Title: Heart of the Sun Warrior (The Celestial Kingdom Duology #2)
Author: Sue Lynn Tan
Genre: Fantasy, fantasy romance
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Publication Date: 2022
Format: Paperback
Length: 480 pages
Read if you like: Chinese mythology, enemies to lovers, epic quests, love triangles

Rating:

I picked up Daughter of the Moon Goddess on a whim at Homesense and it quickly became one of my favourite reads of 2023, so naturally I knew I needed to finish out the duology. That said, even going into Heart of the Sun Warrior in love with this universe, it still completely blew me away. Tan is such an unbelievable world-builder who weaves gorgeous settings, characters, and narratives that are unique and enthralling. This book both made my heart swell and emotionally devastated me on several occasions, and I miss it now that it’s over.

If you’re interested in Chinese mythology, beautifully woven worlds, and a badass female main character, I can’t recommend this duology enough. This series was so wonderful that I’d now consider Tan an auto-buy author and I know I’ll be recommending these books forever.

Fair warining: spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn’t read this book or Daughter of the Moon Goddess.

The Book: Heart of the Sun Warrior by Sue Lynn Tan

Heart of the Sun Warrior takes us back to Xingyin, who has been recovering from the events that occurred in Daughter of the Moon Goddess for the past year. With her powers mostly returned and her mother no longer imprisoned strictly on the moon, Xingyin and her mother are now able to move more freely beyond the moon and receive guests regularly, the latter being a development that Xingyin doesn’t welcome after experiencing so much conflict and betrayal in her time in the Celestial Kingdom.

One group of such visitors arrives at the moon wishing to study the local foliage and explore their homeland, but Xingyin can’t shake the feeling that they’re there to harm her mother and their home. She confides in Liwei, and in her encounters with the guests eventually comes to find that one of them is Master Gang, a member of Liwei’s father’s court who previously advocated for Xingyin’s death in her manipulation of the terms of her deal with the Emperor. She catches him stealing seeds from her mother’s laurel tree before he flees back to the Celestial Kingdom and knows he must be using them for evil.

Shortly after this conflict, Xingiyn accompanies Liwei to his father’s birthday celebration as Liwei has requested her hand in marriage and asked her to attend as his date. Xingyin has yet to accept the proposal, still recovering from Wenzhi’s betrayal, but she knows that if she ever is to agree to marry Liwei, she will need to learn to accept his family and their hatred of her. Unfortunately, as she’s attending the celebration, the moon lanterns fail to light, indicating her mother has neglected her duties. The Emperor takes this as a personal affront and demands justice, so Liwei and Xingyin immediately escape to go see what trouble her mother is in that would cause her to miss the daily lantern lighting she has done for decades.

When they arrive at the moon, they come to find that the Chang’e had received a note stating that Houyi, her husband and Xingyin’s father, is alive and that she should go to meet him, but when she does, he is nowhere to be found. Xingyin returns to the place her mother was sent and finds him herself, at which point he tells her the full story of how he slayed the sunbirds and how it was a massive manipulation on the part of the Emperor. Ever since he’s been unable to face the consequences of his actions. He also discloses that he’s dying, as he’s obtained a mortal illness that he simply cannot continue to fight with his immortality. Xingyin vows to save her father by obtaining the immortality elixir at any cost.

While Xingyin is elated to have found her father, when she returns to the moon, she learns that the Emperor has passed judgment on both her mother and her for failing to light the moon lanterns and is seeking to imprison them indefinitely. Xingyin quickly decides that to avoid eternal punishment, they’ll both need to flee their home and the Emperor’s vicious general until she can find a way to exonerate her mother and herself.

From here, Xingyin and her friends embark on an epic journey to find freedom, save her father, and to fight against the evils of the Celestial Kingdom. She’ll be tried and tested at every corner, but her mission cannot fail if there is any hope of her people managing to survive the oppression that the events of this book bring.

The Review

This book was absolutely epic. When Daughter of the Moon Goddess finished, I felt like a lot of the story had been wrapped up nicely, so I had no idea where Tan would take Heart of the Sun Warrior, but it was possibly even better than the first book.

This story was stunning, weaving through so much history and so many characters fluidly and understandably. I love the universe that Tan has built and all the beauty that it contains and felt like the narrative in this sequel allowed the reader to explore the world even more than in the first book. The story moved in directions I never would have anticipated, and I was on the edge of my seat through a good portion of it.

Speaking of which, in terms of the plot, this book was a beast. I had a hard time summarizing it because it was so epic that it felt like it moved through massive spaces of content and time, but it somehow did so in such an organic way that it simultaneously didn’t feel long at all. I was emotionally invested in the first book, so much so that it’s still one of my favourite books of the year, but this one was straight-up emotionally devastating. I sobbed multiple times in various parts of the story and stayed up way too late trying to take in as much of it as I could. These characters became so close to my heart and Tan’s ability to bring them to life through the epic events she detailed completely hooked me. I would read a thousand more pages about these characters and this story if I could. 

It was also wonderful to get to see Xingyin grow so far beyond the survivalist she’d been in the first book. In this edition, we get to see her grapple with her feelings and who she is beyond the desperate act of needing to save her family. There’s still a great deal of needing to be a heroine, but there’s also time for her to try to determine who she is and who she loves outside of the relationships that forced that title onto her. She’s such a strong FMC that it was so gratifying to see her explore that strength and what it meant to her.

There’s so much mythology and so many impressive regions and characters in these books that I feel like Tan left a lot of potential to build on for future stories. I was ecstatic to learn that she’s currently working on a project that will see a new book in a different region of the world she’s built with all new characters. Tan has become an auto-buy author for me through this series, so I can’t wait to read whatever she produces next.