Fevered Star

Fevered Star

By Rebecca Roanhorse

The great city of Tova is shattered. The sun is held within the smothering grip of the Crow God’s eclipse, but a comet that marks the death of a ruler and heralds the rise of a new order is imminent.

The Meridian: a land where magic has been codified and the worship of gods suppressed. How do you live when legends come to life, and the faith you had is rewarded?

As sea captain Xiala is swept up in the chaos and currents of change, she finds an unexpected ally in the former Priest of Knives. For the Clan Matriarchs of Tova, tense alliances form as far-flung enemies gather and the war in the heavens is reflected upon the earth.

And for Serapio and Naranpa, both now living avatars, the struggle for free will and personhood in the face of destiny rages. How will Serapio stay human when he is steeped in prophecy and surrounded by those who desire only his power? Is there a future for Naranpa in a transformed Tova without her total destruction?

So, I was pretty jazzed about the first book in the series, Black Sun, yes?  But I'm struggling with Fevered Star because the same issues I had with Black Sun? I have all over again with Fevered Star. Mainly, Fevered Star has all the same problems of too much build up, not enough release.  Both books have various deaths and betrayals and stuff, and there's a clash between gods to keep the readers busy, but it still feels a lot like place-setting.  

Let's recap, since I guess I'm committing to the next book in the series.  Serapio lives (this is apparently Not Part Of The Plan, which is uh, news to me.  Guess my last recap should have been more detailed), and he winds up falling with Okoa and Carrion Crow, before getting overwhelmed by zealots, disbursing himself into birds, and then basically biding time until he can confront Naranpa again. 

Naranpa is also alive (not a surprise, thanks recap!) and comes to in the crypts over at Coyote's Maw. There's some back and forth with her brother, but eventually he convinces her to put herself out there as the Coyote Matron (he does this by promising on her behalf, without talking to her about it first, and then when she says no, his punishment consists of thorns through his dick, which I think is totally unnecessary. Surely there was another way to arrive at this plot point).  She does, and also finds new powers as the actual sun god avatar, and ends up confronting Serapio and telling him instead of trying to kill each other, he needs to unite the whole city to save it from the other enemies, while she goes to learn more about her new god powers, which include turning into a big bird. Oh, and her brother dies, and Naranpa makes his ex-girlfriend the new Coyote Matron.

Xiala wanders around trying to find Serapio, once she realizes he's alive, and ends up falling in, semi-accidentally, with Iktan (who is also alive, but that's only a surprise to some people, I think). Iktan is spying on Carrion Crow when we meet him (I guess he had a sub in at the great deathening, and he's mad that Naranpa "died" so he wants revenge or something) but he and Xiala quickly fall in with a Golden Eagle contingent marching around on the plains.  Xiala gets landsick, the Golden Eagle commander lies to Iktan about Naranpa being alive, and we find out that Xiala left Teek because she thought she killed her mother who (in a surprise to Xiala but definitely not to the readers) is not dead, but in fact shows up in the third act at Hokaia as the queen of Teek (even though they don't have queens, just go with it).  Her mom claps her in irons to take her back to Teek.  Note: I am not entirely sure how this is justified, since the murder she thought she committed clearly wasn't. So what crime was she guilty of? Unclear.  Also, I'm lovin' all these people who are alive when they're not supposed to be.  It's thrilling!

Anyway, also converging on Hokaia is Balam and a contingent from Cuecola.  Now Balam is the plotting one, I guess he set up the Serapio thing to... make Tova vulnerable? And then he was also planning to like, take over the world? All I know is that he's devious and plotting, and chewing on god parts so he can dreamwalk, and he's both committed to another politician that he's going to raze Teek, while also promising to Xiala he'll get her back on a ship if she'll be his spy on the inside.  I assume he did not tell her what happened to his last spy (tortured).  Anyway, Hokaia is where all these random factions are meeting up, Golden Eagle, the Teek contingent, the Cuecola plotters and the new ladies leading Hokaia, after an internal coup. Again, I'm not really sure what everyone's initial plans were or what they're all trying to accomplish now, but I like the energy! 

Oh and Okoa: he fiddle faddles around, feeling bad for himself, torn about helping Serapio (who leads the zealot crows) versus his sister, who leads the normal crows, and then he finds out who in Carrion Crow betrayed his mother but that person is like, immediately murdered, so it's not really a big thing.

Again - we're doing a lot of moving people around with not a lot of results here.  There's machinations out the wazoo, but very little payoff.   The stuff I understood the most, i.e., the attempted coup by Golden Eagle, the clash with the Carrion Crow zealots, all the Tova stuff basically, which is the whole first book, turned out to be sort of pointless, since all the main action now centers around the players meeting in Hokaia.  It's honestly frustrating, not to mention that the MAP is COMPLETELY USELESS.  I have always taken issue with the way Tova, an ostensible inland river city, is made of up islands that are like, perpendicular to each other, not to mention all the mentions of canyons and bridges and borders between zones, which are NOT on the map, and now Naranpa can get from the Maw into the celestial tower, which is three zones over, go through a bunch of books in the library, confront Serapio and get back in nine hours, total??? Is this town like, a town for ants? Irrelevant tangent, sorry, but anyway, we get outside of Tova and the first place we go is NORTH, which is nowhere to be found. Like sure, it's boring and doesn't really matter, but seriously, if you make a map, you need to put the places on it where your characters go!  

So this whole thing is actually pretty frustrating.  That being said, as I mentioned before, I am committed and planning to read the next one, but Roanhorse better start resolving threads, if not outright finishing the series, or I may find myself falling off. This is an exciting world, but my patience is not limitless.  There's no single character that I'm hooked by, so the book itself has to hook me. Let's see if she can stick the landing. 

More map rants: Why is Tova so far upriver? Why aren't the big towns at the deltas, for both Tova and Hokaia? How big is this world supposed to be? It's winter in Tova while it's spring in Hokaia, and apparently Teek is warm all the time, but like, Tova and Hokaia look like they're at the same latitude. I know I was pretty pissed about The Cartographers, but their initial idea to do a bunch of fantasy maps like real places and vice versa was super cool. I wish Fevered Star had a realistic map. 

03: A Book About or Set In A Non-Patriarchal Society