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A review by whatbritreads
The Sunbearer Trials by Aiden Thomas
4.0
*Thank you so much to the publisher for sending me a copy of this to review!*
This was my first experience of Aiden Thomas and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. This book gave me extreme Percy Jackson vibes in terms of tone and humour, so if you liked that you’ll probably like this.
The characters really made this book for me, and the friendships that we see in here are quite heartwarming. They ended up being really charming and the different dynamics through the novel were interesting to see play out. There were a lot of names thrown in, especially at the beginning, which did confuse me at several points during reading but it wasn’t too bad. One thing I loved that this book did was have no discernible obvious romance plot. It was wholly focused on the characters own development and their journey or survival, nor overshadowed by romance. It was just so different to what I’m used to seeing. I love romance, but the absence of it here really didn’t make a difference to how good or enjoyable it was.
The diversity of the cast of the book was also amazing as well. So many people are going to feel seen and represented by the way the characters think and feel in here and I loved it. It was a breath of fresh air for ya fantasy, and something I’d love to read more of. A world where queer people can just be themselves freely and live life was so lovely. There were some great conversations and important moments.
I found this book quite slow in pacing, despite it being a somewhat high stakes fantasy. Especially for a ya book, I found it quite dense and it took me a while to get into it and feel like I wanted to pick it up, but by the 65% mark I was fully invested and intrigued as to where it was going.
The writing was fine, although at times I found it a little grating. Though it was lighthearted and humorous and it did manage to make me chuckle a couple of times, sometimes it felt a little younger than the intended audience, if that makes sense. The characters sometimes spoke and acted as if they were much younger than their years, and at points it felt a little basic. There were also a lot of social media and pop culture references which was completely unexpected for me, the mention of things like characters going viral on ‘TikTak’ just didn’t work for me at all. Though the concept of a fantasy in the modern world with technology and social media mimicking our world sounds cool, in practice here I didn’t really like it.
Though I liked the overall vibes of the book, I found the setup and different systems hard to wrap my head around at first. Some of it was quite complex and took me a minute to get a grip with, and I think it could have been explained a little slower and clearer. Or maybe the problem is just me and my miniscule brain cells. I found understanding the more I read, but I’m still not sure I could fully tell you much about the world, how it works, or the different systems of magic or groups of people in the book. It all sort of blurred together in my mind almost.
The PLOT TWIST at the end of the book I completely didn’t see coming, which was great. It ended up picking up the pace massively and being quite tense to read towards the end but I liked it. There was a perfect set up for the next book, which I’m now eager to read.
This was my first experience of Aiden Thomas and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. This book gave me extreme Percy Jackson vibes in terms of tone and humour, so if you liked that you’ll probably like this.
The characters really made this book for me, and the friendships that we see in here are quite heartwarming. They ended up being really charming and the different dynamics through the novel were interesting to see play out. There were a lot of names thrown in, especially at the beginning, which did confuse me at several points during reading but it wasn’t too bad. One thing I loved that this book did was have no discernible obvious romance plot. It was wholly focused on the characters own development and their journey or survival, nor overshadowed by romance. It was just so different to what I’m used to seeing. I love romance, but the absence of it here really didn’t make a difference to how good or enjoyable it was.
The diversity of the cast of the book was also amazing as well. So many people are going to feel seen and represented by the way the characters think and feel in here and I loved it. It was a breath of fresh air for ya fantasy, and something I’d love to read more of. A world where queer people can just be themselves freely and live life was so lovely. There were some great conversations and important moments.
I found this book quite slow in pacing, despite it being a somewhat high stakes fantasy. Especially for a ya book, I found it quite dense and it took me a while to get into it and feel like I wanted to pick it up, but by the 65% mark I was fully invested and intrigued as to where it was going.
The writing was fine, although at times I found it a little grating. Though it was lighthearted and humorous and it did manage to make me chuckle a couple of times, sometimes it felt a little younger than the intended audience, if that makes sense. The characters sometimes spoke and acted as if they were much younger than their years, and at points it felt a little basic. There were also a lot of social media and pop culture references which was completely unexpected for me, the mention of things like characters going viral on ‘TikTak’ just didn’t work for me at all. Though the concept of a fantasy in the modern world with technology and social media mimicking our world sounds cool, in practice here I didn’t really like it.
Though I liked the overall vibes of the book, I found the setup and different systems hard to wrap my head around at first. Some of it was quite complex and took me a minute to get a grip with, and I think it could have been explained a little slower and clearer. Or maybe the problem is just me and my miniscule brain cells. I found understanding the more I read, but I’m still not sure I could fully tell you much about the world, how it works, or the different systems of magic or groups of people in the book. It all sort of blurred together in my mind almost.
The PLOT TWIST at the end of the book I completely didn’t see coming, which was great. It ended up picking up the pace massively and being quite tense to read towards the end but I liked it. There was a perfect set up for the next book, which I’m now eager to read.