Reviews with content warning for Fire/Fire injury - She Who Became the Sun

Reviews tagging 'Fire/Fire injury'

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

115 reviews

valereads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense slow-paced

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

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zombiezami's review against another edition

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emotional tense

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

3.75

While I enjoyed the characters and the ways that the author explored gender expressions and identities in this book, the plot lost me several times. I'm learning it's hard for me to pay attention to narratives that revolve around war. I feel like I would have liked this more as a television show or movie. Some aspects were hard to visualize for me. Not sure if I'll read the sequel.

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taleofabibliophile's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful tense slow-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? No

3.5

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serena_hien's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging reflective 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

3.75

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jourdanicus's review against another edition

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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

I really enjoyed this book and especially the character of Zhu Chongba. There was a little more more discussion of strategy/politics than usually interests me, and sometimes I got the characters confused (honestly because I'm white and not accustomed to Chinese names, so that's no fault of the author, the characters were all very distinct and well written). The moments of the characters' internal narrative and the interactions between them were compelling and believable. The queer subplot of this story is one of my favorite probably ever. The descriptions of the experience of attraction and dysphoria felt so representative and nuanced. I highly recommend the audio, the narrator was great and it was helpful to hear character and place names pronounced correctly.

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annaledbetter's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious tense slow-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

4.0

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bluejayreads's review against another edition

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adventurous dark

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

5.0

I put a hold on this audiobook at the library, and I’ll admit, when it came ready I wondered what I was thinking. I’ve read a lot of Chinese- and East Asian-inspired fantasy lately, including a completely different one that was also a fantasy version of a real ruler of China’s journey to power. But I’ve also DNF’d many, many other similar books recently. So I was a little skeptical going in.

Everything on the back cover is basically the setup for the story. The girl does not get a name, either because her father and brother don’t think her important enough to use it or her family never bothered to give her one in the first place. Surrounded by famine so terrible that people have resorted to truly terrible means, there was no reason to put effort into keeping a daughter alive when you could instead save a son.

But the girl lives. She takes her brother’s name and identity to enter a monastery where there would be food. There she discovers how far she will go to survive. She believes her true fate is nothingness and death, but if she has a strong enough will, she can convince Heaven itself that she should live.

That is the story. It is a monk who is not a woman* but who must hide her woman’s body, whose choices are nothingness or greatness and who will sacrifice anything, even breaking her own heart in the process, to seize her fate. As a girl child in a world that would rather let a girl die than let a boy be uncomfortable, she chose to live by any means necessary.

She is not a good person, but she is a strongly compelling character, a queer anti-hero who does many things that are morally dubious or outright wrong but who I still want to see succeed.

Her journey is set against a war – the Red Turban Rebellion – as the Chinese attempt to overthrow their Mongol rulers. And hers is not the only perspective in the story. There is also the eunuch general of the Mongol rulers, biding his time in dubious favor with various Mongol nobility until he can get revenge for his slaughtered family. There is also Ma, engaged to the son of a Red Turban leader as the rebellion’s leadership jockeys for power, who gets significantly less page time but no less importance than the other two. The threads of fate surround everyone and draw them ever closer to their glory or doom.

This review is poetic because that’s what this book evokes. The writing style isn’t poetic, and the book itself is full of violence and gore and hatred, but the story feels like an epic saga, the kind of thing that gets put to song and sung throughout the land. I occasionally had a difficult time keeping the names straight – though I’m pretty sure that’s a limitation of reading it as an audiobook – and the sheer excess of misogyny was hard to read at times. But I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. The sequel hasn’t even been announced yet, but there is going to be one and I can’t wait.

*About gender and pronouns in the book: Though raised as a girl until age 9-ish, Zhu declares herself not to be a girl. She presents as a man and uses he/him pronouns with others, but declares herself to be in a space between or outside the two genders, neither male nor female. The parts of the book that are from her perspective use she/her pronouns for her, so that’s what I use in this review.

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