Following from Black Sun, Fevered Star is in, a lot of ways, about moving pieces into place for a conclusion. This isn't to say nothing happens, but there's a lot of political maneuvering and plotting for plans that don't pay off yet.
Though Roanhorse switches focus each chapter, the two main characters are Serapio and Naranpa. In the wake of his massacre of the Watchers at the end of the first book, Serapio has a lot to deal with. A increasing following look to him as a god, but he's increasingly aware of the fact he's just a tool of an actual god. The Crow God feels it's been kept locked away by the Sun God too long, and Serapio was its weapon. The only reason he's alive is he didn't kill the true Sun Priest, because Naranpa had been overthrown (and nearly killed) by grasping schemers in her midst.
Beyond that, he can't get anyone to see him as a person. Not can't; they won't. They don't want to see him that way. He's something to worship, but also something to help them achieve their desires, and he's slowly realizing that's all he's ever been to anyone, all the way back to his mother. The one exception was the Teek helmswoman, Xiala, who is making her own fumbling attempts to help Serapio from a distance, and Serapio misses that. Having had a taste of being truly seen, he would like more, but it's not going to happen yet, if ever.
Naranpa's journey is in the opposite direction. She has to come to grips with the fact that in surviving the betrayals and Serapio's attack, she's become something more than just human as well. I don't know if it's her being older than Serapio when he found himself in similar circumstances, or if it's a result of her recent betrayals at the hands of people she thought she could trust, but she seems to grasp that they're both being used by gods as intermediaries more quickly.
Part of the difference is, Naranpa is shown seeking out information to understand what's happening to her. She talks to different people and explores levels of the Watcher's library that were forbidden to her in the past. Serapio knows only what he was told by his teachers and his mother. Who were, of course, setting him up to do their bidding, which rather slanted the perspective they offered.
That said, I was surprised that Roanhorse starts to set Naranpa up as the matron for a reviving clan in the city, then abandons that idea within a handful of pages. I suppose it's part of the character's journey, that she has to accept that her battles are elsewhere, but it felt like an abrupt pivot. Or maybe Roanhorse figured there was enough political jockeying going on in the other plot threads.
Roanhorse keeps the story moving at a brisk pace. She doesn't end every chapter on a cliffhanger, but she's excellent at leaving things at a point that hint towards future conversations or confrontations that you really want to see. I intended to take seven days to finish the book, a nice leisurely pace, and tore through it in four instead.
'He watched his arms pulse black and feathered, and then solidify into flesh, only to burst into birds again. He screamed, a roar of terror, as he willed himself back together.'
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