#Gabriela Romero-Lacruz

[bookcoversonly]

Title: The Sun and the Void | Author: Gabriela Romero-Lacruz | Publisher: Daphne Press (2023)

[mistwraiths]

3.5 stars

This book wasn't what I expected it to be and I'm honestly a bit conflicted about how I feel overall about it. I thought this would be a tale of two girls wrestling with magic and biddings of gods. It was said somewhere that this included a sapphic romance between servant and heir, and I was excited to read about that as well. None of that happened or at least not really in points that mattered. Part of me feels lied to.

I don't feel completely disappointed though because what I got instead had potential and the premise within was interesting. These two new countries are still basically stabilizing after their revolution. Nozariels, natives to the land, were enslaved and now free but still in one country, not seen or treated as people. Valco, who are also natives to the land, were never enslaved but they have conformed mostly to human culture and are dying out. On top of that, there's the spread of religion that is overtaking the native religion and calling magic and magic do-ers evil. We get Reina, a nozariel, nearly killed and saved by her estranged witch grandmother, and eager to become her successor. And Eva, a valco, who was born into a rich noble family, but her father is not who her mother married, and because she's half (quarter??) valco, she's treated terribly but she's fascinated by magic that comes easy to her and desperate for power and freedom.

It's a shame that the book is brought down because of it's slow and poorly paced in the majority, especially the beginning. The first part of the book is just explaining the world and introducing the characters, with hardly anything important happening. We're told mostly what happens instead of shown anything and time skips weirdly in places and lingers in other places as filler. I would have loved more focus on Eva learning her magic, even developing a correspondence with Javier. I would have liked to see Reina's relationship really grow with Celeste and even her grandmother, perhaps her struggling with the things she asked of her. I would have liked more development on Javier struggling with his curse. If this was maybe broken down in parts and explored, I think it would have been great.

If you're looking for your next sapphic fantasy, please look elsewhere. The development of "romance" in this book is pretty abysmal in my opinion. Reina just felt like she was lusting over any pretty girl she came across. The whole time she was in love with Celeste is pretty much one-sided it felt. The instant attraction to Maior and inevitable growth of "romance" is so unbelievable to me and I do not believe that Reina deserves love or forgiveness from Maior.

I think other than the telling instead of showing and the slowness and bad pacing, the WORST crime of this book is everyone being not only easily manipulated/lied too so OBVIOUSLY is that it's so obvious that the characters look incredibly STUPID when they realize it. No one uses a single fucking brain cell in this book and no one actually communicates anything to anyone until it's far too late. It is COMPLETELY OBVIOUS that the nine wives of the Void god has to be sacrificed. Yet multiple characters are shocked when they learned this?? Like it didn't occur to them that kidnapping these women and sacrificing infants to see if they were blessed by the kidnapped girls blood to see if they're real wasn't leading to them being murdered?? Girls who weren't the reincarnated wives likely died along with those babies. How the actual fuck did they think a BLOOD SACRIFICE wasn't death? But hey endangering babies (and getting some killed) and kidnapping women is fine???

One thing I DID like was that these characters are messy and I didn't always like them or agree with them.

I really liked Maior, that girl deserves happiness and the world. She suffered so much and she got treated so terribly. Kidnapped. Constantly being possessed. She was likely already raped by Enrique. Betrayed by Reina at least once if not twice. Forgotten. Treated terribly. And yet she's strong and brave and capable of being kind.

Honestly, the one who surprised me was Javier. I actually kind of felt bad for him. It's not hard to understand why he's cruel and self-centered when literally no one cares about him and treats him like shit. His mother died when he was extremely young. Enrique is a TERRIBLE role model and was only decent/good to Laurel. Laurel, who yes had a baby, said she couldn't take care of him because of her baby and that he was jealous of Celeste. He was like two???? Maybe 4???? A CHILD who lost his cruel mother??? Maybe love and kindness and acceptance could have grown out of him?? I want to know if it was REALLY Laurel who cursed him and how long he's been suffering because that absolutely can attribute to his whole demeanor if he's literally changing into an actual monster. I can't even fault him for going through with kidnapping those women to cure himself although how he didn't know they'd die is stupid too. But it is nice to know that he didn't want to kill anyone. I also feel very upset that everyone hates him/calls him a monster/blames him for killing Celeste when that wasn't his fault at all. Yes, he's implicit in the kidnapping and the ritual like Reina is. But he was possessed by the demon thing and it wasn't him, and it was Eva's fault.

I did like Eva's story actually a bit better. She was definitely mainly dragged around by circumstances and didn't have much agency in her own story, but I liked her trying to be free and learning magic. I think the learning magic bit was kind glossed over quickly though. Eva was messy a bit because she did some things I thought were stupid and some that were more mean-spirited and other actions. I'm absolutely disappointed in her for messing with void magic and causing Javier's possession to happen and then not taking responsibility for it and letting Javier get beat up and then thrown in a cell and hated for what happened. She's been a coward before though but I did thought she learned. The reveal at the end that Rahmagut is in her was a surprise and I'm interested to see what happens next to her and if Javier will be cured, and if their relationship grows.

Celeste kind of rubbed me the wrong way? She's kind sometimes but she's also a bit self-centered it felt like and kind of rude to Maior for no reason. She also felt dismissive of Reina's problems or feelings to me in a number of ways and I felt like while they would have been great friends, if we could have really seen it instead of shown, Celeste would always see herself as more than Reina?

Reina had so much potential to be my favorite but alas, I mostly did not enjoy her story. Reina's part in the story is so important but overall half the majority of important things she did/done is simply TOLD to us instead of showing us. I thought Reina was going to endure whispering of a dark god at night. No. She gets the same random dream occasionally through the story about walking. There's susurration from her heart or the ore idk but that's not any kind of important whispering I thought was mentioned. The kidnapping girls plot is basically skipped over. We don't even get to see her relationship with her grandmother grow or her learning magic or anything. Instead, when we finish part one and things FINALLY start to happen, she's been forced to find Celeste, the last reincarnated wife of Rahmagut, or she'll die. During her stumbling upon escaped Maior, another reincarnated wife of Rahgamut, she basically tricks her into going with her and getting Celeste. She doesn't tell anyone she's going to DIE until far later. I don't blame her for wanting love or acceptance or family, although is kidnapping girls and endangering and sometimes killing babies worth being a family, but she needed the iridio to live and I can understand that. But she was a terrible "friend" to Maior. Ches choosing her was just okay to me.

The last few chapters were quite exciting and had a lot of reveals that were interesting and I'm cautiously intrigued to see what happens next. Mainly, I just want Maior to get everything good in the world and I want to see Javier healed.

[someonelookingpraediti]

Illumicrate Unboxing

Night and Day June 2023

So, the theme is "Night and Day", and the box is pretty well themed! It's fandom neutral, and everything has a night and day theme, mostly in the book's black and white colour scheme. The items aren't thrilling, though.

The book is "The Sun and the Void" by Gabriela Romero-Lacruz. This, apparently, has an exclusive cover, but I think it's a bit of a cheek to say that, as it's only the BACK cover that is exclusive, the front cover is just the standard version! There's foiling on the front of the hardcase, very basic stencilled edges, and lovely artwork endpapers (the same design on both). The thing is, the Waterstones exclusive is nicer than this. The Waterstones version has incredibly similar foiling, an exclusive colour hardcase, purple sprayed edges, and an exclusive colourway. It's nicer. I'm really surprised that Illumicrate didn't do a better job on this.

The first item, and easily the most impressive, is a set of two bowls. These are the right sort of size for noodles, I'd say. They have very similar designs, and one is black and one is white, representing night and day. The designs really aren't very inspiring, but they're nice bowls, and a quality item to receive.

The next item is a set of two coasters. These are easily the worst items in the box. The sun and moon designs are nice, but they're printed straight on to the coaster, they don't have a proper finish on them? They look really odd like this, and they're probably not drink-proof.

Next is a cushion cover. I actually really like the design on this cushion - it's a moon/night design on one side, and a sun/day design on the other. The problem is that the moon side is purple-blue, and the sun side is pink-orange. So there's just no way it can possibly match anyone's decor - the two sides belong in separate rooms!

The last item is a pair of shoe charms. I really like these, although I'm not sure exactly where to thread them on my laces, I'll have to look at some pictures. I don't think these will go with any of the shoes I have at the moment... but I'm sure I'll use them eventually! I think these are a really cute idea, especially since they're fandom neutral.

I do like this box, I think some of the items are worth having, I just wish the book was a bit more of an exclusive, I think it's a bit embarrassing to have your book subscription box outdone by Waterstones. It seems even worse since like, I think that Illumicrate owns the publishing company that produces this book? So they're making fancier exclusives for other companies to sell, but giving their own subscribers a barely-customised version? There's something not right about that.

[melanielocke]

Here are some of my favorite books I read this year, divided into three categories because I'm not good at choosing.

[bookishlyvintage]

Prettiest Cover on my tbr ~

[alberta-sunrise]

Now reading 📖

[haveyoureadthisqueerbook]

[thestrangerthings]

Fall Special Edition Reading Challenge

Whoops! I've got a big TBR problem and a chunk of that is thanks to my love for special editions. The issue? I haven't read more than half of the SE's I own, and I can't keep allowing myself to purchase more when I don't even know if I like what I have. Plus I'm beyond out of space on my shelves and I think it's about time I start unhauling what I don't like instead of excusing their existence "because they're pretty."

So for this fall/autumn season, from September through November, I'm challenging myself to finish all 19 of my currently unread SE's and decide if they stay or if they go. Technically more books I preordered have arrived since taking these photos, and there are more to be delivered this fall, but I will not be forcing myself to include them.

Have you read any of these? If so, did you enjoy them? Are there some in here you want to read, but haven't had the chance yet?

Feel free to comment or tag the SE you like best just based on looks!

[tbookblurbs]

The Sun and the Void - Gabriela Romero Lacruz (Warring Gods #1)

3.75/5 - Lesbians, Venezuelan/Colombian inspired imagery, very well-rounded characters, pacing is a little off

The Sun and the Void was, by and large, a very good debut novel from Romero Lacruz. The character and interpersonal relationships on page are rich and very clearly developed. The novel takes place in two post-colonial nations, and Romero Lacruz does not shy away from criticizing real world problems through the novel. Everything from forced conversion to Christianity to homophobia and sexism to discrimination and subjugation of native people. Specifically, Pentimiento, the religion most humans follow, is clearly based on Christianity.

The characters themselves feel like very full people and none of them are exclusively good or bad. They all have their moments of poor decision-making and cowardice that are balanced out by their moments of heroism and sacrifice. From a personal standpoint, I found it really difficult to get into the headspace of Eva Kesare, mostly because she annoyed me, but I found Reina fascinating. Her motivations and the danger she has to invite upon herself makes her character and her choices so much more fraught and really pulled me in, especially when looking at her relationship with her grandmother Ursulina.

However, the book itself struggles with some pacing issues. I was around 40% of the way through the book before I felt that we had really found the plot and get underway. The book could've been probably 10-15% shorter than it was if an editor had gone over it. Furthermore, many of Romero Lacruz's plot choices were predictable. This might be because I've read so much fantasy, but by around the halfway point of the book, I predicted the ending. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it means Romero Lacruz's foreshadowing was well incorporated, but I think I would've liked a little more subtlety.

[bloodmaarked]

➸ reading list

just added:

prophet, helen macdonald + sin blanché

our share of night, mariana enriquez

the sun and the void, gabriela romero-lacruz

a greek love: a novel of cuba, zoé valdés

the thursday murder club, richard osman

black england: a forgotten georgian history, gretchen gerzina

black people in the british empire, peter fryer

the end of men, christina sweeney-baird

the actor, chris macdonald

the black queen, jumata emill

[tigger8900]

The Sun and the Void, by Gabriela Romero Lacruz

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Ches, the god of the sun, and Rahmagut, the god of the void, have been absent from the world ever since Ches defeated Rahmagut and sealed him away. But every so many years the celestial phenomenon known as Rahmagut's Claw crosses the night sky, heralding the opportunity to seek the god's favor to satisfy one wish. Such a time is upon the land. Reina, born powerless, seeks strength through her grandmother, a powerful sorceress, but instead winds up indebted to her. At the same time, Eva wants nothing more than to rise to her full potential, but with her family suppressing her true nature she decides to take her life into her own hands. As the stories of these two young women converge upon Rahmagut's tomb, dueling ambitions will determine whether the world continues on in relative peace or if the land will be thrust into chaos.

The world building in this novel is fantastic. It's a fantasy world based on Venezuelan history and folklore, with a magic system centered around using real-world metals as reagents. There were indigenous people who lived in the land before human colonizers arrived, as well as a revolution that brings to mind the rebuffing of certain real-world colonial empires. This is the first book of a series, and honestly it's mostly set-up. But the set-up is so interesting that I didn't even care. I can't say enough how much I love the magic system. It's exactly the right balance of simple and complex.

The dual-PoV was done very well. I found the two voices to be distinct, and the characters were believable. Sometimes they did foolish things — very foolish things — but those mistakes seemed natural. The supporting characters were also excellent(Maior was my favorite, by the end). I'm not sure what I think about Javier. I feel like I know where the author is taking his arc, and I think it's going to annoy me. I'd say he's honestly the biggest weakness of the entire book for me, because he leans on tropes — the sick boy, the jerk, the master manipulator — that I'm not a huge fan of, and yet he's so central. Fortunately he's not the only relationship present, so that softens the annoyance a bit, and the fact that Maior exists almost cancels his unpleasantness out.

The author is also an illustrator and has drawn her five primary characters. They appear in the book, some at the start of part 1 and some at part 2, and can also be viewed on her website. If you're a visual reader like me, I recommend checking all five portraits before you start reading so your brain performance of the book doesn't do any odd recasting. There is sapphic rep here, though in this first book at least it's predominantly incessant longing with some small payoff near the very end. The author claims that the next book will be spicier, so I imagine it will get more development later.

The book has frequent action sequences, mixing physical combat with spellcasting. This is going to be a weird comparison, because the settings and plots are nothing alike — not to mention I trust this author more than I trust Cassandra Clare — but whenever the characters were fighting I kept getting Shadowhunters vibes. In a good way. Don't @ me, I said it was weird.

[larubiatarada]

La cruz del diablo y otras leyendas - Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

[nuttydragonbird]

The Sun and the Void is such a great book! In the beginning I thought I knew where it was going...but boy, did it take me by surprise just about every 100 pages in part 2! Reina and Eva are such cool protagonists and their differences in motivations and thought processes are awesome to see! Also, wlw romance, manipulative witches and deer people, we love to see it!

[elliepassmore]

The Sun and the Void review

4/5 stars Recommended if you like: fantasy, South American fantasy, magic, multiple POVs The premise of this book is really intriguing. A Venezuelan- and Colombian-inspired fantasy with human and non-human races, the rock magic, sword fighting, etc. We're introduced to the idea of rock magic and to the non-human races, nozariels and valcos, fairly early on in the book. The nozariels have scales, a tail, and slit pupils, while the valcos have antlers and reddish irises. Both are stronger and faster than humans and have a natural affinity for magic...but that's pretty much all we learn about them. I wanted to know more about them and their culture, pre-contact and how it's evolved post-contact and post-revolution. Similarly, the magic was interesting to me and I liked the scenes that incorporated it. However, I never feel like I got a good grasp on what each of the different branches of magic were and how they were used. For a book with such an interesting premise, I wanted to see more of those things. While I think both Reina and Eva are supposed to feel like outsiders so they'll have motivations for their actions, I would've liked a moment where one or both of them was able to connect with someone else and have the nozariel/valco heritage explained (or shown) a bit more. As much as I like epic fantasies, I think this book could've done with being shorter. It's over 500 pages, but I really think that could've been reduced by 100-200 pages. Not much happens in the beginning aside from getting to know Eva and Reina and understanding the world the book is set in. The book starts picking up ~100-150 pages in and does keep a pretty fast pace for the rest of it, so I think just trimming the beginning down a bit would've helped prevent the book from feeling like it dragged. I'm also not sure this needed to be two POVs. Reina is clearly the main character of this book and most of the narration and action goes to her. Eva just kind of sits around with her family being miserable for a good portion of the book, then is dragged along by Javier, and then finally toward the end begins showing strong agency. Reina, on the other hand, is immediately shown to be someone willing to take things into her own hands, and her willingness to act continues throughout the book, even when the acts aren't always good and even when those acts are manipulated by others. This, combined with the fact that most of the chapters are from Reina's POV anyway, makes me thing that Eva's could've probably been cut down or out entirely and we could've had that information filled in in a different way. To be fair, Eva does begin to get more interesting ~50-60% of the way in, but that's quite late for someone who's supposed to be one of two main characters. For the characters themselves, Reina is half-nozariel raised by her father after her mother died. At the beginning of the book it's clear that Reina's father has also died at this point and she's journeying to try and meet up with her human grandmother, who has inexplicably reached out after almost 20 years of silence. From the get-go it's clear that Reina is caring and more than a little desperate to find her place in the world. She pretty much immediately falls in love (romantically and familially, respectively) with Celeste and Laurel, and the instantly high levels of devotion to them were a bit weird to me. Nevertheless, Reina's desire to have a family and a place in the world, and to make up for her 'monstrous heart' (do you feel monstrous? No? Okay then) means she doesn't always make the best decisions and is prone to being convinced of things by her grandmother, who very clearly has ulterior motives for everything she does (as much as I very much dislike Reina's grandmother, she really is an excellent character). Eva is in a similar boat, being half-valco and raised by her human family with no contact from the valco side. However, unlike Reina, whose father loved her dearly, Eva's family mostly shuns her and tells her that she should try very very hard to not be a demon spawn. Despite this, Eva does have some backbone and goes to see the local half-valco witch to learn some magic. She's pretty certain that her family's claims are wrong and she's not the devil's spawn, but when things start going a little sideways at home, with signs pointing to Eva, she begins to internalize what her family has been telling her and her backbone shrinks to nothing. It comes back a little bit and Eva is successfully able to start her journey toward power and independence, but once again she comes under the thumb of another...but to be fair, it ends up strengthening her seemingly out of sheer spite. As obnoxious as Javier is, Eva actually turns out better for the most part after meeting him. She still doesn't totally think through her decisions, but at least she's taking the reins and she is still good-hearted and wants to help people. One thing that bothered me about the book is how the human-nozariel-valco relationship is described. The humans came in, made contact with these non-human races (including a third that they hunted to extinction but which I suspect will come up in a later book), and then enslaved only the nozariels. This is despite the fact that they're faster and stronger and more magically inclined than humans. And why only the nozariels? Well, the valcos were a more war-oriented race and thus the humans largely left them alone. *Cue eyeroll* That whole description just feels very off to me and feels very hand-wavey-"well you should've fought harder if you didn't want to be a slave." Overall the premise of this book was pretty interesting but the book itself kind of took a while to get started and then once it did it didn't really focus on some of the more interesting aspects of the premise. I liked Reina as a character, even when she was making bad decisions, so I'm glad she gets the most page time.

[beckysbook5]

The Sun and the Void by Gabriela Romero-Lacruz - ARC Review!

Reina is desperate. Stuck living on the edges of society, her only salvation lies in an invitation from a grandmother she’s never known. But the journey is dangerous, and prayer can’t always avert disaster. Attacked by creatures that stalk the region, Reina is on the verge of death until her grandmother, a dark sorceress, intervenes. Now dependent on the Doña’s magic for her life, Reina will do…

[ordinarily-unordinary]

The Sun and the Void

hi Just picked up The Sun and the Void by Gabriela Romero Lacruz from my local bookstore and after checking the site for it I did see that there was a cw for sexually explicit material. if someone has read this book I need you to tell me where it is in the book so I can skip it because I personally really don't like reading spicy scenes but I still want to read the book.