The Sun and the Starmaker

I’ll admit, I went into *The Sun and the Starmaker* expecting another ‘plucky hero saves the magical village’ story. Instead, I got a gut-punch of existential unease. Rachel Griffin’s Reverie isn’t a place you *visit*—it’s a place you *endure*. The village’s reliance on the Starmaker’s dwindling magic isn’t just a plot device; it’s a metaphor for faith under siege, and Griffin doesn’t flinch from the ugliness of desperation. The characters are flawed in ways that feel painfully real: the priestess clinging to ritual as control slips away, the outsider whose skepticism borders on heresy, the children who’ve never seen sunlight but still dream of escape. It’s a story about what happens when the thing that sustains you is also what’s killing you. Suzy Jackson’s narration is the perfect vessel for this bleak beauty. She doesn’t *perform* the characters so much as *inhabit* them, her voice shifting subtly between the weary resignation of the elders and the sharp, restless curiosity of the young. Her delivery of the Starmaker’s rare, cryptic lines is particularly chilling—less a deity speaking than a force of nature murmuring through a crack in the ice. My only critique? The middle act drags slightly, leaning too hard on atmospheric repetition without enough narrative momentum. And while the ending lands with emotional weight, it’s deliberately ambiguous, which might frustrate listeners craving resolution. But those are quibbles. This audiobook lingers like a winter ache—haunting, precise, and impossible to shake.