Review: The Sun and the Star

 So just to get this out of the way: this book did not quite nail Riordan’s usual snappy dialogue and crying-laughing sense of humor. It definitely tried, but one of the risks of cowriting is always going to be the different voices getting mushed up and lost in one another, and there’s a little bit of that here. But what very much didn’t get lost was the original heart of the Percy Jackson books that we all fell in love with: a general sense of joy, compassion, and hope. Riordan has always made a point of making marginalized identities be an integral part of his world, not an afterthought, and while this hasn’t always been perfect it has always, to me, made his world stand out from series and creators who fling ‘diversity’ at their books without actually considering the way that diversity must impact their world – see my review of “Fairy Tale” for example. And this book isn’t any exception, although it’s maybe more subtle; it does such a good job of blending Nico and Will’s experiences as queer people into the overall context of the world and story, without making them the only plot point in their relationship.

Which brings me to another thing that the entire CHB universe and this book both do so well: making relationships with young people actually feel like relationships with young people. Nico and Will’s relationship felt more relatable to me than just about any romantic relationship I’ve read about recently. They misunderstood each other, they had insecurities, and they had to learn that relationships require constant effort, but we also got to see a window into their feelings for one another. Also, it made me so happy to read the little stories about their relationship. Basically the book was full of queer joy (and lots of other joy – I’m looking at the troglodytes), and even if the execution wasn’t absolutely perfect, it still made me really happy.