Red City.

Wow, I have seen so many mixed reviews on this on this book but I was completely blown away.

First off, third person is fantastic in this story. We follow two characters who are childhood friends but are unknowingly in opposite syndicates in the illusive sand industry. The magic system is really cool, Alchemy, allows people to be able to transform any matter into different materials but uses a fragment of their soul. The applications are really cool and numerous and I really enjoyed this. The storytelling was very vivid in my head and could really visualize it.

The world reminds me of Jady City or a godfather style story and I ATE IT UP.

The third person style really works for me here where the story is elevated and it made me love the characters even more. The romance and yearning in this book was so good! I would not consider this a romantasy cause I don't feel the whole point of the plot was the romance.

It had high stakes, cool magic, steamy romance, and characters to love.

I CANNOT WAIT FOR BOOK TWO.

This book is being slept on and is CRIMINALLY underhyped. GO READ IT.

This is officially on Alysha's hype team must read.

If you use the link on this to buy the book, I do get commision just fyi!

Is the Suneater series worth the read?

Sometimes I feel like I am the only one who liked this series. Most opinions seem to either love this series or hate it. I have pretty neutral feelings on it and wanted to share some of the pros and cons and see if this was a series for you (cause like, buying and reading books are huge money and time investments). Spoiler free as usual!

First of a tiny blurb- Hadrian is a son of a young lord in a planet and galaxy far away from earth. There are varying degrees of human bioengineering and the biggest threat to mankind is cielcin-which are aliens. There is a ruling class with a governing religious body. The story is told top us by Hadrian in the present, recounting his story of how he defeated the cielcin and became the sun eater. On paper this story has everything that I would want in a series.

Pros: Christopher Roucchio has great world building, prose and dialogue. His writing is excellent and I will read more from him. His story is layered and complex and has a lot of court and political intrigue. The fight scenes are long and drawn out, but many readers love that. This really is a character study on Hadrian and it follows him intimately for centuries (a la Fitz from Assassins apprentice).

Cons: There are plots, scene, and phrases that are repetitive. Each book follows a similar formula that can get redundant. His scifi series turns into sci-fantasy and has a lot of talk about gods and true gods and models the Catholic religion. For some readers this is fine, for me I prefer my scifi to not have religious entities in it. If it was a fantasy book I would feel differently about this. Hadrian is the only character that gets any sort of depth in this series, so if you aren't a fan of him, you won't be a fan of the series. The plot can be drawn out and redundant so makes it for a longer reader and "slower" paced tale.

So should you read it? Maybe. I for sure do not think this series is for the masses, but reader if you're intrigued by any of this at all, given either a try! The final book in the series comes out 11/18/2025.