Title: The Last Sun

Author: KD Edwards

Rating: 5/5

Are there LGBT characters? Yes, the main character is gay, and so is just about everyone else of importance — if not gay, then probably least bi or poly. In the world of New Atlantis, nobody cares what the gender of the other person you sleep with is. Since the main character is gay, this tends to gay up the surrounding cast. And what’s awesome is how natural it all feels. Basically, it kind of feels like an all-male version of “Friends.” But with more explosions (actual explosions, mind you, I don’t know where your dirty, filthy imagination was going).

Brief summary / book review: This is the book I’ve been waiting for. This book is the reason why I started doing this little series in the first place. There are many wonderful books out there, some of which I’ve reviewed here, that feature great gay characters, or have been written by gay men, but none of them quite nailed it in the way I’ve been hoping.

This one does.

Hoo boy, and how.

First, the plot: Rune Saint John lives in New Atlantis, where there are demigods based on tarot cards. Rune was a member of the Sun Throne, but it was destroyed a few years before the story began, and he’s the last surviving member (hence, “The Last Sun”). With his bodyguard/companion, Brand, he sort of works freelance for the Tower, and is hired to find Lady Judgment’s missing son, Addam.

The story is entirely set on New Atlantis, and though there is definitely a wider world to be explored, Edwards smartly keeps the story focused almost exclusively on Rune’s story, allowing visions of the wider world to come in organically. This has the benefit of letting us meet, and really get to know, Rune, Brand, and a few others.

The story moves fast, with lots of action scenes throughout. The writing is crisp and clear, and the dialogue feels natural. It’s also really funny, and scary, and emotional, all at once. If it has a sort of a spiritual cousin out there someone, I’d compare it to a Joss Whedon work, particularly Buffy.

If there is a weakness, it’s probably most obvious in the lack of female characters. But I can also see how it would have been tough to add a strong female character in this book — any other main or principal character would have felt superfluous, female or otherwise. Edwards has hinted that this will also change in the second book as well, and I have no doubt that when we meet them, we’ll fall in love with them.

It’s a terrific, fun read, and I absolutely cannot wait for the next one.

On a more personal note, I think I connected with this book so strongly because of my own history as a reader. Struggling to accept my identity as a teenager, I wasn’t too aware of books, particularly genre books, that have introduced me to gay characters (this was just as the internet was taking off, mind you). I had no idea about, say, Mercedes Lackey, for example. As it happened, when I was at my local library when I was around 16 or 17, I saw a book called “The Thief’s Gamble” by Juliet McKenna, and picked it up. The main character meets a badass mage named Shiv, and that mage turns out to be gay.

It was like a bolt of lightning had struck me, and I was jolted by the presence of Shiv, and I devoured that book, impatient whenever Shiv wasn’t on the page. It opened my eyes in more way than one, and it helped put me on the path towards self-acceptance. It didn’t happen overnight — it would be quite a few years before I was still comfortable in my own skin — but meeting Shiv helped put me on that path.

Reading “The Last Sun,” all I kept thinking was how much I wished I had this book as a teenager, and was overjoyed that such a book existed. Here’s a book where gay characters take center stage, and it’s all so normal and ordinary, and they’re not mincing milquetoasts who meet tragic, sticky ends, but they’re badasses, filled with agency and wants and desires, and the writing is good and fun and immersive, and everything I’d ever want in a story. I can’t express enough how thankful I am for KD Edwards for writing “The Last Sun” — teenage me would have loved this book. Hell, adult me loves it. You probably will too.

About the ‘Are There LGBT Characters’ series of posts: Being a gay reader, I am interested in LGBT books, but I haven’t always seen reviews clearly note if there are LGBT characters and how significant they are. These mini reviews are my way of addressing this problem.