look this is gonna be a hard to swallow pill for the pjo fandom,
but the sun and the star is coming out at a really important time in the USA -- homophobia is on the rise, books like this are being restricted, and policies are being debated and passed to exterminate queer and trans people from the public sphere. having a positive example of a queer relationship in fiction, especially as part of a mega-popular middle grade series, is going to be important to a lot of the queer 10-14 year olds that make up this book's main demographic.
i have never, ever seen a percy jackson book have such a negative reception online. and it's just a coincidence that this is the first queer-focused installment of the series?
people are seeing the extent of the hate and thinking they shouldn't bother reading tsats at all, that they have already heard enough from people who hate the book. I have had people reblog my positive posts and say "maybe i'll give this book a chance, this is the first nice post i've seen about it." that's really fucking sad yall.
maybe tsats wasn't what you expected, maybe it contradicted your headcanons, maybe you prefer ships other than solangelo. you don't have to like tsats. but the amount of vocal hate for it is ridiculous. other pjo books do not get this kind of hate -- picking apart and complaining about every tiny little detail, ridiculing the writing style of both authors, mocking the attempts at sincerity, even sometimes mocking people who did like the book.
i have never seen this harsh of a response before (and i'm old -- I've been a percy jackson reader since the lightning thief came out in 2005) and especially not from such large portions of the fandom to the point where people who haven't read it are feeling discouraged from doing so.
Please look at the big picture. your opinions don't exist in a vacuum. maybe this is a hot take, but at some point the hate is indistinguishable from how homophobes talk about queer fiction. i'm just saying there are better things to turn your anger towards, and if you hated this book so much just do what the rest of us do and write fucking fanfiction to make yourself feel better. fucks sake
I had no idea about this and I will now take it upon me to write a goddamn essay about why tsats is a good book but for now here's why you should read it:
1. It's Nico. If you love the series you love him. You know all the shit he's been through. This is the chance to go on an adventure with him. Haven't you missed him as much as I did?
2. I'm an editor in training, and I swear, the technical abilities at display in this are ridiculous. If you can't see it, you're just not qualified enough. So shut up about the authors.
3. It's obviously all an excuse for character development. The PJ world didn't need this story, Nico did. As a character I mean. There was much unresolved for him and he deserved all that to be unpacked. We deserved to see him unpack it, not just imagine it. He's such a complex character, one of my favorite ever, and I for one deserved to read this.
4. They are cute. Okay? Solangelo are cute. I loved how much they hold hands and kiss each other's foreheads. Percabeth never was this sappy and it's correct: they just aren't like this. They were different people with a different relationship.
5. The book depicts not a perfect, doubtless relationship such as Percabeth, but one made of people with different pasts and struggles, who learn to be a couple. This is new to the Riordanverse. The focus isn't on the adventure, it's on the relationship. Maybe y'all should consider the intent before judging.
