2024 Canon Promo Post

[keita52]

Use the comments of this post to promote your favorite canon(s). Please use one comment per canon. You can use the template provided here or whatever format you wish.

If it is freely available online, consider adding it to the Freely Available Canons spreadsheet.



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[zabbers]

Name: Forgotten Suns (2015)
Author: Judith Tarr
Length: standalone novel (but somewhat related to Tarr's Avaryan trilogy)
Sub-genre: space opera with fantasy-ish backstory in the worldbuilding
Why I like about it/what it’s about: An archeologists' daughter trying to save her family's dig and its planet's protected status, the powerfully psionic ancient sun king she accidentally releases from stasis with a lot of explosives, and her war-traumatized almost-ex-military aunt journey to solve the mystery of the planet and the king's missing people. There are two characters I really love: Rama (the ancient king) and Aunt Khalida, who are really two sides of the same coin--tragic commanding leader types with an overwrought sense of responsibility and duty and also something terrible that went wrong with all that and now they're tormented and looking for redemption or at least healing. Except that Rama is this old old archetype conquerer-leader-noble who was too powerful and ragey for his own/his people's good, and Khalida exists in a spacefaring military structure that pushed her into what she did (and that enables her prickly, self-sufficient-but-not-really, can't connect with her girlfriend personality). But they're needed and they're resilient and they have to learn to continue and to find their way in a world that's changed or changing around them.

But also there's so much good (tropey and/or classic) stuff: there's Aisha's research-y academic family (and their horses), a complicated power situation with the Spaceforce and the Military Intelligence and the Psycorps, morally gray scientists and psi masters, worldbuilding from the research world to the spaceships to the telepathic internet to outpost/rebel worlds and interesting alien species (and their relationships with humans), a sentient spaceship, stargates, an ancient mystery, parallel worlds, technology and/as magic that are indistinguishably wondrous from each other, sci-fi and fantasy at once.
Any other important information to know about: I think what makes it all work together is the fact that this novel is the beloved story behind the story: the world the author has had in her heart her whole career, full of all the things she'd loved in everything she read and watched. (She essays about finally getting to write what she wants and just have a good time here.)