Review of Heart of the Sun Warrior by Sue Lynn Tan

*Heart of the Sun Warrior* by Sue Lynn Tan (2022). Published by Harper Voyager.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

For three years I worked professionally as a film critic, and while going to all of the film festivals and interviewing directors and actors was cool for a while, but I wanted to reclaim my time and watch movies I wanted to watch. Sometimes watching all of the new releases is great, and behind ahead of the curve, but I feel like I was falling so behind on movies I was genuinely excited about.

So I quit and decided to focus on this blog, and fell back more into literary criticism. I also randomly fell into a period of unemployment because of unexpected circumstances, and I took a long and hard look at my finances and realized I had enough to take time off. I did end up doing that, traveled for a bit, applied to jobs, and found myself working on the blog now more than ever.

During my stint when I was unemployed in late 2024 and early 2025 (a job opportunity I was consistently reassured was happening fell through, effectively screwing me over in so many different ways), I spent a lot of time catching up on the books I never really had the chance to read or was majorly procrastinating on. One of them was Daughter of the Moon Goddess, which I had been meaning to read for a hot minute.

Anyways, I enjoyed that first novel quite a bit, which is what led me to pick up Heart of the Sun Warrior when I spotted it in the depths of my local library branch. I flew through this novel as well in early January 2025, even though this blog post is going to come out much later than that.

Let’s get into the review! We don’t want to keep you waiting for the main event.

After freeing her mother, Xingyin learns of more nefarious forces, leading her to flee and seek out new justice.

We begin this novel where Daughter of the Moon Goddess leaves off. Xingyin is finally able to return home and meet with her beloved mother, but her peace and quiet isn’t going to last for long. When an intruder shows up on the grounds of their estate on the moon, it unearths a completely new conflict.

Suddenly, Xingyin and her mother, as well as her other loved ones, are in grave danger yet again. The emperor is proving yet again he is not someone to be trusted with the ongoing events, and Xingyin discovers something that is going to completely change the course of her future.

She then flees home and what she knows once more, bringing along her companions. She is going to travel far and wide in the Immortal Realm in search of relics and those in charge of distant, foreign lands, even it means she is putting her (and her friends) in danger in search of saving everyone she loves.

Along the way we do get the love triangle that we know and love from the previous novel. Wenzhi, who we saw as a big betrayer in the previous novel, is someone who has a bit of a redemption arc throughout the course of this novel, even though he’s going to throw a massive wrench in Xingyin’s feelings for Liwei.

Liwei is a different story. In some ways he’s a bit of a tool at times, but I can see how and why Xingyin has feelings for him. Those looking for the love triangle elements of the story might find themselves disappointed if they’re rooting for certain characters throughout. I’m not inclined towards romance at all in novels, and didn’t care for the love triangle that was happening here.

It was just kind of a way to keep the plot moving forward to me. Which is fine in some ways, but in others it’s more of a plot device than something that organically is happening.

Overall Thoughts

The actual plot of the book I overall found to be weaker than Daughter of the Moon Goddess—that’s a thought I had upfront while reading this. I know two or three book deals tend to be more common in these kinds of publishing spheres (fantasy and romance), but sometimes the books we read don’t need to be series or have sequels.

I would’ve just been happy reading Daughter of the Moon Goddess. I think that Tan creates such rich and lush worlds in her writing, and the way she incorporated Chinese mythology is just gorgeous throughout. However, I don’t know if we really needed this book, and I’m not sure I felt satisfied after reading this one in the end.

Regardless, if it’s something you’re interested in, I think you should check it. What I might not love might be your favorite book because taste is so incredibly subjective and personal to whoever is picking the book up. So give it a chance and don’t let what I think dictate what you think about this book!

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