With WorldCon and NetGalley memberships pushing my reading more and more toward new releases, I knew that the Published in the 90s square of 2024 r/Fantasy Bingo would require me to reshuffle the TBR. Fortunately, I had plenty of options sitting on my bookcase unread, I just had to pick one. And that one was Black Sun Rising by C.S. Friedman. 

Black Sun Rising takes place on an alien planet full of elemental spirits and elemental magic. After colonizing a significant chunk of territory years before, humanity has lost most of its technology—which never meshed easily with the magic—but has grown in magical ability, despite a powerful religion rising up to argue that the only way to a stable society is in eschewing the magic of the elements. But when a surprise attack sucks the memory and power from a local adept, a priest from a magic-using sect embarks on a quest to get it back. And as one may expect from 90s fantasy, that quest may have implications not only for the main characters, but for the entire civilization. 

Part of the reason I chose Black Sun Rising over myriad contenders was an absolutely tremendous prologue that sets important background for the world while delivering a real emotional punch. But as the book progresses, it turns into…well, a pretty long quest novel. 

Regular readers of the blog know that I’ve fully lost my taste for the structure of quest stories. There are exceptions—The Butcher of the Forest was one of my top stories of 2024, and The Eye of the World is still a favorite, though it’s hard to say what I’d think of it if reading for the first time now—but it tends to lend itself to a lot of repetition. Meet some peril, escape the peril, meet a stranger with uncertain motives, find some more peril, rinse and repeat. Sometimes the atmosphere and writing quality can keep things fresh despite the repetition (as in The Butcher of the Forest, which also has the benefit of being short), and sometimes there are enough big-picture developments along the way to set the stage for something much bigger (as in The Eye of the World). But while the quest structure itself has enough fans that it still gets written regularly, it’s just not one that especially appeals to me these days. And that ultimately made Black Sun Rising a hard sell. 

One area in which it can distinguish itself from the crowd is in the moral ambiguity of the main party. Even putting aside the more esoteric discussion about whether or not magic use is ultimately harmful—one I’m not sure can be fully answered in book one—the party picks up a traveling companion who is genuinely monstrous, leading to real moral consternation about what sort of compromises are permissible in pursuit of noble ends. 

But beyond that, it generally follows the structure I’d expect. The writing quality is high, and there’s a ton of attention paid to detailed building of the world and magic that may appeal to some readers. But it’s a long one, and even with the other positives, that can put a real damper on the experience for readers who aren’t onboard with 90s chonkers and quest plots. Fortunately, although it does open a trilogy, it provides a sufficiently satisfying ending to be readable as a standalone, so it does not require a full series commitment. 

Overall, Black Sun Rising is a well-written, morally complicated quest tale in the lengthy mode of 90s fantasy. There’s plenty here to recommend it, but the pacing can be a major obstacle. 

Recommended if you like: door-stoppers, quest stories.

Can I use it for Bingo? It’s A Book in Parts.

Overall rating: 13 of Tar Vol’s 20. Three stars on Goodreads.