Really solid space opera chronicling societies sprung from Mother Earth in a far distant past. A heady mix of science fiction and fantasy, military adventure and political intrigue, this story takes a minute to get revved up, and then plows forward at a breakneck pace.

I really enjoyed the shifting POV, detailed backstories and exquisite world building in these books. The characters are larger than life and still relatable. The seamless inclusion of sexual and gender fluidity is a boon to a diversifying reader.

Periodic use of “off screen action” to propel the narrative is unfortunately a bit distracting. With so much time given to each interaction on the page, I would have thought an omniscient view into these moments would have detracted from the flow of the plot. And even with substantial setbacks, I sometimes wondered at the invulnerability of Sun and the way she seems to almost function in a godlike manner, always having the upper hand. But, in general, this lends additional gravitas to the fantastical side of the series.

I’m looking forward to continuing the story with book 3!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my free copy. These opinions are my own.

Furious Heaven is a book that proves to me that, yes, even when it’s an author you like, it is possible for a book to be too long. And that’s exactly what I found to be the case here. As much as I enjoy Kate Elliott’s works, this one dragged on too much, such that I didn’t really care about where it was headed. I added the final book of the series to my to read list, sure, but it’s entirely possible I’ll rethink that — especially if there’s another 2- or 3-year wait for it for me to forget everything that’s come before.

Because I think that’s where this book fell down for me. It was long and it dragged. I knew to expect this after the first book but, where that was slow, it was still less than 600 pages. This was slow and nearly 1000 of them (ebook-wise, at least). And god but I felt every single one of them. I’m not even convinced the story told in this book needed that many pages either. “Non-stop action”, the blurb claimed. I raise you this: it never felt like the action even started. Miraculously (or not?), even the battle scenes felt drawn out and unexciting.

Part of this was probably because I felt nothing for the characters. It’s a big cast to find yourself caring about, so inevitably there would be one or two that I liked more than the others, except that never happened. Probably this was also the case with the first book, although I hardly remember that clearly (I’ll come back to this). Somehow, the characters, despite being perfectly well written, did not compel me. So, I wasn’t that invested in what happened to them (some more than others — there were one or two POVs that seemed entirely spurious to me, although I see how they fit in eventually).

Actually, I think there was a two-way relationship between the pacing and characters: if I had liked the characters, I could have stood the pacing, but there was so much emphasis on the pacing and the politicking going on, that I didn’t like the characters. If that makes any sort of sense. I’m trying to say that it felt like more thought was gone into the politics and battles than the characters who should have been driving it all. And because the plot was so slow, built around those politics, the lack of characters I could fully engage with was a detriment to the book.

All of this was only exacerbated by the fact that I had forgotten everything about book one by the time I got to this one. I would truly love if publishers started putting recaps at the beginnings of sequels, since I so rarely go straight into a sequel (unless it’s a reread with the purpose of recalling the plot…) and when there’s a 3-year wait in between, with books the length they are? So, yeah. I remembered pretty much nothing, and that definitely impacted on my initial enjoyment of the book, simply through having to orient myself over again.

So, you’re probably wondering just why this has all merited a three-star rating. That’s because, despite all my complaining, this is still a good book. I’m wavering a little as to whether I can truly say I enjoyed it, but the writing was good, and certain aspects of it still compelled me to an extent. Whether I continue the series, as I said at the start, will probably come down to my mood come 2025 or whenever the next book is out. We’ll see. A lot can change in 2 years after all.

This is the third time I have tried to post a review of this title. I am not sure why it is not sticking.
They get shorter each time I re write it.
Suffice to say that this middle book in a trilogy is even better than the first. I loved it.

Kate Elliott’s Furious Heaven is a big, richly detailed reworking in space of the career of Alexander the Great, though you don’t need to know that background to enjoy this epic space adventure. At more than 700 pages, it’s long but never tedious, and each chapter repays close reading. In this volume Sun Shan, daughter of the ruthless and brilliantly strategic Eirene, takes her place as queen-marshal of Chaonia, then at once sets in motion her greatest challenge, conquering the extensive and much richer Phene empire. Furious Heaven picks up a few weeks after the ending of Unconquerable Sun, and it brilliantly interweaves character studies with palace intrigue, a study in power, deep action and the realistic staging of many battle scenes.

As the story opens, we see Sun, still a princess, drilling her companions, each of whom is the scion of one of the great houses of Chaonia, on the guiding precepts of the republic’s culture. (This is a republic in name only since it is ruled by a monarch supported by a smalll number of aristocratic families.) These scenes establish the dramatic interplay among the companions while bringing out a critical theme underlying the series, the role of destiny.

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We see Sun’s world in Furious Heaven through many perspectives, but only one in the first person, that of Persephone Lee. She is the wry prankster who has trouble taking philosophical discussions seriously but proves herself intrepid in battle and clever in strategy. What strikes me about these early scenes is how performative life is in this aristocratic court. The companions try to shine with their knowledge, their impeccable good looks or their fame as literal performers in the public eye. For the “wasp” cameras of the Channel Idol (the universal web that everyone is wired into) continually record all their public appearances.Persephone is the one who sees through the ingratiating efforts of her peers and constantly makes fun of them. Kate Elliott is especially brilliant at capturing those brief moments that reveal so much about each character, and Persephone is her most mordant critic.

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Once the action kicks into high gear after Sun ascends to power, it is non-stop and brilliantly executed, whether at the scale of space battles in the attack on the Phene empire, the hand-to-hand combat on a single ship or an individual confrontation. They are all gripping. This is no sagging middle book of a trilogy but a completely compelling chapter in the life of Sun and the myriad people influenced and changed forever by her conquests. There’s plenty of intricate palace intrigue and elaborate scenarios of betrayal and war that come to a powerful climax as Sun tries to achieve her impossible goal of challenging fate itself. Furious Heaven is that rare space adventure that is as interesting for its characters as for its action.

My relationship with Furious Heaven is slightly complicated for a DNF (I read to the 58% mark, when my usual cut-off point is 20% - I really tried here!) in that I don’t actually think it’s a bad book. It’s simply one that I am choosing not to continue.

I think it’s very deliberate on Elliott’s part, but I just couldn’t stomach Sun, the main character, anymore. In book one, she craved power; in this book, she gets it, and what she does with it isn’t surprising – she doesn’t suddenly become someone different, all that she does is completely in-character. But…how do I put this?

In book one, the skirmishes/battles that Sun leads are all defensive or reactionary. But here she goes on the offensive, hard, and I just couldn’t get behind that. I kept asking myself why she was doing this, and I know why – for glory – but it didn’t make sense to me. Not in the sense that Elliott has failed to set up Sun’s motivations or convey them, but in the sense that I felt a…naive distress, I guess. It’s not about protecting her people! It’s not about vital resources! It’s not even about territory. By any reasonable metric, it’s completely pointless violence and death on a massive scale.

And it turns out – shocker, I know – that I really hate that.

But! And this is important – but, I think I’m supposed to. I don’t think Elliott is trying to make us buy into the whole for the glory! thing. I don’t think we’re supposed to approve of what Sun is doing. It was an undercurrent in Unconquerable Sun, but I don’t think I’m imagining that Furious Heaven is more overt in its critique of Chaonia – I think it’s very intentional. I think Elliott knows what she’s doing, and is in complete control. This isn’t an issue of the story being poorly written.

It’s just that Sun is no longer anyone I want to follow.

That being said, issues with choppy, over-explanatory dialogue and occasional awkward info-dumps persist. I’m baffled, because I’ve read dozens of Elliott’s books and haven’t seen these problems in her work before this trilogy.

I admittedly was not expecting how long this book was, and it has been long enough since I read Unconquerable Sun that I had to go back and remind myself of some of the characters and the overall plot. But once I had that, we get a great combination of the military campaign in space, more of the international and national political maneuvering, and more of the weaving of the story of Alexander the Great against Sun and her companions' stories. We also get fun new characters, more expansion on threads from the last book, and apparently this will be a trilogy, so I'm interested to see how all of this winds up. Pick it up if you're looking for a good old fashioned space campaign.

Intricate and thrilling, Kate Elliott's Furious Heaven reframes history's most legendary conqueror in a brand new galaxy, lights the fuse, and blasts off on an edge-of-your-seat adventure. Enthralling series you simply have to read.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this novel!

An enjoyable sequel to our gender-swapped Alexander the Great story! Reading the first volume is a must (very little will make sense otherwise) and I'm glad I re-read Unconquerable Sun immediately before this one so I felt current on the characters and events. We pick up here shortly after its conclusion, and jump immediately into the action. The book follows the same general track as the first volume, with battle action and military campaigns interspersed with strategic planning, occasional interludes away from battle, and all seven of Sun's companions and her Gatoi bodyguard flung across known space on various missions. If you're familiar with Alexander the Great's story, a couple of the plot points in here won't be a surprise to you, but it's definitely an engaging read nonetheless.

The worldbuilding gets significantly expanded in this volume, and with more characters added to the central cast as well as the increased scope of events we get a bit less time with each, although it's always a delight to see Persephone, Hetty, and others (especially one of Sun's newly introduced companions, Makinde). Apama's backstory and plotline also get quite a bit more development in this novel, and it's really interesting to have a view from the Phene side of the conflict. The pacing can be a bit slow; goodreads says this release will be 400 pages, which is about 150 pages shorter than Unconquerable Sun. My kindle ARC didn't have page numbers but it ABSOLUTELY did not read any shorter-in fact it felt like a longer book. If it is longer in publication then that's understandable; if it really is only 400 pages, I would be more critical of the pace of the storytelling. The book is definitely a slow burn that builds momentum as the story goes on.

In summary, a sprawling sequel but it was a delight to return to this world and its many characters-looking forward to the release of the third volume!

This sequel was a long time coming, and it was worth the wait. Picking up right where Unconquerable Sun left off, Furious Heaven throws readers back into the action, as Sun and her Companions try to keep the momentum from their victories in the first book. The scope of this book is much bigger and more ambitious than the first, with a stronger focus on the wider world, politics, and warfare. This also means the cast of characters-already large-grew, many of which also have pov chapters. Trying to give all these characters face time seemed to be a struggle, as there were some Companions that, while present and doing important things, never had pov chapters and I often forgot they were there. I also had a hard time following the pov shifts at times, there's really no warning and outside of Perse (who is the only one in first person) all of the narration sounds the same until someone is named to takes action. While things came together in the end and set up book 3 very well, I often felt that the plot was wandering and cramming too many elements into it, making it hard to follow at times.

Wow, what a chewy novel. This is a continuation of Unconquerable Sun, a space opera featuring a gender-bent born-to-lead character named Sun who is based on Alexander the Great. I don't know the history of Alexander super well, but I enjoyed this continuation of the story. The political plots/front of war continues to spread outward from the borders of the Empire, but I really loved how we got to know several of the Companions much better in this novel. If you enjoyed book 1, you're definitely going to want to continue into this novel! My primary concern is that it's slow to start, but the momentum finally builds until BAM everything really starts moving.

I was awarded an eARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I requested a digital copy in order to sample the prose on my phone (since I don't have a eReader) before requesting a physical copy for review. My review will be based on the physical ARC I read (if I qualify)

As a teenager, I vowed never to read a book that said "epic" on the cover. I was tired of stories that stacked cliffhanger on cliffhanger, accumulating points of view without resolution. I read Kate Elliott's Furious Heaven, the sequel to Unconquerable Sun, without knowing the final cover design, so I don't know whether reading it violated my vow. But I can report that Furious Heaven is a rare thing: a sprawling, multistranded story about galactic conquest that reaches a satisfying resolution in two volumes. There could be a sequel--and indeed, it seems that Elliott is planning one--but there doesn't have to be. That's a difficult balance to strike!

Furious Heaven begins with a hefty dose of dynastic plotting. Princess Sun, the story's Alexander the Great equivalent, is her mother's most likely heir, but her succession is not inevitable, and plenty of people both within and outside the Republic of Chaonia would love to introduce some chaos. Sun's new Companion, the brash Persephone, is impatient with politics, but she's more embedded in systems of privilege than she recognizes. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Apama at Sabao, who wanted to be an ordinary fighter pilot, is stuck dancing attendance on her father, one of the cabal of people with two literal faces that rules her empire. Apama's father wields power in a way that's most terrifying for its boringness--he doesn't need to posture villainously when he can simply command.

There's a point in Furious Heaven where Sun concludes that sustained aggression is safer than standing still. I tore through the book's second half in a rush, caught up in Sun's momentum. Elliott does a phenomenal job of conveying both the strategic logic and its contingency on tiny circumstance. Sun is successful despite and because of the risks she takes.

It’s been a long time coming but Furious Heaven is well worth the wait. The book picks up right where its predecessor left off and, given the length of time between this volume and Unconquerable Sun, it may take a few pages to reconnect with the several lead characters. For me, it was fortunate that Elliot leads with a first-person Persephone chapter, which is typically distinctive of voice, wry, and engaging. The chapter headings, reminiscent of an 18th novel but wittily contemporaneous, are a pleasure in and of themselves. This is space opera at its well-written finest. The plot features action and intrigue, complex plotting, sympathetic characters on both sides of the conflict, and a complicated universe that is revealed organically, rather than though data dumps.

Elliot is a wonderful writer. Her action scenes are breathless. Her characters are sympathetic. She can turn an elegant phrase. Once you get sucked in, you cannot stop reading the energetic, superbly paced chapters. This is a long book but never a slow book, despite the complexity of multiple viewpoints and sophisticated politics. Dare I say, this is what Dune could have been?

I look forward to the concluding volume, though nervously, knowing that the historical basis for Princess Sun died young and short of achieving his vision. I hope the spontaneous and brilliant Sun fares better. I know whatever the ending will be, it will be sophisticated and surprising.

Thank you to Macmillan-Tor/Forge, Tor Books, and NetGalley for the chance to read this book! I owe all firstborns, secondborns, later-borns, souls, future travels, and all else to you. This is my first Tor e-galley and thus I will treasure it forever.

Content warnings for this book include: paternal infanticide (coerced), and abusive parents.

I was an huge fan of the first book in the series, Unconquerable Sun, and I was thrilled to see Furious Heaven pop up on NetGalley, and even more exuberant to see I had been accepted. This was a book I both very much looked forward to reading, and was apprehensive [positive] in equal measures; as a social studies student teacher I know when Philip II dies and I was dreading my own emotional reaction as well as Sun's.

Kate Elliot writes with her usual slow build, of great gear circles winding together one gear at a time to draw steadily closer and closer to a large-spanning climax. With multiple points of view across different perspectives on the great interspace wars, through Sun's friends, allies, and rivals, the world continues to deepen and expand with each chapter. Some examples of these include getting to know more of the Phene Empire and the Rider system, Apama's friends, family and struggles....

Expansive and slow-burning, this second book of the Sun trilogy is very much a match for our historical Alexander, and his companions. We've met Hephaestion, we've gotten to know Barsine, and I eagerly await the third and concluding book. This is absolutely a book I'll be happy to recommend to my history appreciators!

I was so happy to see another installment of the Sun Chronicles on the bookish horizon. The dizzying number of characters with complicated political and personal alliances, double-crosses, and secret loyalties introduced in Unconquerable Sun have all returned, with more joining and adding to the maze. Palace intrigue is everything in this installment--even before a leader is assassinated--and new worlds are visited.

It's difficult to review a book that in its structure, pacing, and world-building, reminds me of the second time I read Dune (the first time I tried I gave up). Elliott knows the politics of her universe so well and lingers on various cultural norms and their histories and implications as much as she does the battles whether in space or on planets. It can slow the reader down, but still satisfies. You want to know both what happens next and also to pull back the curtain a little more to see why anything has happened at all.

A thoroughly enjoyable read.