Reviews tagging 'Xenophobia'

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

55 reviews

evelphysicist's review against another edition

adventurous tense medium-paced

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

4.5

I really enjoyed the narrative style, most of the characters and pacing of this book. The story follows 2 characters though, and the second is considerably less compelling than the first. Although this offered perspectives that allow the reader to view the story in a more holistic way.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Death, Racism, Violence, Physical abuse, War, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Slavery, Torture, Child death, Child abuse, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Animal death, Ableism, Animal cruelty, and Vomit

tiernanhunter's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content, War, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, and Violence

Moderate: Death, Cursing, Racism, Toxic friendship, Colonisation, Racial slurs, Sexism, and Blood

Minor: Death of parent, Genocide, Ableism, Xenophobia, Child death, and Classism

thewitchwhoisabook's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Child abuse, Ableism, Body shaming, Violence, Misogyny, Body horror, Abandonment, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Sexism, War, and Death of parent

Moderate: Homophobia, Child death, Xenophobia, Toxic friendship, and Grief

jae_bird's review against another edition

adventurous medium-paced

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

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Child death, Death, Xenophobia, Violence, Animal death, Injury/Injury detail, Child abuse, Death of parent, Sexual content, Torture, Murder, Misogyny, and Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Alcohol

chrisljm's review against another edition

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

Graphic: Blood, Sexual content, Fire/Fire injury, Colonisation, Sexism, Toxic relationship, Murder, Child death, Dysphoria, Torture, Death, Body shaming, Violence, War, Death of parent, Grief, Xenophobia, Injury/Injury detail, and Misogyny

Moderate: Ableism, Animal death, Alcohol, Gore, Slavery, Child abuse, Homophobia, Body horror, and Chronic illness

Minor: Pregnancy

leonormsousa's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Child death, Gore, Transphobia, Xenophobia, Infidelity, Infertility, Sexism, Ableism, Classism, Abandonment, Blood, Child abuse, Misogyny, Racism, Death, Death of parent, Murder, Slavery, Dysphoria, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, and War

aileron's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

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

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Torture, Gore, Ableism, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Death, Colonisation, Fire/Fire injury, Dysphoria, Violence, and War

Moderate: Animal death, Grief, Alcohol, Bullying, Child death, and Death of parent

Minor: Cannibalism, Slavery, Xenophobia, Classism, Excrement, Racial slurs, and Racism

lanid's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional reflective

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Sexual content, Colonisation, Child abuse, Genocide, Misogyny, Ableism, Antisemitism, Body horror, Child death, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Body shaming, Violence, Murder, War, Xenophobia, Gore, and Slavery

ok7a's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Xenophobia, War, Murder, Violence, and Blood

Moderate: Sexual content and Sexism

Minor: Death of parent

hmatt's review against another edition

adventurous tense slow-paced

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

3.25

So, I'm not a fantasy reader, and I think that weighs heavily in my review. If you're used to and like reading historical and/or fantastical novels with lots of characters that span lots of time, you will probably like this. I'm personally much more interested in reading close character studies where not much happens, so this wasn't really my cup of tea.

I persevered because Natalie Naudus, and of course the hype. And also it takes a lot for me to DNF a book, so I just pushed through. 

Some things I wasn't into:

• As I alluded to before, I had a hard time keeping track of all the characters
• This might also be a genre (/part one in a series) thing, but there are so many events that happen one after another that I didn't feel were super necessary to building the story. This and the multiple time jumps made the story seem both rushed and too long.
• So many of the pivotal moments are glossed over? Like I didn't even realize that a lot of them had happened until after?
• The above also fed into my lack of conviction over the characters relationships with each other. There were really only one or two relationships that felt fleshed-out and genuine to me, and these were the rare ones where we spent a lot of time with both characters together. The main character and their love interest was completely blank for me, I didn't feel any of the build up and had no investment in their relationship.

All this said, it's a "fine" story for me. I did like the writing style, despite my thoughts on how the story comes together. The steamy scene that has received a ton of social media attention is incredibly random in the context of the book but like, lives up to the hype and I could have done with more of that honestly? Well done. I really appreciated the book in audio form for its accurate pronunciations of words/names I would read wrong in my head, and I'd love to read more historical fiction focusing on this area of the world.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Sexism, Injury/Injury detail, Ableism, Death, Child death, Sexual content, Misogyny, Medical content, Blood, Xenophobia, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, War, Murder, Domestic abuse, and Gore

Moderate: Alcohol, Animal death, and Grief

Minor: Infidelity