About the Book
Generations of twin goddesses have long ruled Aeon―until one sister’s betrayal split their world in two. A Great Abyss now divides two realms: one cloaked in eternal night, the other scorched beneath an ever-burning sun.
While one sister rules the frozen fortress of Aranth, her twin rules the sand-locked Golden City―each with a daughter by their side. Now those young goddesses must set out on separate, equally dangerous journeys in hopes of healing their broken world. No matter the sacrifice it demands.
512 pages
Published October 13, 2020
Set on a world that has ceased spinning after a conflict between 2 ruling goddesses, Chupeco tells this story through the eyes of 4 different characters, whose respective quests coincide and lead them across burning deserts and night-blighted forest, to connect them all in ways they couldn't possibly have foreseen. Daughters of the aforementioned goddesses live in protected luxury, neither of whom know of the other's existence, but both of whom believe wholeheartedly that if they could travel to the place where the cataclysm happened, they can do something to reverse it and return the world to its former, more balanced, glory. Together with their guardians, they make the perilous journey, all of them learning more about themselves and each other along the way.
There were a few things that didn't work well for me in The Never Tilting World, though none of them completely ruined the experience for me. I didn't much care for Arjun, Haidee's guardian, as he felt poorly developed in comparison to the other characters. While Odessa and Lan had their tumultuous relationship, it felt like Arjun's presence served as more of a token convenience, someone who existed largely to give explanation as to how Haidee made it to her destination, and to also give Haidee a romantic interest, though I didn't really feel much between the characters. Not when on the other side of the world, there was a more developed couple (albeit a complicated on-again-off-again couple).
Besides that, there was the fact that the world had stopped spinning at all. It's an interesting set-up, but when it comes to the science, well, there wasn't any, not really. A world that used to rotate and then suddenly stops will have more consequences that just one side being constantly day and the other constantly night. Yes, I know it's fantasy, but I still like realism in my fantasy, and every time I thought about the potential consequences of an un-spinning world, it seemed there was only so far I could suspend my disbelief.
That doesn't mean Chupeco wrote The Never Tilting World badly. It just means there was one area I couldn't reconcile myself to. That's all.
That being said, the story overall was pretty interesting, though I had a clear preference for Lan and Odessa's story and Arjun and Haidee's. I enjoyed seeing their respective journeys across the world's dangers, both known and unknown, and seeing how they rose to the challenge or failed, how they discovered and rediscovered parts of themselves, and how willing the two young goddesses were to throw away everything they had been in favour of everything they might become.
Odessa, in particular, was an absolutely fascinating character. She started as a timid girl, but a determined one, and over the course of her journey and her acquisition of power, she not only became less timid, but more authoritarian, shaping her friends and guardians into something that would serve her interests at all costs. She broke boundaries, she did terrible things for what she felt sure were the right reasons, an exchange of her personality for the power to potentially remake the world and set it back on track, and seeing her transformation was enthralling to me. I've read a number of fantasy novels, but rarely do I see anything written from the perspective of someone who starts off fine and then succumbs to corruption along the way.
In contrast, Haidee's journey was a much less interesting thing to me, as it just involved, well, a pretty typical journey. Go new places, meet new people, learn a bit more about yourself and your world and the past, and then get to your destination. Haidee and Arjun's sections weren't boring, in fact most of the action seemed to be there, but I couldn't quite bring myself to care about them as much as I cared about Lan and Odessa.
For all that there were some aspects that didn't work for me, I did overall enjoy The Never Tilting World, and I'm curious as to how the story continues. The ending was the perfect cliffhanger, and there's clearly a lot more of the story to tell, so at some point in the future I'll probably see if I can see it all through to the end. There was clear creativity at work, in the world-building and the characters, and I'm always down for a good sapphic relationship. Even if this book didn't grab me as much as other books have, it was still pretty good, after all.
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