Scan barcode
A review by siavahda
The Hand of the Sun King: Book One by J.T. Greathouse
2.0
HIGHLIGHTS
~every culture has its own magic
~don’t let them see your scars
~empires are always bad
~magic has rules for a reason
~break them
I don’t think Hand of the Sun King is a bad book. But gods, reading it bored and frustrated me. And maybe it’s that Sun King and I just aren’t a good fit; maybe that’s all it is. But it feels like this is the exact same story I’ve read a thousand times before, without enough of an original take to be worth the bother.
Alder is the son of a Sienese (fantasy Chinese) merchant and a Nayeni mother; the Nayeni are the newest people to be conquered by the Sienese empire, and Nayen is still not fully tamed, with pockets of resistance fighting back against the Sienese overlords. Alder’s grandmother hates the Sienese and despises her daughter for having married one, and although she takes some time to teach Alder a little bit of the Nayeni culture and magic, she leaves while he’s still a child to rejoin the resistance. But Alder’s experiences with magic drive him to learn more about it, and with his grandmother gone, his only option is to excel in the Imperial Examinations and become a Hand of the Emperor, one of the few who have access to and are taught the Empire’s magic.
And it’s all just… I just didn’t care. Objectively, Hand of the Sun King is perfectly decent; the prose isn’t beautiful, but it’s very readable; Alder isn’t a very likable character to begin with, but the first-person perspective was definitely a good choice and his character growth is great; Greathouse plays with themes of colonialism and empire and race, and I didn’t notice any missteps there.
But it was all just so predictable. I could see each twist coming from a mile away, and it’s a running joke in my friends group that I’m someone who never sees the twist coming. Hand of the Sun King follows the path of a thousand other coming-of-age stories, and although the revelations about the nature of magic in the final pages were kind of interesting, nothing else really was. I definitely didn’t think those revelations were worth the effort of reading the three hundred pages leading up to them. There isn’t even any nuance to the colonialist themes, or the nature of the Sienese empire; the empire is just bad, and it’s bad for everyone, and obviously there’s a magical conspiracy at the heart of it, wow look how much I do not care. Obviously Alder turns on the empire in the end; obviously the catalyst for this is also a love interest; obviously Alder is given a magical mentor at the end who teaches him The Secrets Of Everything. None of it was surprising, and the occasional cinematic moment with magic, or poignant scene involving his heritage, couldn’t make up for that.
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!
~every culture has its own magic
~don’t let them see your scars
~empires are always bad
~magic has rules for a reason
~break them
I don’t think Hand of the Sun King is a bad book. But gods, reading it bored and frustrated me. And maybe it’s that Sun King and I just aren’t a good fit; maybe that’s all it is. But it feels like this is the exact same story I’ve read a thousand times before, without enough of an original take to be worth the bother.
Alder is the son of a Sienese (fantasy Chinese) merchant and a Nayeni mother; the Nayeni are the newest people to be conquered by the Sienese empire, and Nayen is still not fully tamed, with pockets of resistance fighting back against the Sienese overlords. Alder’s grandmother hates the Sienese and despises her daughter for having married one, and although she takes some time to teach Alder a little bit of the Nayeni culture and magic, she leaves while he’s still a child to rejoin the resistance. But Alder’s experiences with magic drive him to learn more about it, and with his grandmother gone, his only option is to excel in the Imperial Examinations and become a Hand of the Emperor, one of the few who have access to and are taught the Empire’s magic.
And it’s all just… I just didn’t care. Objectively, Hand of the Sun King is perfectly decent; the prose isn’t beautiful, but it’s very readable; Alder isn’t a very likable character to begin with, but the first-person perspective was definitely a good choice and his character growth is great; Greathouse plays with themes of colonialism and empire and race, and I didn’t notice any missteps there.
But it was all just so predictable. I could see each twist coming from a mile away, and it’s a running joke in my friends group that I’m someone who never sees the twist coming. Hand of the Sun King follows the path of a thousand other coming-of-age stories, and although the revelations about the nature of magic in the final pages were kind of interesting, nothing else really was. I definitely didn’t think those revelations were worth the effort of reading the three hundred pages leading up to them. There isn’t even any nuance to the colonialist themes, or the nature of the Sienese empire; the empire is just bad, and it’s bad for everyone, and obviously there’s a magical conspiracy at the heart of it, wow look how much I do not care. Obviously Alder turns on the empire in the end; obviously the catalyst for this is also a love interest; obviously Alder is given a magical mentor at the end who teaches him The Secrets Of Everything. None of it was surprising, and the occasional cinematic moment with magic, or poignant scene involving his heritage, couldn’t make up for that.
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!