Reviews with content warning for Homophobia - Lei che divenne il sole

first off, i don’t know what kind of experimental writer-drug shelley parker-chan did to achieve this level of complexity and nuance and utter PERFECTION, but i’ll have whatever they’re having.

she who became the sun is not an easy book to read. this baby is DENSE. there are soooo many moving pieces at play in the politics, so many details and places and characters to keep track of, but it’s so rewarding in the sheer entertainment and emotional intensity it provides as a story. while this book is HEAVY on characterization i never ever felt that the pacing was weird. it absolutely did what it needed to do for me, and parker-chan’s writing is so intentional and artful that this book felt like it was thoroughly thought out in every way. the blurb likens it to the song of achilles but i would say it’s much more similar to the poppy war.

and the characters, holy fuck. this book has no soft fluffy sweet characters to speak of. these are determined, driven antiheroes constantly working toward their individual fates, and a lot of the time not giving a fuck who they have to hurt to get there. and so many of them are delightfully queer. one of the true strengths of this book was the way queer longing was depicted. ouyang’s POV especially. the anger, jealousy, shame, otherness and YEARNING he experienced all felt so real. everything he felt the reader could feel and that to me is the mark of masterful characters in a novel.

and then there’s zhu’s POV with the obsessive push to her fate and the turmoil of trying to figure out who she actually is. the depiction of gender dysphoria in this book was really well done in my opinion. zhu’s feelings about her body sometimes hit so hard.

in short: this book is brutal. it’s gay as fuck. it will hurt you but you’ll probably enjoy it.

Content Warnings

chrisljm's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

This book has been marketed so heavily as a fantasy but it’s really not. There are only two fantastical elements and they’re not even that important to the story.

This is a story about fate and how the main character seeks greatness with hers. Although an interesting premise, I didn’t really enjoy how the story was told. It’s like the meme about Zuko’s honor except it’s a billion times worse because all the main character talks about is her fate/greatness, it was incredibly excessive (fate was mentioned 145 times, greatness 50 times). I think the main character started off interesting, but something about the way we see her through other POVs made me so unattached to her, and I really didn’t care if she succeeded or failed.

I think one of the worst things is that she wanted Ma as a way to remind her of empathy and to keep her from becoming like the men she hated, but at the end that’s who she became anyways. And I especially hate how Ma feared a life where all her thoughts, feelings, and wants are ignored, yet in the end she stays with Zhu because she loves her even though she knows that means a life of pain. I don’t find that romantic at all; I think that’s terribly sad and love shouldn’t contain so much suffering. A line in the end from Zhu’s POV says “Zhu’s desire propelling them higher and higher, until there was nothing left above them but the dazzling vault of Heaven. And for Ma every moment of that ascent would be compromise and heartache and the gradual erosion of her belief that there was always a kinder way. . . I’ll make it worth it, for both of us.” I just don’t see how anything could possibly make that pain worth it.

I think maybe a large part of why I didn’t enjoy the book that much is because my beliefs/the way I see the world is so vastly different from the main characters, and so my disappointment might just be a me problem.

But also, the story moves so slowly it’s kind of hard to read in large chunks. A lot happens but it doesn’t feel like it, and I don’t want to say it’s boring, but it was hard not to zone out. There are also times where parts of a scene happen off screen? I don’t know if this is just a writing style or what, but it was confusing because instead of reading what happens, I have to infer for myself because the author likes to describe emotions first and events second.

For instance during the scene where Ouyang cuts off Zhu’s hand, they’re fighting and all of a sudden they’re not fighting because something is clearly wrong and then “her fingers clenched around the sword in her lower body”, and then on the next page his sword flashes and there’s an impact and every feeling is described and then you’re told her hand is missing.

I just feel like this book was more frustrating to read than it had to be.

Content Warnings

terry_reads's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.0

I enjoyed the first half of the book but aber the monastery got burned down I found it really hard to keep reading and I couldn't stand like half of the characters.

Content Warnings