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A review by coralinejones
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
3.0
Incredibly sad and disappointed I didn't like this one as much as I had anticipated. 3 stars for the beautiful prose and the entire first part of this novel.
I do see something great in this book, and I completely understand why everyone enjoyed it as much as they did. The prose is genuinely gorgeous and does keep you entertained in this world of grief, violence, famine, etc. I guess, because I'm coming off the high of The Poppy War, I wanted to read something as grand as that trilogy. The very first part of this book, when we meet our protagonist Zhu, had me hooked. I couldn't put the book down and I was growing more and more excited to finish this because I couldn't wait to see her journey from childhood into early adulthood.
I did initially find a lot of similarities between "She Who Became the Sun" and other pre-established works such as Mulan and TPW. I thought this was perfect. Then, suddenly, I was jolted out of my immersion during part 2. This is where my star rating comes into play heavily. I didn't really like Shelley Parker-Chan's storytelling and the pacing that came with the middle part of this book. I thought it became incredibly choppy and all over the place once they introduced other main characters. For example, it was hard to find a connection with Zhu after part one. I struggled to remain engaged in the story and what was going on. I even found it a little hard to figure out what was supposed to be happening. I wanted to DNF this multiple times.
Not to mention a lot of the story actually takes place off screen. A lot of development I thought we should've read about just didn't happen and I guess we were made to infer what happened during those years?!
All-in-all this just wasn't for me. I do hope Shelley Parker-Chan continues writing and publishes something outside of this duology because I would love to continue reading their work; hopefully finding something that sticks with me outside of this novel. As I said, their writing is gorgeous, I just couldn't connect with this specific story.
I do see something great in this book, and I completely understand why everyone enjoyed it as much as they did. The prose is genuinely gorgeous and does keep you entertained in this world of grief, violence, famine, etc. I guess, because I'm coming off the high of The Poppy War, I wanted to read something as grand as that trilogy. The very first part of this book, when we meet our protagonist Zhu, had me hooked. I couldn't put the book down and I was growing more and more excited to finish this because I couldn't wait to see her journey from childhood into early adulthood.
I did initially find a lot of similarities between "She Who Became the Sun" and other pre-established works such as Mulan and TPW. I thought this was perfect. Then, suddenly, I was jolted out of my immersion during part 2. This is where my star rating comes into play heavily. I didn't really like Shelley Parker-Chan's storytelling and the pacing that came with the middle part of this book. I thought it became incredibly choppy and all over the place once they introduced other main characters. For example, it was hard to find a connection with Zhu after part one. I struggled to remain engaged in the story and what was going on. I even found it a little hard to figure out what was supposed to be happening. I wanted to DNF this multiple times.
Not to mention a lot of the story actually takes place off screen. A lot of development I thought we should've read about just didn't happen and I guess we were made to infer what happened during those years?!
All-in-all this just wasn't for me. I do hope Shelley Parker-Chan continues writing and publishes something outside of this duology because I would love to continue reading their work; hopefully finding something that sticks with me outside of this novel. As I said, their writing is gorgeous, I just couldn't connect with this specific story.