Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!
I read The Sun and the Void back in 2024 and really enjoyed it; although I didn’t remember everything about the plot, I figured I would go ahead and pick up the sequel. Thankfully, I didn’t have too much trouble readjusting to the world, but that was the least of my problems. The River and the Star had its moments, but I feel like I read a book from a completely different series.
Now, tread lightly! This review contains spoilers for book one in the series, The Sun and the Void. For my review of book one, click here!
Enjoy this week’s review!
The River and the Star (The Warring Gods, #2) – Gabriela Romero Lacruz
Reina and Eva’s lives will never be the same.
Both of them are now in thrall to separate gods—the god of the Sun and the god of the Void. While Reina revels in a new domestic life with her girlfriend Maior, Eva struggles with the dark powers brewing inside of her. But trouble is on the horizon for Tierra’e Sol, with armies of wretched tinieblas invading the shores. As the gods grow hungrier for power, Reina and Eva must choose which side they belong to—and which side is worth fighting for in the first place.
TW/CW: rape, violence, murder, colonialism, religious bigotry (fictional), descriptions of injury
There’s a specific brand of overlong genre fiction book that just leaves you thinking “this could’ve been an email.” I’m all for languishing and having narrative elements that aren’t necessarily practical, but some books have no business being over 500 pages. Unfortunately, The River and the Star was one of them.
It’s been two years since I read The Sun and the Void, and back then, I remembered really enjoying it, for the most part: the Venezuela-inspired setting, commentary on colonialism and war, compelling characters, artful prose. Somehow, The River and the Star treated all of those positive elements as an afterthought, and I think that’s where Lacruz went wrong. Everything about this novel seemed simultaneously overlong and dialed back: the prose is somewhat duller, the commentary feels less cutting, and everything that made the characters compelling is either rehashed or forgotten entirely. At a certain point, I had to accept that this wouldn’t be a satisfying end to the duology just because Lacruz had drained most of the juice out of the narrative. It’s just a shell of book one.
So what, you might ask, filled that void (no pun intended) left by all that? 500+ pages of unnecessary angst. Half of what “drives” the plot of The River and the Star ended up being overwritten angst and yearning. Listen, I’m all for a good yearn, but this was just too cornily written. It almost made me wonder if there was some pressure on Lacruz to make it more of a romantasy, because I feel like we took a hard left from the nuance of book one into “oooooh he’s a morally gray sexy man 😏 but NOW he’s turning into a DEMON 😏” COME ON. Eva and Javier’s dynamic was strange enough in book one, but I feel like it never got rectified in The River and the Star; all of his borderline abuse got swept under the rug, which, for a novel that wasn’t afraid to condemn the ways that men in positions of power use physical and sexual violence as leverage, felt exceedingly weird. As for Reina and Maior, they were all sunshine, rainbows, and overwritten sex scenes, and until the last 50 pages, quite flat as characters. It’s just such a letdown after how layered they were in book one.
That’s not even acknowledging just how boring the Rahmagut/Ches plot turned out to be. It just felt like a disservice to turn the complexity of The Sun and the Void into a very black-and-white story about people being puppeteered by the gods of light and dark. There’s a fancy macguffin, a Big and Bombastic Climax where The End Of The World Is At Stake, ooooooooh, but everything gets wrapped up in a nice bow at the end. There’s nothing inherently wrong with doing that in a fantasy novel, but given that The Sun and the Void really got into the weeds about power, the nature of revolutions, and, oh, the moral complexity inside each and every person no matter their chosen cause, it felt especially cheap. Plus, while Eva predictably had some serious consequences to being puppeteered by Rahmagut, it’s like Lacruz just straight up forgot that Reina was a vessel for a whole god. If the synopsis didn’t say anything about her being possessed, I would’ve had no clue. Whoops. Seems like a pretty important detail, I dunno…
To be fair, The River and the Star wasn’t all bad. I’m just bitter that a lot of what I loved about The Sun and The Void got chucked in the trash, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy a few moments of it. I think the political intrigue was at least salvaged, even if it was less nuanced than it was in book one. With the plotlines of all the squabbling families and Eva and Reina being vessels for Ches and Rahmagut (which was, in and of itself, an invasion of autonomy), I feel like Lacruz did an excellent job of continuing the thematic thread of the loss of autonomy and independence, both personally and as a vital part of the revolution. Maior’s subplot with Laurel accentuated that wonderfully, and she was one of the few characters that got spared the fate of the others and was developed more meaningfully. As a kind of end to the revolution/liberation plotline, I feel like this was a decently executed thread, even if the rest of the novel didn’t quite hold water.
All in all, a sequel with enough redeeming moments to keep it afloat, but none of the staying power of its predecessor. 3 stars.
The River and the Star is the final book in the Warring Gods duology, which began with The Sun and the Void. She is also the author of the forthcoming novel Song of Fallen Stars, which is Slater for release in 2027.
Today’s song:
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
