Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

 I first discovered Rebecca Roanhorse when her short story "Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™”, was nominated for a Hugo Award.  I loved it and her! Her writing style is crisp and It pulls you in right away.  When Trail of Lightning, her first novel, was nominated for awards the next year, I read it and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I felt like it had some “first novel” roughness but was altogether enjoyable.  The sequel, Storm of Locusts, was even better! So I was thrilled when NetGalley and Saga Press gave me an eARC of her new secondary world fantasy novel, Black Sun. It was fantastic! Roanhorse has really come into her full powers as a novelist and storyteller. The characters are well drawn with understandable flaws based on their backgrounds and upbringings. There are four point of view characters in this book, who don’t all get equal attention. One of my only complaints about the book is that one of the point of view characters, the son of the crow tribe, is not introduced until it felt like halfway through the book. He seemed to get short shrift compared to the others. The only other complaints that I had are incredibly minor. I would have preferred that the book had come with a content warning for some body horror and parent-on-child violence in the first chapter. I understand why that occurred from a narrative standpoint, but it made me feel all squick and I could see a lot of people getting a really negative emotional reaction to it. I also had forgotten until about 7/8 of the way through the book that it was the first part of a trilogy so I was upset with the ending was such a cliffhanger! I can’t wait until the next volume comes out.