Ignite the Sun by Hannah Howard was an exciting Fantasy novel. The story starts off quickly and doesn’t slow down. I listened to the audiobook in one straight sitting.

Siria finds out very early on that she is not fully who she believes she is and continuously questions who she can trust and what she can believe. While Siria is “Team Light” she is up against “Team Darkness,” the witch Queen Iyzabel. I enjoyed the untypical mythology in this story which lended a uniqueness to this book. I was so- so on the relationship. I would have liked to have seen a slower build up to the characters falling for each other. Lastly, I enjoyed the world but felt we didn’t get to learn enough about it. I would have liked to have seen much more world building.

I thoroughly enjoyed the narration by McKenzie Fetters. I found her voices unique and distinct.

I received an advanced audiobook from Blink through NetGalley. All opinions are 100% my own.

I want to give this book more stars but in the end it fell a little flat for me.

It certainly had a lot of potential, I loved the premise and the world building was very solid. Set in a kingdom that has quite literally been plunged into darkness by an evil queen, Siria believes she is a normal girl but soon discovers she is the last sunchild and able to draw power from the sun. She then has to take a journey, joined by a host of others from mages to nymphs to banshees, to restore the sun and destroy the regime. This felt like a fresh idea in the world of fantasy novels, the rules of magic were well established and it was interesting to see a different take on familiar mythological elements.

Despite these positives, I was disappointed in a lot of other areas. The plot felt rushed and the characters underdeveloped. The villain of the piece is particularly underwhelming with a weak backstory introduced towards the end, almost as a throwaway, and lacking in menace.. In general, the supporting characters are each given good backgrounds but I don’t think they were really utilised enough. The romance between Siria and Lindon was sweet but didn’t add much to the story.

I would say this is more on the teen end of the Young Adult market and a bit underdeveloped for the older reader. Overall, I am interested to see how this author progresses, she came up with a great concept and world for her debut and I think there’s certainly potential there.

I listened to the audiobook version of this book and perhaps that affected my experience. I found the narrator a bit distracting and her voices rather exaggerated.

Thank you to Netgalley And the publishers for an advance copy of the audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to the publisher for providing an ARC of the audiobook edition of Ignite the Sun in exchange for an honest review.
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Ignite the Sun's plot, world, and magic system are incredible, they're just told through an unoriginal narrative and an annoy-at-best protagonist. Our MC suffers from world-revolves-around-me-itis. She's saved by a group of rebels and spends the entire first leg of their journey complaining about how much walking their doing. My favourite character was definitely Marrow who just fully put her in her place for it but unfortunately, no one else does. Don't get me wrong, that 'I'm out of my element let me complain about something dumb while running for my life' thing can be done right, but only when it's a point of growth. Ignite the Sun consistantly reminds you that Siria's 'not like the other rich girls' so suddenly having her act really pampered and prissy just didn't make any sense and since she already started off appreciating the little things you can't exactly write an arc where she learns to do that.

Above all, the pacing was just too off. The chapters are incredibly short which I usually love but this isn't a fast paced story. It takes place over multiple weeks but we'd get like 10 chapters within a day or two then a quick "and then 2 weeks happened and nothing changed." I truly don't get why the journey wasn't just made shorter (that way I could have also been spared Siria's complaining). I thought if anything the length was there to help with character growth (which we see very little of as I previously mentioned) or to make her budding romance more believable but the problem is, it isn't a 'budding romance'.

Her love interest is someone she knew as a child but they start off having not talked for a while. At first I was expecting it to grow into a romance but instead she very quickly goes "yup. I'm in love with him." I love stories where we watch characters fall in love. I love stories where we watch two characters already established to be in love grow together. Choosing to pull a "uhhh they were childhood best friends but it's been a few years so their chemistry is a little awkward but also they're going to be in love right away and you have to trust me because they were childhood friends" felt like a weird choice.

Audiobook wise, our narrator was lovely. Perhaps a little over dramatic at times but I'm all for over the top narration for fantasies.