{"id":22701,"date":"2022-06-09T09:00:44","date_gmt":"2022-06-09T16:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=22701"},"modified":"2022-06-03T09:52:35","modified_gmt":"2022-06-03T16:52:35","slug":"new-book-the-sunbearer-trials-takes-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2022\/06\/09\/new-book-the-sunbearer-trials-takes-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"New book The Sunbearer Trials<\/em> takes flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

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New York Times<\/em> bestselling author Aiden Thomas is taking his first crack at a multi-book series with his Mexican-inspired fantasy novel The Sunbearer Trials<\/i>. The book follows Teo, a 17-year-old semidi\u00f3s who is chosen by the sun god Sol to compete in the deadly decennial Sunbearer Trials. To win the trials is a great honour, but to lose is the greatest honour of all, for the loser must sacrifice their body to Sol so that they can hold back the evil Obsidian gods for another 10 years.<\/p>\n

This book reminds me of The Hunger Games<\/i> in the best way possible\u2014but with significantly less gore. Thomas does an excellent job of immersing the reader in the mythology and mechanics of the story\u2019s world.<\/p>\n

Teo is the trans son of the goddess of birds, Quetzal. This gives him special abilities, like being able to fly with his bird-like wings. One of the most interesting parts of this book was learning about the different gods and semidioses\u2014especially their powers. All of the characters are intriguing and are fleshed out in a way that feels real; it left me wanting to dig deeper into each of their lives to find what makes them tick.<\/p>\n

I love that Thomas drew inspiration from Mexican mythology and the present day but still made the world distinctly his own. Right from the get-go, Teo\u2019s world bursts with colour and light.<\/p>\n

Beyond the vivid imagery, I especially like the choices Thomas made when it came to the world\u2019s attitude towards gender and sexuality. While Teo does still struggle with dysphoria at points throughout the novel, his society is accepting of trans people. There\u2019s even a completely normalized \u201cgender confirmation ceremony\u201d in which a newly out trans person is acknowledged and celebrated with the community, like a birthday. In addition to Teo, there are many other people of various genders and sexualities\u2014even the sun god is non-binary.<\/p>\n

Now, while I did enjoy this book, there were a few drawbacks. The beginning moves at a breakneck pace, so much so that I was left feeling lost in a deluge of character descriptions and speedy transitions. Additionally, Teo did read a bit younger than what I would expect from a 17-year-old. But don\u2019t let this dissuade you\u2014I found that these issues improved as the story picked up with the start of the Trials.<\/p>\n

The Sunbearer Trials<\/i> is a vivid story filled with action, friendships, and personal growth. I recommend this to anyone looking for rich mythology and superpowered teens fighting for glory and survival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York Times bestselling author Aiden Thomas is taking his first crack at a multi-book series with his Mexican-inspired fantasy novel The Sunbearer Trials. The book follows Teo, a 17-year-old semidi\u00f3s who is chosen by the sun god Sol to compete in the deadly decennial Sunbearer Trials. To win the trials is a great honour, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22703,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,269],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-june-8-22"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22701"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22721,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22701\/revisions\/22721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}