Reviews with content warning for Transphobia - She Who Became The Sun

Reviews tagging 'Transphobia'

She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

46 reviews

_lovedelirium's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

you know what the romance in this was really bland now thinking about it more ..... need more of that zhu x ouyang rivalry !! that's what made the book interesting, also it was kind of slow to take off but once they started switching pov it got better, peak of engagement was definitely more on ouyang's side. reading book two for more ouyang!!! because zhu pissed me off at the end

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jessiereads98's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-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

2.5

This was a huge disappointment. I’ve seen this book hyped so much and it’s not even close to the best sapphic fantasy I’ve read or the best Asian inspired military fantasy I’ve read.

The most compelling part of this story was the character of Ouyang and his relationships. That being said, I would still cut Ouyang’s story from the book entirely. I see how he works as a mirror to Zhu’s character, but him and his story aren’t necessary. This book is too long with too many POVs that are wholly unnecessary and while technically they come into contact occasionally, they really aren’t that relevant to each other. No POV adds anything to the others. The jumps between POVs are also extremely jarring at times. Overall, I found it difficult to care about any character due to a lack of consistent characterization and constant jumps.

There’s no real payoff from the magic here. This is heavy on the military and light on the fantasy to the point where for me it drops to more magical realism than true fantasy. This was really disappointing since it had potential. However, almost every time

Zhu’s ability to see ghosts

comes up, it goes nowhere. It’s only really used once, and does very little to further plot, characterization, or themes in my opinion. I felt like I smelled the mouth-watering aroma of baking bread only to walk into the bakery and find they didn’t sell bread at all, just used the scent to attract customers.

I can recognize the writing in this book on its own is objectively, technically very well done. However, it still reads very dry and drags for about 300-350 pages. The ending was good, but it wasn’t worth the rest of the book. This ended up feeling like an excessively elaborate and unnecessary set up for whatever is going to happen in the sequel.

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