Fevered Star

Rebecca Roanhorse
Completed 3/11/2024, Reviewed 3/11/2024
4 stars

I wish I hadn’t waited so long to read the second book in the “Beneath Earth and Sky” trilogy.  I forgot almost everything about the first book, Black Sun, except that I totally loved it.  I didn’t love this book as much, as I struggled to remember the characters and situations.  Roanhorse does a decent job of reminding you what happened, but even halfway through, I felt like I was missing something.  Fortunately, the prose is so amazing that reading the book is a joy.  And I did remember quite a bit.  I just think I would have enjoyed it better if I hadn’t waited so long.

The book begins on the heels of the cliffhangers of the first book.  Naranpa, the Sun Priest, finds herself prematurely buried and must claw her way out.  While crawling out, after her lamp burns out, she finds her hands glow, for she has become the avatar of the Sun god.  However, she doesn’t know how to use her powers yet.  Her narrative takes her on the journey of self-discovery while continuing to try to bring peace to the clans.  Serapio has become the avatar of the Crow god and continues his quest to kill the Sun Priest.  He struggles with power, trying to figure out how to still be a human while being a living god.  It is sort of the opposite of Nara’s problem.  Xiala, the Teek who brought Serapio by boat to Tova, searches for him, for she has become infatuated with him.  However, fate keeps her from him and she finds herself on a different path in this political nightmare.

As you can tell by the plot summary, there is a lot of journeying in this book, either physical or spiritual.  And that’s my main problem with this book.  It is rather plotless.  There is a lot of political intrigue as the myriad of secondary characters jockey for position in the new order of things, but not a lot actually happens.  I was disappointed in this.  I wanted forward momentum.  Instead, I got a lot of meandering.  So I concede that this novel suffers from middle book syndrome. It exists to position all the characters for the dramatic conclusion in book three.  

However, the book is beautifully written and the world building continues to be outstanding.  I was completely sucked into this alt-pre-Columbian culture and propelled forward by the prose alone.  I didn’t love the book, but I loved reading it.  Since I don’t know much about indigenous cultures of Central and South America, I found the mythology as engrossing as in the first book, perhaps more so since I was rediscovering it.

My reading challenge this year is to stick to books I already have on my Kindle.  However, I’ll probably pick up the final book of the trilogy so that I read it on the heels of this one.  Probably in a month or two.  Roanhorse has become one of my favorite authors and I want to get as full an experience of this world she built before I lose my memory of it.  I give this book four stars out of five even though I was a little lost and there was a lack of a strong plot.  I enjoyed reading it that much, all because Roanhorse has gorgeous prose that gripped my attention.  If her writing wasn’t as strong, I would have only given it three stars.