Reviews tagging 'Homophobia'

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

80 reviews

alexbirdreads's review against another edition

adventurous dark reflective slow-paced

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

5.0

M'kay. I can't really put my finger on WHY I rated this one five-stars. It doesn't exactly have what I usually rate a book five stars for. I think I just really love the characters and the drama. I love how morally gray almost everyone is, and how tragic the one morally good character's situation is. Actually, there is an underpinning of tragedy for everyone. The story puts emphasis on the ways that desire can be the root of suffering, and asks what kind of actions are justified when characters are trying to do more than survive in extreme circumstances. I love that betrayals we see coming still hurt your feelings. I also love just how fucking WILD this book is. Zhu in particular is a special kind of crazy. The tragedy that comes from gender nonconformity in a rigidly gendered society is sprinkled throughout the book in ways that you'd expect, but also in corners here and there that you wouldn't. 

I liked that there was room for joyful queer love and joyful gender exploration amid the queer tragedy, because we have a lot of stories of queer suffering. I get that it's important and that there's a place for it (and it certainly had it's place in this book!) but it's nice to have some GOOD. It feels more authentic when a whole spectrum of experiences is represented, and, if anything, the moments of joy make the moments of tragedy feel that much worse afterwards. 

It's a little long and convoluted, and the story is really more about character exploration than direct action, so it might not be for everyone, but I really enjoyed it for some reason. 

It really was kind of crazy, though. Like, 'one-armed dingo ate my heaven-ordained baby' crazy. You gotta love Zhu. But someone get Ouyang a therapist, my god. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Blood, Murder, and Violence

Moderate: Sexism, Transphobia, and Homophobia

Minor: Child abuse and Child death

leannanecdote's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional tense slow-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Grief, Misogyny, Murder, Mental illness, Child death, Classism, Confinement, Blood, Death, Cursing, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Toxic relationship, Homophobia, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, War, Bullying, Sexual harassment, Violence, Physical abuse, Sexism, Torture, Toxic friendship, and Ableism

Moderate: Slavery

crystalisreading's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional tense

• 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

5.0

Intense.  well written. Compelling.  Wonderful audio narration. Incredibly morally grey characters. Brutal. All the feels. not for the faint of heart. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Vomit, Animal death, Blood, Slavery, Torture, Alcohol, Colonisation, Dysphoria, Sexism, Physical abuse, Racism, Ableism, Child death, Classism, Body horror, Child abuse, Death, Grief, Medical content, Misogyny, War, Infertility, Murder, Sexual content, and Violence

amazelan's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional slow-paced

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

5.0

c'était magistral.

je ne m'attendais pas à être autant transporté.e dans cette histoire, ni à m'attacher autant aux personnages ; pourtant presque toustes sont un peu affreux à leur manière. Zhu en particulier est si intéressante, et son développement est incroyable. c'est l'un des exemples les + magistraux de grey character. pareil pour Ouyang, mais différemment. 
puis même les personnages + secondaires sont tous intéressants, RÉALISTES surtout dans leurs travers et leur cruauté, et leurs relations le sont toutes autant. 
le désir, le destin vs les choix sont trois sujets essentiels à l'histoire et très bien développés je trouve ; ils sont finalement tous intrinsèquement liés et lient ainsi d'une certaine man ère les personnages entre eux, même si les liens se révèlent souvent destructeurs. 
j'ai aussi beaucoup aimé que Zhu soit un personnage assez flou dans son genre, et surtout suivre son développement et sa prise de confiance face à cette non-conformité de genre qui fait partie de sa grande force. on voit assez peu de personnages aussi gnc, et ça fait du bien. 
voir des relations peu cishet et complexes dans un livre comme celui-ci fait du bien. 

les plot twists sont bien placés, l'écriture est magnifique et transporte dès le début - même si elle est assez descriptive et que le début peut paraître vraiment long (moi j'adore les descriptions comme ça donc ça m'a pas rebuté du tout ahah). 
puis le mélange entre historique et fantastique est incroyable.

je pourrais écrire encore plusieurs lignes sur à quel point j'ai adoré ce livre mais j'aurais jamais les mots parfaits je crois, juste lisez-le il est TROP CHOUETTE !!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Sexism, Violence, War, Toxic friendship, Body horror, Dysphoria, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Murder, Death, and Torture

Moderate: Homophobia

Minor: Animal death, Child death, Death of parent, and Grief

laguerrelewis's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny inspiring reflective sad 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

4.0

This book, like its characters, contains multitudes. It reflects on gender, survival, ambition, society, discrimination, loyalty, identity, and even more than I name here. It also manages to tell an epic story on top of all that. For that I praise Shelley Parker-Chan. My only gripes with this book are that it takes a very long time to get into the meat of the book, that the prose is beautiful at the expense of sometimes distancing us from the characters (who were truly my favorite aspect of this story) and

there is a very interesting connection made with fate and biological sex throughout the story, but ultimately I, as a nonbinary reader, felt wasn’t explored as well as it could have been.

All in all I recommend this book and enjoyed it, though I will say I am not in a rush to pick up the sequel.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Animal death, Abandonment, Child death, Misogyny, Blood, Murder, Violence, Vomit, Colonisation, Medical content, Classism, Excrement, Homophobia, Death of parent, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Sexism, Sexual content, Slavery, and War

throwback682's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional tense slow-paced

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

5.0

From the publisher:

“Mulan meets The Song of Achilles in Shelley Parker-Chan's She Who Became the Sun, a bold, queer, and lyrical reimagining of the rise of the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty from an amazing new voice in literary fantasy.”

Phew. This book was so good and I’m ready to immediately dive into the conclusion of the Radiant Emperor duology - He Who Drowned the World. 

This book is about human suffering - due to war, patriarchy, religion, etc. It’s not an easy or lighthearted read. I liked so many of the characters in spite of them all being pretty bad people - some of the best characters are power hungry, blood thirsty, and ruthless - and it gets worse from there. 

But I’ll be damned if I wasn’t rooting for them!

This book has some very queer elements (both in terms of sexuality and gender) but very much in a way that’s framed by its setting - you won’t be able to neatly cram these characters into 21st century western boxes and labels, though you might be tempted. 

Although the bulk of the “adult” content in this book is the violence of war, there’s also one graphic sex scene, FYI. See also the content warnings. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Eating disorder, Child abuse, Dysphoria, Homophobia, Xenophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Colonisation, War, Alcohol, Ableism, Misogyny, Sexual content, Medical content, Murder, Blood, Death of parent, and Violence

Moderate: Vomit

Minor: Grief, Animal death, Excrement, and Outing

The sex scene involves

fisting.

A character sustains a battle injury that is significant to the plot. The injury is

an intentionally amputated limb.

There is a character who is mutilated.

He is a eunuch, and there are references throughout the book to this.

He is treated very poorly because of his

genital mutilation, which makes him viewed more as a woman than a man.

Two children die

one violently and one maybe of a broken heart?

The opening of the book takes place during a famine, and some content could be triggering to those with ED/ARFID I imagine.

A child is starving, etc.

Again, it’s a book about war, so lots of blood, swords, bombs, fire, etc etc. Drowning:

A great number of soldiers are washed away in a flood but there’s no description of any drowning.

Many people get sick due to something like food poisoning so there’s

a bunch of people having vomiting and diarrhea.

Gender stuff:

The main character is a girl who hides her identity and pretends to be a boy. She binds. She has a confusing relationship with her body. I wouldn’t exactly call it dysphoria in the way we’d use it, but I think those parts could be triggering to some in a related way.

4m0r's review against another edition

adventurous tense slow-paced

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

3.75

I would have liked this book better would have been fast paced, for my the problem was on the second part, it was too heavy full with nothing most of the time. 

I read this book because people recommend it for the ones who were still grieving the poppy war, so I couldn't help but compare the two all the time. Surprisingly, this book stood as its own, but Zhu and Rin really were the same but different at the same time. Their determination was the same but it felt like Zhu's greed was trying to be excused whereas Rin 's was just embraced.

I believe it would have been better had it been a duel pov: Ouyang and Zhu 1st person each. Because the way povs are writing in this books are really weird, you won't know who pov you're reading until like the character is addressed, and there were so many unnecessary povs, like esen, baoxiamg and even ma (Although I know people might disagree I feel like if Zhu comprehend her so well her body language would have told the same through Zhu's eyes). It was kind of confusing. 

I don't remember a lot of this book, only the big points like the monastery or the confrontations but if you ask me about any other thing I won't be able to answer because there was too many useless information around. If it had been more plot driven I think it would have been better because trying to depict so many characters didn't work at all

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Murder, Body shaming, War, Violence, Dysphoria, and Death

Moderate: Child death, Suicidal thoughts, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Child abuse, Racial slurs, Confinement, Grief, and Homophobia

kriti's review against another edition

medium-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, War, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Death, Misogyny, Grief, Classism, Death of parent, and Violence

Moderate: Homophobia, Torture, and Slavery

Minor: Body shaming and Pandemic/Epidemic

vaguely_pink's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional 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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexism, Murder, Child death, Death, Death of parent, War, and Violence

Moderate: Child abuse, Dysphoria, Grief, Misogyny, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual content, Homophobia, Colonisation, and Blood

Minor: Fire/Fire injury, Animal death, Slavery, Suicide, Alcohol, Cursing, Pandemic/Epidemic, Abandonment, Ableism, Animal cruelty, Eating disorder, Infidelity, and Body horror

andtheywereroommates's review against another edition

dark emotional medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, War, Violence, Homophobia, Torture, Blood, Misogyny, Death, Physical abuse, Dysphoria, Ableism, and Grief

Moderate: Racism, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Sexual content, Child death, Animal cruelty, Fire/Fire injury, Mental illness, and Death of parent

death, mutilation, trauma, tourture, death of a perant/offscreen death of a child, animal death, violence, abelism, war, PTSD, even more death, misogyny, homophobia- internal and external,