Reviews with content warning for Racism - She Who Became the Sun

i think we can withstand and understand a lot of things. we can suspend our disbelief to pretty high amounts, if a book captivates us in one way or another. we though, at the beginning, she who became the sun would be such book. we were very excited to indulge, as our friends have recommended this book to us over and over again, saying it was right up our alley.

but one too many comparisons to Mongolians being a different, lower breed, and the insulting of parts of Central Asian (we are using a generalisation here, as they do have common traits that are shared) material culture, our culture by the narrative itself proved itself too much to bear.

the prose has unfired clay legs. we reckon that if it had been put to the kiln once more, shaped and fired, she who became the sun would have then become the book we'd adored. but as it is, it reads less like a novel and more like a skeletal outline of what it ought to be. the opening was strong, very strong, and held itself like so, but afterwards zhu's personality seemed to be hollowed out with overdramatic, shallow feats of her supposed bravery and desire to live that neither had held themselves seriously, rebuking own impact with turn-around jokes, nor they were rooted to the brutal survival drive zhu chongba had been set on and grounded in at the beginning. maybe we would believe them, would we had seen that the buddhist philosophy had become the outermost layer of the strata that lay on the bedrock of crude survival — instead, we were met with time skips that made our head spin, and crude paragraph breaks.

paired with a structure unfavorable to us, most of this novel's prose is exhausted on telling you how you ought to perceive a character, what they thought, and how they felt at the moment. "a character saw [x], but they realized it was actually [y], as they were [z]" — this one is a white lie of sorts, as the author's writing is stronger than that, but in the end, that was our main take-away. the narrative distanced itself from the characters with a crude valley, and i did not feel engulfed in the world of an epic historical fantasy at all. a hand gripped our shoulder feverishly instead, pointed fingers at hazy figures, told us they were the characters, and one of them was full of desire, the second one of them wanted revenge and his manhood back, and else. i felt like a tourist that had to accept the tour guide's skewed belief of the reality they had thrust themselves into as the truth. therefore, i had learned that my culture's traditional women's wedding headdress are stupid conical hats. that it was not the Xiongnu empire, but the Mongolians (or, Mongols, as the narrative says) themselves, that invaded the Chinese dynasties. that we are, as the tradition in storytelling proclaims, polygynous raving patriarchs who only think about war, sex and casting out our family members as soon as they inconvenience us.

and i was still ready to understand it. but the brute stereotyping was not of the commoners having to carry the weight of the empyrean reality. the adjectives did not exist in the minds of the characters, but were written in by the narrative, almost as if it were an afterthought. we did not feel like we were reading about a grimdark, imperialistic reality, but more of a vacuum with various worldbuilding elements thrown in, strung loosely with strings and dehumanization peppered in — a dehumanization that, sadly, doesn't exist only in the universe of she who became the sun, but the reality we have to deal with on a day-to-day basis as well.

ally W for Xu Da, though. i like him. :)

Content Warnings

percys_panda_pillow_pet's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark inspiring sad tense medium-paced

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

4.25

At the time of writing this, I have finished both She Who Became the Sun and He Who Drowned the World. I have no intention of spoiling either book in this review; I had just wanted to wait to write this after finishing the duology as I was interested if any of my opinions of the writing and characters would change.

I have heard a lot about this book online. I know it's fairly popular and heralded as a Sapphic masterpiece. It is definitely good, that's for certain. I don't feel like it was too over-hyped, though the Sapphic elements were not what expected. However, I still loved the Sapphic relationship and the dynamics between the two characters. It was interesting to see how they balanced each other.

I really really enjoyed the worldbuilding and characters, both were big strengths for the novel and what drew me in the most. Though sometimes I felt lost in the different cultures portrayed, it wasn't a constant feeling and the writing emphasized the important themes and points that meant that total understanding wasn't entirely necessary.

Zhu's POV was my favorite part of the book. While Ouyang had interesting sections as well, especially as we got to know his character and motivations, I'm a total sucker for "chosen one" tropes and Zhu is very similar to that in the way she chases her fate. Because of this, I definitely felt like there was a bit of an odd balance to the POVs and pacing, in addition to the fact that the book is overall a slow book. But I didn't mind once I got to the end. The end was so perfect to keep readers on their toes and maintain intrigue for the sequel, which is part of the reason I waited to write this: so that I could read the sequel right away!

Reading this actually made me want to reread similar books, like Wesley Chu's The Art of Prophecy and Sue Lynn Tan's Daughter of the Moon Goddess. Anyways, if you're curious about She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan now that the sequel is out, I definitely think it is worth the read!

Content Warnings

mpbookreviews's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional reflective 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

4.75

Content Warnings

bibliomania_express's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense 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? It's complicated

5.0

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