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Unconquerable Sun (The Sun Chronicles Book 1) by [Kate Elliott]

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Kate Elliott

Unconquerable Sun (The Sun Chronicles Book 1) Kindle Edition

by Kate Elliott (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

570 ratings

Book 1 of 2: The Sun Chronicles

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"Non-stop action! Space battles! Intrigue! This is the kind of space opera that I love best—but Elliott does it even better."—New York Times bestselling author Ann Leckie

New York Times bestselling author Kate Elliott brings us a thrilling new science fiction adventure set in a rich universe full of political intrigue with Unconquerable Sun.

Bookpage's Best Books of the Year
Autostraddle's Best Queer Books of 2020

GENDER-SPUN ALEXANDER THE GREAT ON AN INTERSTELLAR SCALE

Princess Sun has finally come of age.

Growing up in the shadow of her mother, Eirene, has been no easy task. The legendary queen-marshal did what everyone thought impossible: expel the invaders and build Chaonia into a magnificent republic, one to be respected—and feared.

But the cutthroat ambassador corps and conniving noble houses have never ceased to scheme—and they have plans that need Sun to be removed as heir, or better yet, dead.

To survive, the princess must rely on her wits and companions: her biggest rival, her secret lover, and a dangerous prisoner of war.

Take the brilliance and cunning courage of Princess Leia—add in a dazzling futuristic setting where pop culture and propaganda are one and the same—and hold on tight:

This is the space opera you’ve been waiting for.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Print length

522 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Tor Books
Publication date

July 7, 2020
File size

6054 KB
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Total Price: $14.29

Books In This Series (2 Books)

Complete Series

The Sun Chronicles

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1
Unconquerable Sun (The Sun Chronicles Book 1)
Kate Elliott

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2
Furious Heaven (The Sun Chronicles Book 2)
Kate Elliott

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$17.59

Kate Elliott
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Kate Elliott
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Non-stop action! Space battles! Intrigue! This is the kind of space opera that I love best--but Elliott does it even better. ”―Ann Leckie, New York Times bestselling author

"Intricate and thrilling, Kate Elliott's Unconquerable Sun reframes history's most legendary conqueror in a brand new galaxy, lights the fuse, and blasts off on an edge-of-your-seat adventure perfect for fans of Arkady Martine and James S.A. Corey." ―Emily Skrutskie, author of Bonds of Brass

"Brilliant battles, exciting intrigue, and heroines I would follow through hell--this is the gender-bent space opera of my dreams." ―Yoon Ha Lee, multiple-Hugo-winning author of Ninefox Gambit

“A sweeping saga of a fierce and indomitable conqueror and her companions, this is breathtaking and mindblowingly good.”―Aliette de Bodard, Nebula Award-winning author of The Tea Master and the Detective

“A maelstrom of palace intrigue, interstellar back-stabbing, devious plots, treachery, blistering action, ferocious confrontations―and a heroine for the ages... Enthralling, edge-of-your-seat stuff hurtling along at warp speed. Grab!”―Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Rich with history, tongue-in-cheek humor, cultural references, and vibrant characters, this highly entertaining series launch will have readers clamoring for more.” ―Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Fans of Lois McMaster Bujold and N.K. Jemisin will find this a candidate for instant re-reading as soon as the last page is turned.” ―Booklist, starred review

Praise for Kate Elliott

“Absorbing... There should be more SF like this.”―Jo Walton on Jaran

“It’s an absorbing book with great characters that has had a lot of thought put into the universe and which gets the details right. There should be more SF like this.”―Tor.com on Jaran

“The concept got me shivering... the characters, the mysteries, the background history, the cultural complexity, were all so intriguing I couldn't stop reading.”―Elizabeth Moon on Cold Magic

--This text refers to the paperback edition.

About the Author

Kate Elliott has been writing science fiction and fantasy for 30 years, after bursting onto the scene with Jaran. She is best known for her Crown of Stars epic fantasy series and the New York Times bestselling YA fantasy Court of Fives. Elliot's particular focus is immersive world-building & centering women in epic stories of adventure, amidst transformative cultural change. She lives in Hawaii, where she paddles outrigger canoes & spoils her Schnauzer. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07WPNFXN6
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tor Books (July 7, 2020)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 7, 2020
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 6054 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 522 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #206,174 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #802 in Galactic Empire Science Fiction eBooks
- #854 in Galactic Empire Science Fiction
- #2,162 in Space Opera Science Fiction (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
570 ratings

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Kate Elliott

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Kate Elliott lives in Hawaii, USA. In addition to the Crossroads series and the Crown of Stars series, she is co-author of THE GOLDEN KEY.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5

570 global ratings

5 star		54%
4 star		30%
3 star		12%
2 star		3%
1 star		1%

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David Lord

Enjoyable

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 14, 2022

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I liked the intersection of grand space opera and personal intrigue. Characters are well formed and the plot, while slow to start, builds to a fun climax.

One person found this helpful

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Mindy

A fun, well-written space opera

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 7, 2021

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I really enjoyed this book. The characters were very interesting and compelling. The plot was exciting and surprising. I liked how the author kept the themes meaningful but still made the story a lot of fun to read.

One person found this helpful

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M. Kantola

Non stop surprises

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 2, 2022

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Another great space opera from Kate Elliot. Her hiatus must have been busy.
The action never really stops. There is a lot of depth given to every character. I can’t wait for the next installment.

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Chrisette

Who's on first base & who is the traitor

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 25, 2020

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This book follows an untried young woman as she choses her companions and faces an uncertain future as the heir. It's full of court intrigue, fighting, and love. I didn't want to put the book down because of all the uncertainty and mystery of what was really happening. I can't wait for the second book to be released.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 20, 2020

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Kate Elliott is one of our very best writers. She writes compelling plots and relatable characters. Her prose is clear and and approachable without being cliche'.

The only problem is. like so many of the good writers of series, it takes her too long to pen the sequels. But, I guess that's my problem, not hers.

Highly recommended.

Keep up the outstanding work Ms. Elliott. And, if you need a reader, I'm your man.

9 people found this helpful

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HotRod

Complex and captivating story

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 24, 2021

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Three, or is that four, civilizations battle for survival and dominance. Strong female characters in abundance. Palace intrigued. Clones. Mysterious unknown forces. Faster than light travel. Battles of enormous scale. It's everything a Sci fi story should. A real page turner. Bravo.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 27, 2020

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Another great book by Kate Elliott. This is a very engaging space opera with well-developed, fascinating characters and a really interesting world. While I got very invested in the story, for the most part it was low on the angst meter, which I appreciated. I eagerly look forward to the future adventures of Sun and her companions.

6 people found this helpful

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Sue4

Kate Elliott is a master of her craft

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 27, 2020

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This is one of my favorite Kate Elliott books. Families, if you have daughters — or sons you want to raise as men who consider women as strong, competent, smart, independent, creative, and capable — give them this book. I don't have kids, but all the same I am hoping for a series about Sun and her adventures!

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A. Whitehead

A novel of immense richness, with fascinating characters and amazing worldbuilding

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 22, 2021

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The great Phene Empire once ruled a vast swathe of space, but it has been beaten back by the Yele League and the small, powerful nation of Chaonia. The Republic of Chaonia, long disregarded as a flyspeck irrelevance, has risen to greatness under Queen-Marshal Eirene, a gifted military strategic and politician who has united her people, brought the League to the negotiating table and now plans a bold move against the Empire which will grant Chaonia immense power. But the Empire is aware of her ambitions and moves to forestall her. Internal politics also threaten the Republic, and at the heart of them is Princess Sun, the Queen-Marshal's daughter and presumed heir who burns with the need to prove herself, earn her mother's respect and bring defeat to her enemies.

Unconquerable Sun is the first novel of the Sun Chronicles, a military space opera from Kate Elliott, one of SFF's most consistently rewarding authors over the past thirty years. Elliot started her career in space opera with the Jaran series but has become best-known for her accomplished epic fantasy series: Crown of Stars, Crossroads and Spiritwalker. Unconquerable Sun is both a genre homecoming but also an impressive historical analogue, an attempt to retell the story of Alexander the Great in a far-future, SF context.

Going into Unconquerable Sun, there were things I was expecting as normal from a Kate Elliott novel: impeccable worldbuilding that takes from a wide range of influences and merges them in original ways; excellent characterisation; richly-detailed political intrigue; and a canny and knowing sense of humour. These are all present and correct. What I wasn't quite expecting was the novel to be as foot-slammed-on-the-accelerator action-packed as it is. Elliott's always done well with battle sequences, military maneuvers and tactical elements in her prior fiction, but it's always previously felt like a secondary element, with the characters more more emphasised. Character remains foregrounded in this novel, but they are generally explored and developed whilst under fire (either on the ground or on starships). This isn't just space opera, but full-on military SF, and Elliott does it proud.

The worldbuilding is pleasingly complex, with the Chaonia Republic (here presumed to stand in for Macedonia) squashed between the Yele League (a guessed analogue for the Hellenic League of ancient Greece) and the Phene Empire (Space-Persia) and still bristling from its occupation by the Empire some decades previously. There's also the rules on interstellar travel, which can be conducted (albeit at still-achingly-slow speeds) by standard FTL engines (here called knnu drives) but mostly by beacons, fixed wormhole-gates linking systems together. Centuries previously, the beacon network suffered a catastrophic failure which destroyed most of the beacons, leaving only the periphery intact. Chaonia, Yele and Phene (among other, more distant powers) are therefore great powers still dwelling in the shadow of a vast vaster, older history, most of which was lost in the collapse. Readers keen to discern the relationship of these powers to Earth will find a few scattered clues to what happened, but not much more than that. Hopefully, this element will be explored further in later books.

Each of the major powers is also explored in depth, with the Empire being ruled not by a single ruler but a council of enigmatic "Riders," who are somehow telepathically-linked at all times (even over interstellar distances) in a way no one else understands. This gives the Empire a tremendous strategic advantage in warfare (since FTL communication is otherwise impossible) which the Chaonians hope to overturn by other means. Another key element is the space-borne civilisation of the Gatoi, who dwell on vast fleets constantly moving between the stars. The Gatoi serve the Empire as apparently-honoured mercenaries, but the Chaonians believe there may be more to this service than appears, leading to an alliance between the Queen-Marshal and a Gatoi renegade which Eirene hopes will bring the Empire down. The alliance is controversial, given it produced Princess Sun (whose legitimacy is constantly challenged because she is thus only half-Chaonian) and the long-term effectiveness of the project is in doubt. Political intrigue follows, particularly between Sun's father and House Lee, loyal servants of the Republic who are dubious of the alliance. Other worldbuilding elements feel more whimsical, such as a Chaonian reality TV show which has real power in terms of PR and politics, but is surprisingly well-developed.

On the character front, the book is told predominantly through three POVs: Princess Sun herself, through whose eyes we also get to know her retinue of allies and friends, the Companions; Persephone Lee, who tried to flee her family's smothering control five years ago to enlist in the military under an assumed identity; and Apama, a Phene pilot who is assigned to a military taskforce with a bold agenda and gradually discovers that she is far more important than anyone first suspected. Persephone tells her story in the first-person, whilst the other two stories are told in the third, an intriguing narrative device which breaks up the structure nicely (and leads to the suspicion that maybe Persephone is telling the whole story in flashback, with the other chapters being compiled from other accounts).

Unconquerable Sun is a novel of immense richness: excellent characters, terrific and detailed worldbuilding and a high concept (genderswapped Alexander the Great in spaaaace!) which in lesser hands would have been superficial but here is developed and explored in some depth. It's also a face-paced space opera with more spectacular space battles than you can shake a Star Destroyer at. Perhaps the only negatives I can consider is that perhaps a tad more build-up of the factions and players could have been accomplished before all hell breaks lose and stays loose for the rest of the book (around 150 pages into this 520-page novel), and Elliott's tendency for characters to engage in gossip, sartorial discussions and comical banter in the face of imminent death occasionally feels incongruous. That said, this isn't a book that's interested in realism more than it is in myth-making, and the feeling that you're dealing with Greek heroes transplanted in time and space makes this element more engaging.

Unconquerable Sun (****½) is original, fast-paced, action-packed but also rich in character and fascinating in its worldbuilding. I eagerly await the sequel.

3 people found this helpful

A.M. Obst

Kate Elliott does it again! MUST READ!!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 16, 2020

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I don't normally read space opera, but when I saw this was by Kate Elliott I knew it would be a great read. I wasn't disappointed at all.

This is a book that seems to effortlessly balance action, political intrigue, social commentary and sharply drawn characters that are enjoyably flawed. It mixes interstellar battles, jaw-dropping revelations, and snarky humour in a heady brew that left me turning pages long after I should have put the book down and done something else.

My main tip for readers is buckle up and go with it, but PAY ATTENTION because there are little details that seem random at first, but are revealed later to be important.

I'm very much looking forward to the next instalment of adventures of Princess Sun, the Wily Persephone and their companions. Oh and some of the chapter titles are simply marvellous!

5 people found this helpful

Book Lover

Really good mix of sci-fi and character story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 6, 2021

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I was a bit worried that this would be hardcore sci-fi, but it's not; there are battles, but it's very focused on the characters, and the relationships between everyone. The main core is Sun, along with her companions - I really loved how the relationships (both old, from her long-time companions, and new from ones introduced to the mix) changed and developed. I also really enjoyed the political fights, and the way that the choices and decisions influenced everyone else - and how Sun's own choices made her character develop. It's a really well-paced, well-written book with lots of interesting (and cute!) characters

Franca Ogbonnaya

amazing story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 13, 2022

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This was a fantastic epic space battle story about a warrior princess, a heiress who is trying to escape from her overbearing family and a pilot on the opposite side who has been fastracked for a secret mission. There is action, romance, betrayal and my personal favourite…big, epic, space battles! I really enjoyed this story and cannot wait for Book 2!

Bob

Posh girls in space

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 29, 2021

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I was not sure if this was some sort of parody. It felt almost PG Woodhouse without the humour. It was not advertised as YA otherwise I would have given it a miss

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