Goodbye to the Sun – 4.5 Star Book Review

Welcome to one of the June 7th stops on the blog tour for Goodbye to the Sun by Jonathan Nevair, organized by Storytellers on Tour. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for spotlights, reviews, author guest posts & interviews, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.

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About the Book

Goodbye to the Sun
Wind Tide Book One
by Jonathan Nevair

Publishing 18 May 2021
Shadow Spark Publishing

Cover Art: Zishan Liu
Quote image artist: Zishan Liu
Concept art (Kol 2): Stephen Wood

Genre: Science Fiction, LGBTQIA
Page Count: 249
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!

Tucked away in the blue sands of Kol 2, the Motes are on the brink of cultural collapse. Razor, a bold and daring pilot, leads a last-ditch gambit against their local oppressors, the Targitians. The plan – abduct visiting Ambassador Keen Draden and use him as a bargaining chip to restore her people’s independence in the Sagittarius Arm. But when the operation unravels, Razor is forced to renegotiate terms with the arrogant diplomat. Battling furious Wind Tides and pursuit by an infamous bounty hunter, Razor and Keen find mutual assistance in a dubious freelancer with a knack for exposing cracks in people’s pride.

Tucked away in the blue sands of Kol 2, the Motes are on the brink of cultural collapse. Razor, a bold and daring pilot, leads a last-ditch gambit against their local oppressors, the Targitians. The plan – abduct visiting Ambassador Keen Draden and use him as a bargaining chip to restore her people’s independence in the Sagittarius Arm. But when the operation unravels, Razor is forced to renegotiate terms with the arrogant diplomat. Battling furious Wind Tides and pursuit by an infamous bounty hunter, Razor and Keen find mutual assistance in a dubious freelancer with a knack for exposing cracks in people’s pride.

Goodbye to the Sun – a nonstop thrill ride across an unstable galaxy, combining moral struggle and character-driven adventure.

Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK

My Review

My Rating: 4.5 Stars
Consider liking my review on Goodreads.

I was granted complimentary access to Goodbye to the Sun as part of my participation in a blog tour for this title with Storytellers on Tour. Thank you to all involved in affording me this opportunity, and to Jonathan Nevair specifically for being so kind and involved with all tour participants. Participating in your cover reveal was such a pleasure I just had to ensure I would be on the review tour as well! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

Goodbye to the Sun is space opera done right, plain and simple! The characters are well developed and compelling, the plot is suitably character-driven and easy to follow without being too simple, and the universe is amazing. I love the settings! The races, the cultures, the planets, all so well done.

I admit I’m not overly familiar with the inspiration material, Antigone, so I can’t comment on how recognizable it is in this new story.

I did enjoy both of the novel’s POVs, Razor and Keen, and the narrative voices for these characters are suitably distinct. It’s easy to tell we’ve switched characters even if you’re not watching for names and markers. With that said, I’m not sure how I feel about the proportions of POV splitting at the beginning of the novel. Razor brings us in, telling us how we got to her later timeline present, and then we jump to the start of that story but from Keen’s POV. At the very beginning, this was a little jarring. I felt like that intro was so brief we didn’t really have a feel for Razor yet and then suddenly we’re in Keen’s head and it took a good page or two to adjust, but there’s also important information to pay attention to, which resulted in a slightly rocky start.

The political intrigue is so detailed I can tell Jonathan must have way more details figured out and filed away somewhere (even if only in his head) than what we ended up reading on the page. That makes me so excited to read more in this universe! Between the great characters and the clear evidence that the author knows so much more than we know, it’s clear this book has only scratched the surface and we’ve got a lot more to look forward to.

Now, I do have one small and possibly petty critique point that I find myself giving to many American science fiction authors, and that’s the very USA-centric view of the world that has made it into this book in ways that made me, a non-American reader, stop and wonder how likely certain details are. Last year I critiqued Paolini for the very US Marine Corps terminology for everything for a future of humanity with a unified solar system government situation that would have formed from other world power leaders as well. In Goodbye to the Sun, the first moment that gave me the same pause was when Keen notes his ship’s speed in mph. Not only is the USA one of the last holdouts for the Imperial system, it’s specifically a civilian holdout. NASA and all USA military branches use metric. You’re telling me that when humanity as a whole reaches faster-than-lightspeed travel and lives on multiple planets in a galaxy far away we’re going to go with imperial measurements in day-to-day life? I have doubts.

Overall this is an excellent debut and a great start to a series I look forward to continuing. If you love space opera, read Goodbye to the Sun and keep your eyes open for more from this author!

About the Author

Jonathan Nevair is a science fiction writer and, as Dr. Jonathan Wallis, an art historian and Professor of Art History at Moore College of Art & Design, Philadelphia. After two decades of academic teaching and publishing, he finally got up the nerve to write fiction. Jonathan grew up on Long Island, NY but now resides in southeast Pennsylvania with his wife and rambunctious mountain feist, Cricket.

You can find him online at https://www.jonathannevair.com and on twitter at @JNevair.

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Giveaway Alert!

Prize: A signed copy of Goodbye to the Sun by Jonathan Nevair – International!

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