“...all peoples of the Meridian have banned human sacrifice. It is considered uncivilized, barbaric...Too powerful for humans. Best we stick to sacrificing people the old ways, with wars and famine and despot rulers.” [p. 297]
Black Sun (first of a duology) is set in a world with a pre-Columbian, Mesoamerican flavour. There are four focal characters: Naranpa, the Sun Priest, who grew up in the squalor of the Maw; Xiala, a Teek sea captain regarded as not quite human; Okoa, a warrior prince called back to the city of Tova after the death of his mother; and Serapio, whose own mother made him into a god, or the vessel for one. All are drawn towards Tova, for the Convergence -- a spiritually-significant eclipse which may revive the fortunes of the Carrion Crow clan, still recovering from the Night of Knives massacre a generation before the novel opens.
Roanhorse has chosen her viewpoint characters to display the different facets of Meridian life: their voices are distinct, and their stories very different. I found Xiala the most intriguing of the protagonists, with her Teek magic, her pain at being exiled from her people, and her weakness for casual sex and strong liquor. Naranpa's rise from obscurity to power was mostly backstory, and her narrative focussed on the political machinations of the priesthood, and her attempts to reform it. (Some interesting interactions with her former lover, though.) Serapio was fascinating, but a lot of his story was told in flashbacks to his youth and training: most of his most powerful scenes were told from other perspectives. Okoa, rider of the giant crow Benundah, felt the least-developed of the protagonists, but I suspect he'll have a larger role in the second book.
This may have been a case of 'right book, wrong time': I found the worldbuilding, the diversity, and the character interaction fascinating, but I don't think I gave the novel as much attention as it deserved (and needed). Still, I'll revisit it before I read the sequel, Fevered Star.
One minor niggle: 'acre' is a measure of area, not distance, so a circle can't be 'two acres in diameter'.
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