North Star Guide Me Home by Jo Spurrier – review

This review forms part of my contribution to the Australian Women Writers 2014 Reading Challenge. All my 2014 AWWC reviews can be found here.



North Star Guide Me Home

North Star Guide Me Home by Jo Spurrier is the third book in the Children of the Black Sun trilogy. You can read my review of the first book, Winter Be My Shieldhere and the second, Black Sun Light My Way, here. There are some spoilers for the first two books in this review, so if you haven’t started on the trilogy yet, you might want to wait until you’ve read the first two books before reading this review.

The Blood Mage Kell, who loomed so large in the first two books, is gone and the three mages (Isidro, Sierra and Rasten) have to come to terms with what their lives are without him in them. I mentioned in the review of the second book that I was surprised by the ending but didn’t mention what that ending was for fear of spoilers. The death of Kell was that ending – I had assumed that at least one thread of the story would have focused on Kell right until the end of the trilogy. However, in retrospect, killing Kell in the second book made sense. It was clear that Sierra and Rasten wouldn’t really be able move on without confronting Kell, and their stories (in particular Rasten’s) faced limitations without moving through that issue.

The story isn’t all good cheer though – Spurrier still puts the characters through the ringer. Hands are chopped off, a lot of blood is spilled and most of the characters are given an emotional workout. However, there isn’t as much graphic torture or degradation in this book. Indeed, while the atmosphere of the third book is just as hard and unforgiving as the first two, I found that the story more oriented towards recovery.

As with the previous books, there was some interesting exploration of how people from different cultural backgrounds interact and form families. The politics of the world were also well realised and expanded in this third book.

I normally don’t comment on endings as I don’t like to spoil the books I review too much (and indeed, please feel free to skip this paragraph if you’re yet to read the book). The whole trilogy came together well and I didn’t have any issues with the ending as such. However, I was expecting more major characters to be killed, and killed in a heart wrenching way. As it was, the ending seemed a little, well, nice considering the tone of the rest of the books. Still, given how much hell the characters went through, I should begrudge them a little happiness, should I?

Overall this is an excellent end to a trilogy. If you’re interested, definitely go back and start with Winter Be My Shield though. North Star Guide Me Home isn’t really a stand alone book, and you won’t get anywhere as near as much impact without having seen the characters through their earlier trials.

As in the last review, I should also mention that back in 2013, Sean Wright, leader of the intrepid Galactic Chat crew, interviewed Jo Spurrier for the podcast. That podcast can be found here.

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.


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This work by Mark Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.

Black Sun Light My Way by Jo Spurrier – review

This review forms part of my contribution to the Australian Women Writers 2014 Reading Challenge. All my 2014 AWWC reviews can be found here.



Black Sun Light My Way

Black Sun Light My Way by Jo Spurrier is the second book in the Children of the Black Sun trilogy. You can read my review of the first book, Winter Be My Shield, here.

The political and social system that was introduced in the first novel is solidly developed in this second novel. We learn a lot more about other societies, and the gradual expansion of the readers world view is handled well, with information provided at a good pace. There are nice touches which show the depth of the world building – for instance, the marital structures of a society mired in a harsh environment that incorporate multiple parters of both genders into a family unit. These elements provide some real depth to the story.

The series continues the portrayal of a hard and dangerous world, where characters aren’t trying to be too nice. Issues of torture and rape are canvassed, and Spurrier doesn’t shy away from exploring the real consequences of these actions. To that end, the character of Rasten (the main bad guy’s apprentice) is used as a vehicle. Over the course of the novel, the readers perception of Rasten transforms from a pure villain to a more complex, tragic figure who has been scarred, both physically and emotionally, by long term abuse. While his actions remain unsympathetic, he becomes more understandable.

In the first novel, I found one of the main characters (Isidro) was a little bit too understanding of other people’s points of view. A lot of interpersonal drama was resolved by him seeing things from the other point of view and then disarming the situation. While this was very sensible of him, it did sometimes feel a little too “easy” as a way of moving the plot forward. In this second novel, the character is portrayed with more issues, including bouts of severe depression. This lent a better balance to the character, and given that he features strongly it helped the balance of the book overall.

The book ended with at what seemed to be, at first blush, a surprising point. Spurrier sets up a particular “quest”, which is actually resolved by the end of this book. While reading, I kept waiting for another complication to be introduced that would delay the completion of the quest and was surprised when that complication never emerged. However in retrospect I can see that it was a necessary step to allow the characters to grow. Without it, the third book would have run the risk of being repetitive. So, when I sat back and considered the book, the confusion I felt on first reading was well and truly resolved.

Overall this is an excellent second book to a trilogy. Well worth the read, however I wouldn’t consider it a stand alone book. If you’re interested, definitely go back and start with Winter Be My Shield.

I should also mention that back in 2013, Sean Wright, leader of the intrepid Galactic Chat crew, interviewed Jo Spurrier for the podcast. That podcast can be found here.

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.


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This work by Mark Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.

Winter Be My Shield by Jo Spurrier – review

This review forms part of my contribution to the Australian Women Writers 2014 Reading Challenge. All my 2014 AWWC reviews can be found here.



Winter Be My Shield cover

Winter Be My Shield by Jo Spurrier is the first book in the Children of the Black Sun trilogy. This was Spurrier’s debut novel and she has subsequently gone on to finish the trilogy.

This book has sat on my to be read shelf for a long time. I received it at an Aurealis Award ceremony a couple of years back, and it has sat staring accusingly at me from my bookshelf for all that time. And it is too bad that I waited so long to get into the book, because I really enjoyed it.

Spurrier has constructed a cohesive political and social system that sits on top of an interesting and imaginative form of magic. It took me a little bit of time to place the different countries and their relation to each other, but it clicked into place about a third of the way through the book. Something about the politics seemed fresh, I enjoyed the discovery process as we learnt more about the world.

The setting is well realised, the kind of biting cold that it is hard to imagine in Australia (or at least the parts of Australia that I’ve lived in).

It is not for the faint of heart though – the story is definitely on the grimdark end of the fantasy spectrum. There are some very cranky people that express their crankiness in some very direct ways. However the violence and grit never seem gratuitous, rather they add texture to the world.

The main characters were an interesting lot, and Spurrier explores interesting questions of diversity in her treatment of the recently physically disabled main character and the treatment of magic users in one of the societies in the world.

It is a good start to a series and I will be reading the rest.

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.


Creative Commons License

This work by Mark Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.