Review: Unconquerable Sun

Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I started this book thinking it was going to be a damn good one - a lavishly designed space opera in a pseudo-Asian setting, with the main character's nation being pretty clearly China-inspired (Elliott apparently got a lot of early readers across numerous Asian cultures, if the acknowledgments are anything to go by), and a lot of promising comparisons to Princess Leia, Alexander the Great, etc. But then, as the book goes on, we get introduced to a second POV. And while Sun herself is a pretty nice and engaging character, Elliott gives the privilege of first-person POV to Persephone instead, and repeatedly tries to hype her up with every chapter she's in being headed with some variation of "In which the wily Persephone..." Honestly, the ridiculous shilling of a character I couldn't bloodydamn stand made me want to quit the book half the time, and really dragged down my enjoyment of the story single-handedly. If this had just been Sun's story, maybe I'd be a lot more hyped for the promised two sequels listed on one of the book's early pages. But now I just feel like this one was more hype-damaged than anything else.

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