more of the big picture because I get to read perspectives from Skedi, Elo, and Anara, as well as Kissen and Arren. (Arren doesn't get a ton of page time, but he still gets some. And yes, five perspectives is a lot for one book, but since I was already familiar with these characters, it wasn't nearly as annoying and confusing as it was in the first book.) But even I the reader don't get the whole picture, and any given character only has a tiny piece. Kissen herself crosses entire continents trying to stop one thing from happening, even though she doesn't even know why it would be a bad thing, just that she has it on really good authority that it would be. By the time I got to the end of the book, so many things had happened and so few of them seemed particularly related to character goals that I was about as surprised as the other characters when Kissen announced that thing was bad, actually. This is definitely an action-packed book, and it definitely manages to move the overarching plot forward. But it felt like a lot of the details got lost along the way. 

On the whole, this book is about what I expected from the sequel to a book I really loved - solidly good, readable, enjoyable, but not nearly as great as the first book. I picked this up having it in my head for some reason that the Fallen Gods series was a duology, so I was a bit surprised to get to the end and find out there's more. But I will be reading Faithbreaker. The story is still good, the characters are still stellar, and I'm still engaged and intrigued by this world's weird and unique take on gods. Even though I can't say I'm enthralled with the overall direction the plot has taken, I'm still enjoying it and will happily finish out the series. 

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