49 pages • 1-hour read
The Sunbearer Trials
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Background
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of bullying, emotional and physical abuse, gender discrimination, graphic violence, and illness or death.
Linguistic Context: Gendered Language in Spanish
The Sunbearer Trials uses different noun endings to express the genders of different characters. Spanish-speakers might expect to see dios (god) and diosa (goddess), but the text also uses the ending “e” to show gender neutrality (as in diose and semidiose). These terms reflect a conscious choice to embrace an expansive vocabulary that makes room for characters of all genders, normalizing gender fluidity within the world of the narrative. For Thomas, this inclusive vocabulary honors the story’s roots in Mesoamerican culture:
Within the Latinx identity […] we’ve had gender norms forced upon us because of colonization. Many cultures—I would even say most cultures—were a lot more queer before white colonizers came […] what people don’t realize is that Mesoamerican societies […] had terms for people who didn’t fit a gender binary (“Aiden Thomas, Cemetery Boys & The Sunbearer Trials.” Hinton Cast, from Hinton Publishing, 2025).
The term Latinx, a neologism of US English, gained popularity in the early 21st century as a gender-neutral alternative to Latino/a—a term that evokes the inherent gender binary of romance languages. Scholars trace the history of the term back to “the ‘x’ [first] used at the front of Chicano written in the form of ‘Xicano’ as part of the civil rights movement [in the 1960s] for the empowerment of Mexican origin people in the United States” (Salinas Jr., Cristobal. “The Complexity of the ‘x’ in Latinx: How Latinx/a/o
Students Relate to, Identify With, and Understand the Term Latinx” Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, vol.19, no. 2, Jan. 2020). The term has prompted much public debate, with some critics arguing that while it’s widely used in activist and academic spaces, it’s far less common in Spanish-speaking communities due, in part, to the difficulty of pronouncing “Latinx” in Spanish.
The conflicted discourse around the use of “Latinx” has given rise to other gender-neutral terms such as “Latin” or “Latine,” that more closely mirror existing gender-neutral identifiers in Spanish, such as “estudiante.” Thomas’s inclusion of “diose” and “semidiose” reflects a desire to create wider representation and normalization of gender fluidity within his genre: “for me, it was once again taking steps to kind of make space, not only for [my] characters, but also for my readers. [It’s] so important to be able to [see] characters who are like yourself and how they navigate these really tenuous and tricky situations, especially when it comes to family and community” (“Embracing Identity: Aiden Thomas on Writing Trans and Latinx Characters - Wyoming Humanities.” Wyoming Humanities, 2024).
Cultural Context: The Influence of Mesoamerican Mythology and Contemporary Mexican Culture
For The Sunbearer Trials, Thomas takes inspiration from the spiritual and cultural rituals of Mesoamerica, including characteristics of the Aztec and Maya pantheon of gods. The Trials themselves culminate in the sacrifice of a semidiose to power the stones of Sol, the narrative’s central god, which echoes the Aztec ritual of human sacrifice to their solar deity, Huitzilopochtli, “who was said to be in constant struggle with darkness, [and] required blood from a human heart as nourishment to ensure his survival. To feed their god, the people of the sun offered up their own” (Webley, Kayla. “Top 10 Sun Myths: Huitzilopochtli, Aztec God of Sun and War.” Time Magazine, 2011). Similarly, Thomas’s diosa Quetzal is named for the quetzal bird revered in many Mesoamerican cultures, whose “iridescent green tail feathers also symbolized spring plant growth to the Aztecs and Mayans, who viewed the quetzal as the ‘god of the air’ and as a symbol of goodness and light” (“ABC's Bird Library: Resplendent Quetzal, ‘Sacred Species.’ American Bird Conservancy).
Thomas incorporates elements of contemporary Mexican culture and geography into his story, marrying his historical references to Maya and Aztec mythology with recognizable practices, food, geography, folk art, and other cultural elements from modern Mexican life. In conversation with Hinton Publishing, Thomas notes, “For The Sunbearer Trials, I really wanted it to be a reflection of my relationship to my family’s Mexican heritage […] While there’s inspiration from Mesoamerican mythology, a lot of it is contemporary [culture]” (“Aiden Thomas”). For example, in the competitors’ fourth trial, Thomas reimagines alebrijes—brightly colored sculptures of fantastical, chimeric creatures originally conceived by papier mâché artist Pedro Linares—as living creatures that inhabit Los Restos. The cities that host each of the trials reference architectural details from modern Mexican cities, such as the desert city, Casa de Corazón, which echoes the signature domed, pink clay buildings of Zacatecas.
The Sunbearer Trials sits in conversation with other young adult fantasy novels—such as Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Gods of Jade and Shadow and J. C. Cervantes’s The Storm Runner— that integrate elements of Mesoamerican mythology and religious ritual into the narrative.
Genre Context: Deadly Competition Trope in Young Adult Fantasy
The Sunbearer Trials is built around the popular young adult (YA) trope of a deadly, high-stakes competition that finds its roots in the myths of ancient civilizations, notably the Greek myth of the Minotaur, a creature with the head of a bull and the body of a man who was imprisoned at the center of a labyrinth designed by the inventor, Daedalus. Minos, the King of Crete, demanded that 14 young men and women from Athens be sent into the labyrinth as an offering to the Minotaur every nine years. This narrative framework was famously solidified by Koushun Takami’s 1999 novel Battle Royale and later popularized globally by Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games series. Thomas himself points to Collins’s series as a key inspiration for his duology: “I came up with The Sunbearer Trials [as a title] because I wanted something that was a nod to The Hunger Games because that was such a big influence for me” (“Aiden Thomas”). Deadly competition novels typically feature young protagonists forced to fight to the death for the entertainment or stability of a dystopian society.
Following in this tradition, The Sunbearer Trials interrogates authoritarian power, class division, and the glorification of violence. Thomas utilizes these conventions to critique The Injustice of Inherited Hierarchies within the world of Reino del Sol. The Trials are not just a sacred ritual but a “televised and sponsored event” (6), mirroring the spectacle of The Hunger Games, where contestants’ lives become a form of public entertainment. Thomas critiques the world’s rigid social structure, which is divided between the powerful, privileged Golds and the marginalized Jades. Luna, the high priestess, declares that becoming the sacrifice is the “greatest honor of all” (54), echoing how regimes in dystopian fiction often use propaganda to justify violence. By placing a Jade protagonist into this traditionally Gold-dominated arena, Thomas uses the deadly competition trope to challenge the foundations of his fictional society and question who is deemed worthy of being a hero.
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