Good pacing overall. Kept my interest. Interesting world building and Fae politics. FMC with the potential for strong individuality, but had several moments of stupidity and naivety. Semi-predictable plot and characters, but the book still ended with a lot of reveals left... unrevealed but hinted at. 

 It’s quite funny because the previous book I read that was said to be “inspired by The Hunger Games” was Lightlark, which quite possibly wins the award for worst book I’ve ever read. (review still to come, NaNoWriMo is kicking my behind). But then I read this book and it’s so so much better at executing the prompt/inspiration and making it truly its own idea. 

Trial of the Sun Queen understands that The Hunger Games was more than the romance, there’s reasons for the games and why they need to occur and so on. What Trial and THG have in common is that the focus shouldn’t be on the romance that might (and does) occur; the focus should very much be on why the tributes have to be in the contest and why it’s all wrong. And then also adds fae to the mix, because why not? While we do get a bit of the politics, I did find myself wanting more but hopefully that’ll play a bigger role in the second book. 

The book was well-written, packed with action and fast-paced (it’s under 400 pages). The characters were written in such a way that you couldn’t help but to root for Lor, smile/smirk whenever Gabriel was mentioned on the the page (I chose him as my favourite character probably before his third scene?). I’ll admit, I was confused with the first few of Nadir’s pov chapters and actually though he was the Sun King’s son (he was not) so I think I’ll enjoy getting to know more of this compelling character in the next book. 

There was more action than I originally thought there would be and I liked that! Listen, I’m still recovering from Lightlark where a ton of action was promised and we received about 2.9%. So I was glad that what was promised, was actually given! I think a large part of the book is basically build up to have a second book as it felt like half of the story was told in this book. So hopefully in the next book which comes out next year will have it all. 

I enjoyed the plot and the plot twists that we were given – again, I could see that it’s for the build-up for the second book – but honestly I really didn’t mind that. In fact it actually made me more excited for the sequel. For the next book I definitely want more Gabriel (I just really love him).