Celestial Monsters
by Aiden Thomas
High School    Feiwel    416 pp.
9/24    9781250822086    $19.99
e-book ed.  9781250822093    $11.99

Thomas returns to Reino del Sol, the fantasy world introduced in The Sunbearer Trials (rev. 1/23). Teo’s refusal to sacrifice a fellow demigod at the end of that novel has caused the sun to vanish. Now a horde of monsters with immense destructive power has been released. It’s up to Teo—with his impulsive best friend and his broody crush—to steal back the Sol Stone so they can avert the apocalypse. They fight monsters, learn brutal truths about Reino del Sol’s history, and kiss a little along the way. To resurrect the sun, someone still needs to be sacrificed, but Teo is determined to find another course of action. As he and his companions visit cities with more communal structures than they’re used to, Thomas expands the first book’s exciting world-building to explore what a more just society might look like. Frequent fight scenes are broken up by considerable humor and thoughtful humanizing moments, as characters grapple with the immense pressures placed on them as the children of gods. Though the metaphors for transness are subtler in this installment, there are still some moments of gender exploration—and many of queer joy.

From the ">September/October 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.