Listen. Here’s the thing, okay? Objectively this book series is insane. Like we have a fictionalized ultra-violent version of lacrosse that somehow has a robust NCAA network of teams as well as an Olympic team despite having been invented like 18 years ago. We have so much mafia violence it makes Goodfellas look like Saturday morning cartoons. The justice system doesn’t work that way, psychiatric medications don’t work that way, so much in these books just straight up doesn’t work that way… and yet!!!
I will say that in comparison to the original All For the Game trilogy, which started its self-publication journey in 2013 and lowkey you can tell, this second series—which focuses on fallen Raven Jean Moreau and his transfer into the care of sunshiney USC team captain Jeremy Knox—is considerably less grimdark. It’s also pretty clear to me that Nora has taken a lot of the feedback on the original series (there aren’t that many women, for example, and most of them aren’t treated super well by the narrative; there is a lot of language in the prose that’s reflective of the times) and is actively working to correct those things in these new books. I personally really appreciate that, and I think that attention is what makes The Sunshine Court so much more enjoyable to me than the original trilogy (and that’s saying something because I really love the original series).
I guess I would say that the crux of this series, with Jeremy and Jean, focuses less on the violence and more on the incredibly hard work of unlearning the abuse you suffered through no fault of your own. Jean has been put through hell by the Ravens, and now that he’s free from their influence he has the opportunity to shed that baggage and become his own person—but it’s not easy and it’s definitely not fast. Getting to be inside his head while he slowly comes to learn that he’s not just property to be sold to the Moriyamas is really very moving.
Also, this is pretty classically black cat/golden retriever coded and like… at the end of the day I’m just a guy. C’mon.