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A review by sugarpal
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
adventurous
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
4.25
This book gave me pretty much everything I wanted. The main character was power-hungry, morally grey, and gender non-conforming. (Also, if you saw my update about starting the book… Yeah, I take it back, Zhu has plenty of red flags. Yay!) The plot was excellent, the writing was beautiful. Everyone was gay. Amazing.
Just a couple of quibbles: the pacing felt slow at times, maybe because I wasn’t really invested in Ouyang’s plotline, and there were some times when I was confused by the writing. Maybe I’m dumb, but I just needed the genius plans and intrigues explained more fully for me, instead of implied. Also, I wanted to see a couple of semi-important events that were kind of glossed over? But oh well.
As I said, this book has a lot to recommend it. The characters are excellently handled, even though like I said I didn’t care much for Ouyang. The depiction of Chinese culture was excellent, fascinating, and I thought the magic was an interesting way of playing with the concept of the Mandate of Heaven. This book definitely gave me some Poppy War vibes, although it’s set further back in history and has to do with the Mongolian colonization instead of the British. It’s also more focused on politics than war, and I felt it was a bit lacking in action. But there is some in there, and this book has a lovely (steamy, queer!) romance to make up for it. (Be aware, it is VERY explicit.)
I’m definitely going to be reading the next book!
Just a couple of quibbles: the pacing felt slow at times, maybe because I wasn’t really invested in Ouyang’s plotline, and there were some times when I was confused by the writing. Maybe I’m dumb, but I just needed the genius plans and intrigues explained more fully for me, instead of implied. Also, I wanted to see a couple of semi-important events that were kind of glossed over? But oh well.
As I said, this book has a lot to recommend it. The characters are excellently handled, even though like I said I didn’t care much for Ouyang. The depiction of Chinese culture was excellent, fascinating, and I thought the magic was an interesting way of playing with the concept of the Mandate of Heaven. This book definitely gave me some Poppy War vibes, although it’s set further back in history and has to do with the Mongolian colonization instead of the British. It’s also more focused on politics than war, and I felt it was a bit lacking in action. But there is some in there, and this book has a lovely (steamy, queer!) romance to make up for it. (Be aware, it is VERY explicit.)
I’m definitely going to be reading the next book!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Child death, Colonisation, Death, Death of parent, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual content, and Violence
Moderate: Alcohol and Slavery