A review by storieswithbee
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

adventurous challenging dark inspiring sad tense
  • 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

2.0

Genre: Historical, LGBT, Asian Literature 
Age range: 17+

Overall: 2/5
Characters: 3/5
Plot: 2/5
Writing and Setting: 5/5


Content warning: *child abuse, violence, graphic scenes, neglect, poverty 

The gist of my review: 


This book has a very interest concept and literally THOUSANDS of incredible reviews… but I didn’t like it...
 
Initially I was drawn in with the ‘Mulan meets The Song of Achilles’ and the ‘bold, queer, and lyrical reimagining of the rise of the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty’. I understand where the Mulan references tie back to, however, I really can’t liken this book to SOA in the slightest. I more see this book resembling ‘Poppy Wars’. 
 
I will give props to the LGBT representation, but the reason why I didn’t like the book was because I found it to be more of a history book, rather than this epic fantasy. I attempted this book multiple times, and eventually I forced myself to finish this book. 

Characters: 3/5

The characters were all interesting in their own ways. By far, I loved Ouyang the most. This character was so fascinating from the get-go, but Zhu…! Zhu’s story started off so well. I felt empathetic for her humble and simple beginning and rooted for her for seizing the opportunity she took, but after she left the monastery, I was put off my how dull she became. 

Plot: 2/5

To me there didn’t really seem like there was much of a plot. Throughout the course of my reading experience, I couldn’t really tell what the course of the novel was going to be and when I got to parts where the sequence of events became clearer, I just wasn’t amazed.

Writing and Setting: 5/5


In my opinion, the writing in this novel is what prevented me from DNF’ing. The descriptive writing was lyrical and artistically written. All the scenes and characters were described in such a visual fashion that I became absolutely addicted to. 
 
In terms of POV, the story jumps around to different characters a lot. Although I normally like this about epic fantasy novels, I just don’t think it was done particularly well in this book. As I mentioned before, not all the characters that engaging and only some of them weren’t really distinct. 

Thank you to Shelley Parker- Chan and the team at Tom Doherty Associates for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. 
 
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