Review: Celestial Monsters

Celestial Monsters by Aiden Thomas
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

It took Aiden Thomas a couple of years to follow up on The Sunbearer Trials and its shockingly dark ending, but now here they come with the duology's conclusion and...unfortunately it left me feeling whelmed at best. Though the first book was a 3.5 rounded up to a 4 because of the ending, this one is for me more of a 2.5 rounded down to a 2 because of its lackluster nature. Thomas had been very open about taking inspiration from Percy Jackson and The Hunger Games both, but for this book, it felt like they were doing The Sun and the Star in a similar environment to the ending of the Quarter Quell from Catching Fire. In other words, dark and murky, but drawn out to over 400 pages, making it unfortunately dully repetitive as well. While Teo, as the protagonist, provides the trans rep that has been Thomas's bread and butter from the start, his story arc (particularly his chemistry-free pairing with Aurelio - seriously, Aurelio is such an unlikable rich brat that I wish he could've died off in the first book) feels oddly low stakes and boring for what's supposed to be an apocalyptic adventure. It's very clear that this series should've been Xio's story from the start, because Xio gets all the interesting stories and character development in this one. For a number of reasons, I've been starting to outgrow Thomas lately as a writer, so I think this might be the last book of theirs I read for a good long while. Even if they do finally write a sequel to Cemetery Boys like they've been hinting for so long.

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