Black Sun

Black Sun is an epic fantasy novel by the American writer Rebecca Roanhorse, published in 2020. It is set in a world inspired by the civilisations of pre-Columbian America.

The novel opens with a prophecy: a god will return when the earth and sky converge under the black sun in the holy city of Tova. The winter solstice is usually a time of celebration and renewal, but this year it falls on a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event that the Sun Priest declares an unbalancing of the world. A ship meanwhile sets out from a distant city with orders to reach Tova in time for the solstice. Its captain is Xiala, a disgraced member of the Teek whose song can calm the water around her as easily as it can bend a man's mind, and she is carrying one passenger: Serapio, a young man described to her as harmless, blind, scarred and cloaked in destiny. The novel follows its four main characters as their paths converge on the city.

Roanhorse draws on Indigenous American histories and mythologies rather than on the European middle ages, and this book is the first of the Between Earth and Sky trilogy.