Sorrow and Starlight: Zodiac Academy 8

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and antigay bias.

Tory is one of the two protagonists of Sorrow and Starlight and of the Zodiac Academy series as a whole. She forms a duality with her twin sister, Darcy. The two are foils for each other, with Tory as the more impulsive and straightforward sister, while Darcy is more cautious and circumspect. In this novel, however, her character arc is built on dualities. First, she is defined by her defiance and refusal to follow a predestined path dictated by the stars. She is repeatedly confronted by the weight of cosmic prophecy and the expectations of her bloodline. Yet, rather than accepting her fate, she fights to carve her own destiny, further building on the independence that Valenti and Peckham established in the prior novels. However, she is also someone weighed down by guilt, isolation, and the fear of never being good enough. With both her sister and husband gone, she is left without purpose and turns to the dark rituals she finds in the Book of Ether. When she chooses to follow through with them and travels to the Damned Forest and beyond, she confronts manifestations of the parts of herself that she has long tried to suppress: her fear of being a burden to her sister and her fear of becoming a monster.