Book Review - The Legend of the Sun Knight
Fanart side story comic - author unkown
Yesterday I finished reading "The Legend of Sun Knight", which is a web novel written by Yu Wo (御我) and translated into English by PrinceRevolution.
The novel is written in first person perspective where we're following the 38th generation Sun Knight from the church of the god of light. The whole series is 8 books long and you can read the for free on the PrinceRevolution website.
TL:DR at the end
Series synopsis:
I am a knight. To be precise, I am the Church of the God of Light’s Sun Knight.
The Church of the God of Light worships and serves the God of Light, and theirs is one of the three largest religions on this continent.
As the whole continent knows, the Church of the God of Light has the Twelve Holy Knights, and each one has his own unique personality and features.
To be the Sun Knight is to have shining golden hair, sky blue eyes, a compassionate nature, and a brilliant smile.
“The benevolent God of Light will forgive your sins.”
I must have said that line at least a million times in my time as the Sun Knight.
However, the greatest wish in my life is to be able to stand before the entire continent and roar, “Damn your ‘the whole continent knows’! This Sun Knight just doesn’t feel like smiling! I just don’t want to forgive these human trashes! I just want to pepper my sentences with ‘f***’!”
Unfortunately, even to this day, I continue to wear a smile as I say, “The benevolent God of Light will forgive your sins.”
When looking for a new novel series to pick up I came across this gem and just wanted to tell you about it.
In this light novel we dive into a world where Gods, Demons and magic exists. Within this world multiple churches exists, that represent the will of the corresponding Gods. We follow Grisia Sun, the 38th Sun Knight . The Sun Knight is the leader of the 12 holy Knights, that throughout history always looked the same and had the same characteristics (at least this is what the common folk thinks).
In theory, the Sun Knight is the benevolent spokesperson of the God of Light, the man closest to perfection alive, but in reality we can experience the wonderful duality of his existence during 8 Volumes that each tell a different story of the Sun Knight.
To be honest I did not expect a lot when I started reading the book but I was surprised!
For all the people who are not familiar with Chinese web novels, generally speaking they all follow the same set of clichés (Weak to strong, fighting about face, shameless overpowered MC etc.) that do not make any sense on closer inspection but in this novel the author did a great job creating clichés that made (kinda) sense. Why does the bad Demon King always abducts princesses? Why does he kills princes? Why are bad guys always good in their heart? Read the novel and you'll see a possible explanation.
Another thing that I liked on this novel where the character. Not to overdrawn but also not shallow and 2 dimensional. They were funny and had their own personality, something you don't see very often in these kinds of books. Since the 12 holy knights all had two personalities, there was a lot of room to make funny jokes or create interesting situations and the author used this to his full advantage.
While reading this novel series I often had a smile on my face, felt sad, thought about the choices of the main character, was angry about certain choices the MC took only to think that the choices where genius moves after reading a few chapters more.
Expect the occasional strong foreshadowing, I felt this novel made the most out of the setting. Really enjoyed the read!
TL:DR: The characters are interesting, the novel is well written, the translation is great, the story makes sense and is good. Read it!
PS: My first book review in English, sorry if it is a little unpolished...