The Last Sun

By: K. D. Edwards

Narrated by: Josh Hurley

Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

In this debut novel and series starter, the last member of a murdered House searches for a missing nobleman, and uncovers clues about his own tortured past.

Rune Saint John, the last child of the fallen Sun Court, is hired to search for Lady Judgment's missing son, Addam, on New Atlantis, the island city where the Atlanteans moved after ordinary humans destroyed their original home.

With his companion and bodyguard, Brand, he questions Addam's relatives and business contacts through the highest ranks of the nobles of New Atlantis. But as they investigate, they uncover more than a missing man: a legendary creature connected to the secret of the massacre of Rune's Court. In looking for Addam, can Rune find the truth behind his family's death and the torments of his past?

Cover design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht/Prometheus Books.

©2018 K. D. Edwards (P)2018 Audible, Inc.

phenomenal

needs a trigger warning but it's fantastic. the sexual assault description, in my opinion, was clearly coming though.

for those looking to read, when he mentions something about a dog mask or a cat mask it's coming. brace yourself. it's graphic, but it's well done. I applaud the author for the accuracies.

narration was fantastic! absolutely amazing.

Loved it!

It has the adventure of YA books but the entertainment and dialogue for all us adults that miss the magic! Plus the queer representation throughout the journey has me running to the next book!

This is fun and series has potential!

So this book was a weird, and strangely delightful surprise? From the cover, and maybe even the blurb, I NEVER would’ve guessed this was urban fantasy. I had assumed all this time that it was high fantasy and it’s one of the reasons I’ve avoided reading this book for so long. I love high fantasy and used to read a lot of it, but I don’t know. It takes me awhile to get into high fantasy so I hadn’t read any in awhile, and I don’t usually read them by audio first. *shrugs* Turns out this book is very urban fantasy but with elements of what I’d consider high fantasy.

Content notes include violence, death, mentions of torture, mentions of abuse, very graphic flashback scenes and mentions of rape of a teenager throughout the book, an eating disorder, being unknowingly drugged, mentions of drugs and slavery, and mentions of contemplating suicide.

For me, personally, I thought parts of this was hard to follow along with just audiobook alone and not being able to follow along with the text (I eventually found the text through my library since the e-book is a very pricey $10), which made it somewhat easier to read. The audiobook’s narrator, Josh Hurley, is a new-to-be narrator but he’s very good as the main character, Rune.

However, there are moments in the audiobook where characters are said to speak softly, and when the narrator tries to do that as well on the audiobook, it just makes it VERY hard to understand and hear what the character is saying? I wasn’t a fan of that since one character does nothing BUT speak quietly. I was wearing Bluetooth over the ear, noise cancellation headphones and could still barely hear what was being said, so that’s my biggest complaint about the audiobook narration.

There’s not much downtime in this book and it’s pretty much nonstop action from one thing to the next, which is great if you’re into that sort of thing. I was mostly fine with it? It’s a very breakneck pace but I was certainly never bored. But I did find that since everything was going so quickly, I was having a bit of a harder time following the mystery plotline of this book. Again, I’m not sure if this would’ve been easier for me if I had read this by text first, but on audio, it was hard to keep track of who was who and how everyone was related to one another.

There’s a lot of worldbuilding throughout so there’s just a lot going on. This series is built a bit, or maybe a lot, from tarot cards but I’m not family with tarot at all so I don’t know if having more of an understanding of tarot would help? I definitely see this series as one I would like to re-read, so maybe I’ll pick up on more the second or third time I read this. But for now, I thought the mystery aspect of this was a bit convoluted and still unsure how everyone was involved, and to what ends. The world is an interesting and strange mix of near mythology (with the lost city of Atlantis?) and the world as we know it mixed together to form a world called New Atlantis and ruled by the Arcana, the ruling houses. There’s a whole magic system I couldn’t explain but magical powers seem to mostly come from discs called sigils that can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Rune has a small collection when compared to the other Arcana’s full armory of sigils. But I do want to know more about Rune and one particular one he has - the cock ring sigil. Did he use it in this book? Like, I think he did?? But tell me more??? Does he ever...take it off? I would assume so considering one of the sex scenes that happened in this book but I have many questions about that one particular sigil.

The strongest part of this book would definitely be the characters. I ADORE Rune. He’s the last of his family line - the Sun throne (hence the book’s title). He and his Companion and bodyguard, Brand, have survived since the fall of the Sun family and household by taking odd jobs as mercenaries to a powerful Arcana called Lord Towers.

What I love about this book is that Rune and Brand are in their 30s, and not in their early twenties. But among their kind, they are young when their kind can live centuries. There’s definitely a sense in this first book that Rune is powerful and might be more powerful than everyone else, given time. But he doesn’t have a big ego and is wonderfully sarcastic and kind, and generally just a good person.

With this first book, I SO want this series to have a polyam relationship between Rune and Brand, a very rich scion named Addam. Scions are like royalty within Arcana? Or at least from what I could understand about this world’s social structure. EVERYONE is attracted to Rune, and I think it’s very interesting that Brand keeps most of those people away from Rune...except for Addam? It’ll be fun to read about how their dynamic grows in the upcoming books. Rune and Brand have been together a long time, and not romantically at all, but they do have a very strong bond between them. Adding Addam to the mix after so long is really fun to read about since Addam is very different from Rune and Brand.

This book isn’t just all fun and games, as much as Rune, Brand, and Addam joke around. It has its very dark moments too. There is a lot of fighting and there is a lot of death. Rune and Max’s past is dark and no doubt we’ll find out even more about that in upcoming books.

There are a lot of men in these books and just not a lot of women? The one woman who had any significance in the story at all had to do with her ties to another man, and it seems to be heavily implied that she had an eating disorder that she hides with magic? So, I wasn’t a fan of how heavily male-centric the story was and would love to see some more women in the book who isn’t, say, just Rune and Brand’s housekeeper or an Arcana they see in passing.

It’s also implied that all the characters are very white, and there doesn’t really seem to be any BIPOC in this book so far, at least not within Rune’s circle of acquaintances and friends. The most we get about a mention of other cultures is if their relics are stolen (Terracota soldiers) or that someone had an “Asian fetish”. So, that’s not great and there’s definitely room for improvement there.

Story-wise, I think this was confusing and introduces a lot in the worldbuilding that I found hard to follow along, at least through audio. But the characters and nonstop action was enough to keep me entertained. Just don’t ask me to explain anything about this world work and who all the characters are. I do like that Rune and Brand seems to have adopted teenage children into their care without much thought. Max and Quinn have been through so much and it’s nice to see them around adult figures who treat them with respect like they’re actually worth caring for.

I saw from the author’s twitter that nine(!!!) books are planned for this series and three books per story arc? Normally, I would bail on a long series, no matter how much I love the characters, but when separated into short story arcs of three books each? I can do that.

Overall, I think this book was a very solid start to a new series and this seems to have been the author’s debut full-length novel? I can see why people have fallen in love with this series and I’ll be diving right into reading the next book.

Wonderful story and great narration

This book is Amazing! The story so vivid and original! The narrator does a great job making you feel like you are really in the story.

This is one of the best fantasy series I have read/listen

Some books hit a core; this one hit mine. It is an incredibly compelling and powerful story, wrapped together in a mantle of fantasy and magic. If you have ever met a victim of a horrendous injustice... This book may help you see them in a different light. Who knows, perhaps the light will shine bright enough for you to see a hero instead of a victim.

Action packed and sexy

I really enjoyed this book. Excellent pacing. The character interactions feel authentic, and the sexy scenes feel natural (and very sexy). The action sequences are really interesting and well imagined. I hope to see more of the sexy good stuff in the sequel.

Last 🌞

can't wait to hear more from this author !!
this was pretty thrilling and funny

New to Me Narrator was Icing onthe Cake

I really could go on and on about how amazing this first installment was but, instead, I want to talk about the Narrator.
This is my first time listening to Josh Hurley and I was very impressed. His capacity for changing the tonal quality of his voice is outstanding. Not in a cartoonish or distracting way either. I don't know if it's used quite enough though, Rune and Brand can sound very similar at times and it's only their cadence and language that makes it possible to differentiate.

Still, I think he's only going to get better. I'm already hunting for other performances.

enjoy the characters

the story held my attention but I really enjoyed the characters. they covered a range of sexuality without it being the main focus. the characters you were supposed to like were emotionally intelligent and funny. an interesting mix of real world and fantasy.

This book was everything I hoped it would be.

I literally couldn't not stop listening, I honestly got lost in not only the words but his voice, in the best way possible of course. I could listen to him read all day, and I did. lol.
once it ended I just hit play again so I could relive just a little longer.
i can't wait to start the next one.
thank you to the author and the reader. As a leo and a fan of tarot I just really enjoyed this story.