The Unknown Sun is a Fantasy/Sci-Fi/Romance novel, not my typical genre, but it sounded interesting so I decided to give it a try, and I'm glad that I did.
Moira is a young woman with a chilling past. Not once, but twice, she has been the sole survivor when terrible accidents have claimed the lives of her family members. Both of her parents and two of her sisters have died tragically in a car wreck and then a plane crash, leaving Moira basically all alone in a world she doesn't understand where everyone, including herself, wants to know why she didn't die.
When she is attacked at her home by a strange boy she vaguely recognizes from school, she cries out for help, but the twins that show up to save her are not ordinary themselves, and soon she finds herself in another world surrounded by strangers.
Despite knowing no one and nothing of this strange land, she soon discovers there are links between her past and this world. The twins, Airi and Bel, were able to save her through the use of a magic portal. It is up to Moira to work with the twins to save their world and activate similar portals throughout the land while avoiding the evil forces that seek to destroy them and claim the throne from their father.
As Moira works with the twins, she begins to discover she has much to offer. She transforms from the weak child she had been on Earth and finds her own power. She also quickly makes a love connection with Bel and learns to love his sister, Airi, as a best friend. She soon realizes that this new land will be her home and she must do what she can to protect it, no matter the cost.
There were a lot of things that I really liked about The Unknown Sun. First of all, Mackey has a gift when it comes to word choice and prose. Parts of the piece are actually written so beautifully it is as if one is reading a poem. I really enjoyed savoring the word choice and letting the perfectly chosen words roll off of my tongue.
I also thought Mackey did an excellent job of building the world as we went along. This is a distinct place, which is difficult to construct, and sometimes authors get so bogged down in building the land they forget to advance the story. That did not happen here. The pace continued as it should while the world was built around it.
I also felt like the story itself was very engaging. There were some creative ideas here that I hadn't considered before, starting with the idea that Moira had been the victim of these two accidents that had shattered her family. There needed to be a reason, of course, and I feel like we find out enough information about those events later for it to make sense.
There were a few things that I would have like to have had better clarification on. For one thing, the new world involves a new language--although I'm not clear on how they actually also know English so well--and a lot of the words were confusing to me. I don't feel like I learned them well enough to know what they meant when I heard them later in the story. Some of them were very similar to each other.
I can say the same about some of the characters. There ended up being a lot of characters with strange sounding names, particularly towards the end, and some of them started with the same letter, so I couldn't always remember who was who, especially with characters that were mentioned but did not actually appear in the book. Towards the end, I finally decided I had given up on trying to remember who a couple of the characters were and I decided to go ahead and finish the book and if I needed to go back and figure it out later, I would. I didn't have to do that. It might be more important in a sequel, possibly.
On the subject of the sequel, this book was first published in 2014, and while the back matter promises a sequel, to my knowledge, one is not out yet. That seems like a really long time to wait for a sequel to me.
Finally, this story gives new meaning to the phrase "love at first sight." Bel loves Moira immediately and it only takes her half a second to realize she loves him, too. She is young, though, so maybe that is plausible. I am a bit confused about their relationship, however, especially since we find out later that they may actually be related, and that doesn't seem to make a difference to them at all.
Overall, this was a good read. I definitely recommend it to anyone who likes fantasy novels, particularly those set on other planets. It will also help if you like romance. I received a copy of this book in exchange for a review, but you can purchase it here, and the current price is $2.99.
No comments:
Post a Comment