Reviews with content warning for Murder - A Song to Drown Rivers

An epic fantasy-tragedy which takes place in ancient China. This is a retelling of a Chinese tale (which I had not read prior). It feels more like historical fiction than fantasy to me, but definitely had the sweeping epic vibes that felt something like Eastern mythology. War, “sexpionage”, love, friendship, and tragedy is all in this tale and I was quite captivated the whole way through.

Wonderful audiobook narration, which I especially appreciated hearing proper pronunciation of the characters names.

Overall, a good read for me which caught me by surprise as it’s quite different than my typical TBR.

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somsom1312's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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rileydobereading's review against another edition

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adventurous sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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soph22's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

3.75

Thanks to NetGalley, Macmillan UK Audio, and Tor for the audio ARC.

I don't know how to feel about about this book. On one hand, I think the writing was beautiful, lyrical, undeniably well written, but on the other, I found the story slow. Time was taken to describe some things to the point I became bored while also skimming over things I was really interested in. The romance felt rushed, to the point where I just didn’t feel the connection strong enough to really root for them - yet the ending emotionally killed me. A real mixed bag, but I would gladly read more books by this author.

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baileybeloved's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Loved the world building, the characters, & the ending.

As with a lot of historical fiction/retellings, you could see where the story was going the entire time & I knew, basically beat for beat, what was coming next, but it didn’t take away from the emotions of it.

Everyone got the ending they were always going to have & I respect that. I think Liang has excellent characterization skills, which really aids in making the plot both believable and predictable - not that that is a bad thing. Knowing the characters so well that I can predict their thoughts/motivations just means (to me) that you’ve created some very well fleshed out characters.

A small thing I really liked - up until the end - is that we see a lot of moments where Xishi is forced to face that people, regardless of kingdom, are just people. Everyone loses family in wars regardless of side, every kingdom has a king who is selfish, every court is made up of individuals with their own tragedies & losses, & every mountain can be stunning, regardless of the earth it resides on. Though Xishi sort of acknowledges this through noting her surprise (thinking specifically of the line

”you call the Yue monsters?”

), it is kept in the background. It does not change Xishi’s mind or her mission, which I liked for her character. Then at the end, you have another character kind of bring that point home for her, which I thought was kind of unnecessary for the story. Like it is understandable that that is that character’s belief, but I just felt like that being the catalyst for Xishi’s next actions, & the ultimate climax of the book, was a little bit unnecessary.

Overall, I liked this story a lot. The book itself is also stunning (I have the hardcover with the art on the front (sword) & back (hairpin) beneath what is already a beautiful cover).

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