Summary
There are seven Supplicants destined for the Capital, chosen as children by mysterious Voices, who are known as the Sovereigns.
Lynn and Willow go to Sunrise, who are devoted to beginnings and the morning. Fabio and Aidan go to Day, Isobel and Hollie go to Sunset, Yvaine goes to Night.
Will the seven Supplicants pass the Trials and achieve their dreams? Or are they entering a nightmare?
Review
The book first caught my attention when I saw the author describing it as a cozy dystopian book. This is the era of cozy EVERYTHING so I wasn’t surprised but the cover has a dragon! Put cozy and dragon together and you get me salivating all over the book. And this book didn’t disappoint!
We follow 16 year old Isobel who has been chosen by the Sovereigns to go to the Capital and take part in a trial to become Scion. Yes, that’s a lot of words to say she’s a Chosen One. What follows is a fairly typical dystopian story where the wide eyed main character acts as the lens through which we explore this new world. Isobel is kind hearted, empathetic, and bashful, she finds the Capital enchanting but also longs for her home in the Outlandish. She makes friends with the other chosen ones, explores the Capital and prepares for her trial. As the time for the trial approaches, Isobel starts questioning everything—her place in the world, her worthiness as a Supplicant, her future in the Capital. This is a story of one person’s internal journey and finding out what choices you really have in this carefully coordinated world.
The story lives up to the descriptor of cozy. The book is full of daily activities of Isobel and the other Supplicants. We follow Isobel as she explores this new world, learns more about the magic and the Sovereigns, makes new friends, etc. We get scenes with rich descriptions and heartwarming interactions. The magic infused world is vivid and fresh, and the description of the magic will soothe your soul.
Where do the dragons come in, you ask? Well, they are an integral part of the story and I won’t ruin the fun for you by telling you all about them!
The magic in this world is song-based. It’s not the words that cause magic, it’s the vibration of the song. According to the author, they based the magic on Quantum Mechanics. So if you are well versed in Quantum Mechanics, it would be a bonus point in your book. If you’re like me and don’t know anything about Quantum Mechanics, fear not. The lyrical and effervescent writing paint a vivid picture of the scenes with magic, you feel like you have been transported to a different world.
One of the things I didn’t like about this book is the side characters. I didn’t feel they were memorable enough and not very fleshed out. Which is a pity when certain plot point happened and I couldn’t care about the character.
Speaking of plot points, the book doesn’t really have a Big Bad. There are bad things happening but it’s not a single entity. This Kafkaesque feature of the world is something I would like to see more of in the sequel.
The beauty of this book lies in the small things and quiet moments. As one character says:
“That’s for you, a gift for the Sovereigns, for when you get there. It’s so you can tell them that’s what they protect us for, why they keep us safe here. It’s the big things but it’s the little things, too. For us people, it’s the little things that keep us going, the things that we treasure on our deathbed.”
The Sunset soVereign
This book is unlike anything I’ve read in recent years and will cherish the memory of reading it for days to come.
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